Since July 2014, I’ve written 110 previews of UFC events. In that time, I’ve seen every single fight the promotion has put on and thousands more besides in order to do the necessary film study to write my guides.
Just two UFC events in that period have escaped my keyboard: the godawful UFC Fight Night 102 in Albany, New York, in December headlined by Derrick Lewis and Shamil Abdurakhimov and the fun one where the diminutive John Lineker brutalized Michael McDonald and Tony Ferguson and Lando Vannata put on a barnburner for the ages.
There have been a grand total of 112 UFC events since that first one I previewed, from the epic battle between Matt Brown and Robbie Lawler in San Jose to the fun scrap that Artem Lobov and Cub Swanson put on at UFC Fight Night 108 in Nashville, Tennessee, last Saturday. That’s more than a quarter of all the events the UFC has put on its entire history.
All of this is a roundabout way of saying I’ve watched a ton of MMA with a technical eye in the last three years and that I’ve had a front-row seat to the evolution of the sport. There have been some major changes to what happens inside the cage, and we’ll focus on a few of those here.
First, the long battle between striking-first fighters and grappling-first fighters continues, with the true all-terrain fighters still nowhere to be found. Second, counterpunching is becoming a more and more important part of the sport. Finally, and most importantly, volume and pace have continued their rise. Fighters throw more strikes, attempt more takedowns and generally do more in the cage than they ever have before.
These trends are somewhat connected, and each could take up a full article of its own. But we’ll focus on the basics here.
Let’s start with the stylistic diversity of the sport. The entire history of MMA has been a tug of war between striking and grappling, as enabled by wrestling, and the balance of power between the two poles has shifted regularly. First, there were the grapplers, then the first wave of sprawl-and-brawlers, then the next-generation top-control specialists, then more sprawl-and-brawlers and so on ad infinitum.
At some point, the three-dimensional fighters—those who could do everything with equal ability a la Georges St-Pierre—were supposed to take over, but that never really happened. Instead, we’ve just continued to get better specialists—Olympians instead of collegiate wrestlers to name just one example. Nobody can survive without some measure of skill everywhere, but the benefits of specialization have never disappeared.
This is a key point because it speaks to what kind of sport MMA is on its way to becoming. We’ve been told for years that fighters had to know how to do everything, that having all the tools and the ability to seamlessly shift from one approach to another was key to success.
The last few years have proved once and for all that’s not the case. The do-everything fighters haven’t taken over, and only the peerless Demetrious Johnson—the exception to every rule—rules his division without a real preference for what kind of fight he decides to win.
Look at the real talents who have risen to the top in the last few years: Conor McGregor, Cody Garbrandt, Joanna Jedrzejczyk, Stephen Thompson, Max Holloway, Khabib Nurmagomedov and Robert Whittaker, to name just a few. All are capable of doing different things, but all have defined preferences and elite, top-of-the-heap skills in their areas.
Maybe someday we’ll see formless, perfectly well-rounded fighters who can wrestle like Olympians, strike like elite kickboxers and grapple like ADCC winners. Until then, fighters who are capable of dominating a single phase and surviving elsewhere will rule this sport.
Let’s move on to our second point, counterpunching. This is far more specific than the first, but it speaks to the overall technical development of MMA in the last several years, and it’s the best example regarding how much sharper fighters are getting from a skills perspective.
Counters have been part of MMA for a long time. Anderson Silva made himself a legend by picking off overmatched opponents with brilliant responses, from Forrest Griffin to Yushin Okami. And Chuck Liddell was no stranger to blasting overaggressive foes.
The big shift lies in the depth and complexity of the counter game. Even in his late prime, the years he spent dismantling guys like Griffin and Bonnar, Silva wasn’t the world’s most diverse counterpuncher; he thrived on particular types of relatively basic responses—like a slip and return or other simple triggers—against drastically less skilled opposition.
Compare that to what fighters like Garbrandt, Thompson, Jose Aldo, Jedrzejczyk, Amanda Nunes, Whittaker and especially McGregor are doing now, all against much more skilled opponents.
Whatever else we might say about McGregor, to name just one example, he’s one of the most diverse, accurate and devastating counterpunchers we’ve ever seen in the sport, a master of subtle angles and timing and the owner of a deep toolkit he can use to land his shots.
This is the root of a bigger point here. Counters aren’t just punches you throw in response to the opponent; they’re the tip of a much deeper iceberg, one built on timing, accuracy, sense of the distance and especially footwork. The fact that so many fighters are so much better at landing a greater variety of counters is a proxy marker, a great big neon sign, for the technical evolution of MMA striking as a whole.
To effectively and consistently land counters, a fighter needs to have the footwork to put him or herself in the right position in the first place, a sense of the distance to tell where she or he is relative to the opponent, the timing to figure out when to throw and the calm under pressure to let the opponent’s shot come without panicking.
It’s not just young bucks like Garbrandt coming up with these countering skills,either; established fighters like Aldo and McGregor (in his last two fights) are showing huge improvements in that regard as well.
Counters are hard to pull off, and a fighter has to be really, really good to make them a centerpiece of their game. The fact that we’re seeing counters so much more now tells us a great deal about the underlying skills that enable them.
This brings us to the final development: work rate and offensive output. There are a number of different aspects to this, which I’ll touch on, but the basic point is this: Fighters are doing more in the cage every year. They’re throwing and landing more strikes, attempting more takedowns and are generally more active. This has been an ongoing trend for a long time, but it has fully blossomed in the last several years.
Take the last UFC Fight Night card as an example. In the main event, Cub Swanson landed 209 significant strikes on Artem Lobov over the 25-minute distance, while Lobov landed 123 of his own in an action-packed but not blistering fight.
Compare them to the epic five-round war in the first fight between Robbie Lawler and Johny Hendricks back in March 2014: The two fighters combined to land 308 strikes in what seemed at the time like an impossibly quick-paced fight.
That Lobov and Swanson fight is on the high end, but it’s not orders of magnitude different from what other fighters are doing in terms of pace these days. Demetrious Johnson landed 108 significant strikes in just shy of 15 minutes against Wilson Reis, while Robert Whittaker planted 55 on Jacare Souza in less than nine minutes at the UFC on Fox show on April 15.
Fighters like Holloway and Jedrzejczyk routinely put absurd amounts of volume on their opponents. TJ Dillashaw, who will soon try to regain his bantamweight title, is a whirling dervish of offense who buries his opponents in strikes.
We could go on and on and on with more examples, but these should suffice to drive home the basic point: Offensive output is rising, rising some more, and then rising still more beyond that. This isn’t to say that everybody is a part of this trend—Aldo remains methodical, Garbrandt prefers power to volume and Tyron Woodley works at a glacially slow pace—but by and large, this is the ongoing trend.
There are a few different things driving this trend. Better cardio, whether as a result of more athletically gifted fighters, more time to train or better strength and conditioning programs, is probably the most important factor.
Combination striking has improved even in the last few years, so fighters are throwing more strikes in sequence. That rise in technical skill I already mentioned also plays a role; with better footwork and sense of the distance, fighters spend more time close to each other, which means more opportunities to throw and land. Counters are a part of that as well, as fewer thrown strikes pass without an immediate answer.
All of this holds true for the increased volume of takedowns as well. Better footwork, especially the pressure footwork that forces an opponent to the fence, creates more opportunities for takedown attempts and clinch entries. Being closer to the opponent likewise means that more attempted takedowns have a chance of getting close enough to succeed.
When we put these trends together, what we see is an ever-higher level of specialized technical skill at the top of the sport, performed by fighters with deeper gas tanks and more ability to produce offense in the cage. At an elite level, MMA has never produced more fun, compelling fights than it does now.
I’ve had a front-row seat to these developments over the last three years, and what a run of fights it’s been. Here are a few of my personal favorites, fights I felt best embodied these shifts:
- Robbie Lawler vs. Rory MacDonald, UFC 189
- Conor McGregor vs. Nate Diaz I and II, UFC 196 and UFC 202
- Robert Whittaker vs. Jacare Souza, UFC on Fox 24
- Joanna Jedrzejczyk vs. Claudia Gadelha II, The Ultimate Fighter 23 Finale
- Max Holloway vs. Anthony Pettis, UFC 206
It’s been a pleasure following the technical aspects of the sport over the last several years, and if they’re anything to go by, the next few aren’t going to be any less fun to watch.
All statistics via FightMetric.
Patrick Wyman is the Senior MMA Analyst for Bleacher Report and the co-host of the Heavy Hands Podcast, your source for the finer points of face-punching. For the history enthusiasts out there, he also hosts The Fall of Rome Podcast on the end of the Roman Empire. He can be found on Facebook.
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