Tag: Brad Pickett

UFC 204 is in the books after a fantastic night of action. Middleweight champion Michael Bisping successfully defended his title in a razor-thin, controversial decision against the legendary Dan Henderson in the final fight of the former Pride and Strikeforce champion’s long and illustrious career. 

That was only the cap on a great slate of fights, though. In the co-main event, perennial contender Gegard Mousasi hammered the venerable Vitor Belfort to send the 20-year veteran into potential retirement. Jimi Manuwa brutally knocked out Ovince Saint Preux, while Stefan Struve submitted Daniel Omielanczuk. Uber-prospect Mirsad Bektic returned to action to finish the overmatched Russell Doane in the first round.

The preliminary card was likewise excellent, featuring finishes in five of six fights; Iuri Alcantara‘s drubbing of Brad Pickett in the Fox Sports 1 headliner was the highlight.

In this technical recap, we’ll take a deeper look at the best action of the evening, focusing on Bisping-Henderson, Belfort-Mousasi and Alcantara-Pickett.

Michael Bisping vs. Dan Henderson

This was the best version of Dan Henderson we’ve seen in quite some time, and his performance was the logical endpoint of the athletically-diminished-but-still-crafty fighter who has been struggling to find a groove over the last several years.

Far too often since his last great all-around performance against Shogun Rua in 2011, we’ve seen Henderson plodding forward and looking to wing his punishing right hand. That just doesn’t cut it against elite 205- or 185-pounders, and it’s a big reason why Henderson had lost six of nine fights since that epic win over Rua.

All aging fighters have to find the balance between their diminishing physical gifts and their increasing knowledge of the sport. Since the Rua fight, Henderson’s struggles with durability and decreased speed and reaction time have launched him into a downward spiral.

In the last two years, however, Henderson has shown some flashes of coming to terms with his physical decline, and his performance against Bisping was the culmination of that process of reinvention.

While still capable of shocking speed in short bursts, he’s no longer fast enough to consistently explode from distance; opponents can manage the range with kicks and straight punches and keep him just a bit too far away to land that right hand.

Henderson needed a new approach, and he found it with counterpunching. Instead of coming after his opponents, he lets them come to him. As long as an aging fighter’s reactions are still quick enough to pull the trigger, counterpunching is a skill set that improves with age, as Anderson Silva’s late career shows most clearly.

Improved counters are how Henderson dealt with Tim Boetsch, and they’re how he had his moments of greatest success in the rematch with Bisping. The sequence that led to the knockdown in the first round went like this:

1. Bisping pressures, and Henderson feints a left hook as Bisping comes in.
2. Bisping steps in with a lazy left hook and pulls his hand back to his stomach rather than his chin.
3. Henderson launches a monstrous right hand over the top of Bisping‘s left hook that catches the champion on the chin.

This was exactly what happened in the second round as well. Bisping pressured a seemingly hurt Henderson toward the fence, threw a lazy left hook that he pulled back to his stomach and Henderson laced him with a right hand over the top.

Counter right hands were the key to Henderson’s approach in this fight, but he also did an excellent job of jabbing with Bisping and using low kicks both to slow the kinetic Bisping and to score enough points to give himself a chance of winning rounds.

All of those things put together made this the best Henderson performance in years. “Not bad for an old man, huh?” he said after the fight, and it’s hard to disagree with him.

But what about Bisping? How did he handle the challenge Henderson presented?

Bisping clearly pursued a cautious game plan from the get-go, as you’d expect given the thunderous way their first meeting ended back in 2009. He pressured, but not too aggressively, peppering Henderson with jabs and low kicks while throwing his left kick high regularly to keep Henderson’s right hand pinned to his chin as much as possible. 

With Henderson’s decreased ability to explode into a right hand, this would theoretically keep Bisping just out of danger. 

Then when Henderson tired in the later rounds, Bisping‘s thinking seemed to run; he would turn up the pace and volume and overwhelm the less-conditioned veteran. A tired Henderson wouldn’t be able to throw the right hand with as much force, so Bisping could safely sit down on his punches and land with power.

Bisping more or less succeeded with the first part of the plan, and aside from the two early knockdowns he did an outstanding job of minimizing the threat of Henderson’s powerful right hand as the fight went on. He ate a bunch of low kicks in the third, fourth and fifth rounds—19 of Henderson’s 47 total strikes in those rounds, per Fightmetric—but avoided serious damage.

As to the second part of the plan, the champion did what he normally does in terms of turning up the pace as the fight goes on, attempting (per Fightmetric) 76, 67 and 67 strikes in each of the final three rounds, respectively. That’s in line with what he did in the later rounds against Thales Leites and Anderson Silva. 

Bisping never pulled away on the scorecards the way he had in those fights, though. That was probably due to justified fear of the right hand. Bisping never really sat down on his punches the way he had in his last few fights, and even though he was throwing volume, his shots didn’t seem to have the same effect.

And that’s how you end up with a close, contentious decision. Bisping did what he planned to do in terms of the broad outline of his plan, but his shots didn’t have the impact they needed in the later rounds to convince observers he was obviously winning those frames.

Regardless of the outcome, it was an outstanding fight and a fitting final bout for one of MMA‘s true greats.

Vitor Belfort vs. Gegard Mousasi

While Belfort isn’t the fighter now that he was during his epic, testosterone replacement therapy-fueled run of head-kick knockouts in 2013, he’s still one of the most dangerous punchers in the middleweight division, and Mousasi had to show off both discipline and skill in order to safely finish him as effectively as he did.

The Dutchman’s plan was simple, yet not necessarily easy to pull off: responsible pressure.

In an orthodox-southpaw matchup, both fighters generally try to get their lead foot to the outside of the opponent’s. This creates a dominant angle from which to land the rear power hand, making it more difficult to see coming while shortening the path for it to land. 

Mousasi used a consistent jab and left low kick to take that outside angle away from Belfort. Like clockwork, every time Mousasi jabbed or threw the low kick, Belfort moved into Mousasi‘s right hand.

This predictable movement simplified Mousasi‘s footwork for him, meaning he only had to sidestep in one direction in order to cut off Belfort before he got back into the open space in the middle of the cage. With Belfort‘s back to the fence, Mousasi could crowd him and take away the advantages of his speed and explosiveness. When they engaged, it would be on Mousasi‘s terms.

Belfort‘s plan, by contrast, wasn’t a bad one: let Mousasi come to him, then use his speed advantage to either get off first or to land a devastating counter. The problem was his inability to find a dominant angle for the left hand or the right range to explode into it, courtesy of Mousasi‘s pressure. He also struggled to pull the trigger when an opportunity did present itself.

This was the best performance of Mousasi‘s career. He has always liked a subtle pressure game but faced with an opponent who needed to be pushed back and outworked, Mousasi turned up the aggression and the offensive output. When Belfort was hurt, Mousasi unleashed everything he had to get the finish in impressive fashion.

Iuri Alcantara vs. Brad Pickett

Both of these veteran bantamweights had struggled a bit in recent years, with Alcantara running up a 1-2 record in his last three outings and Pickett going 1-3 in his last four. It was the 36-year-old Alcantara who looked like a reborn fighter, however, putting together the best performance of his 40-fight professional career. 

Alcantara has always had great skills and off-the-charts killer instinct, but he struggled to put together a consistent-enough approach to score points and win rounds. Leaving aside the stunning finish—more on that in a moment—it was encouraging to see Alcantara come out with a strong game plan, stringing together kicks and punches at a rapid pace to stick the smaller Pickett on the outside.

But oh, lord, that finish was sweet. The sequence began with a jab feint to a spinning elbow that caught Pickett right on the temple. When Pickett fell, Alcantara swarmed him with punches and elbows and nearly finished the fight right then.

Pickett’s a savvy veteran, however, and he momentarily succeeded in tying up Alcantara to slow the barrage. Alcantara took what Pickett gave him and passed to side control, then knee-on-belly and finally into a high mount, where he locked up a mounted triangle.

That was just bait, however, and Alcantara immediately switched to a belly-down armbar when Pickett looked to defend. Pickett stepped over to defend the armbar and walked right into a triangle setup, and from there Alcantara got the tap.

It was a gorgeous sequence in every way. Alcantara swarmed the second he had Pickett hurt, took the positional advance when it became clear the strikes wouldn’t end the fight and put together a slick submission chain to get the finish.

UFC 204 was a great night of fights. Check back after UFC 205 on Nov. 12 for another technical recap.

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 Twitter and on Facebook.

Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com