Issue 131

August 2015

Despite any level of ability, a fighter is nothing without a sound gameplan from their coaches. FO explores the blueprints behind some of the most ingenious fight strategies in MMA.

A mixed martial arts bout used to be a much more basic pursuit than what it is today. Fighters would sharpen their skills in the gym and then simply aim to use their strengths to dominate the outcome of a fight. Ask a mixed martial artist from just a decade ago what their game plan was for a particular matchup, and it’s likely you’d hear a canned response about imposing their will, or making their opponent fight their fight.

But today, fighters are no longer the one-dimensional athletes of the past. The elite of the sport’s top promotions are likely to be dangerous wherever the fight goes. And if a fighter is uncomfortable in one aspect of the game, you can be damn sure they’re training their butt off to rectify it. 

To thrive and succeed in MMA’s chess matches of 2015, it’s imperative fighters have a solid strategy that allows their strengths to be maximized, and their opponent’s weaknesses to be exposed. If they can achieve that, some of the most compelling fights and performances are created.

It’s the one aspect of any fight that’s a true team effort, or even in some cases that of the head coach alone. And game plans can be as attractive and exciting as a Hail Mary knockout or last-minute submission. 

Fighters Only looks back on eight of the very best coaching masterclasses, investigating the methods behind some of the most cerebral victories in the sport to discover just how the winners got their hands raised.

Beat him at his own game

Fedor Emilianenko vs. Mirko ‘Cro Cop’, Pride Final Conflict 2005

As well as dominating the sport’s heavyweight division, Russian master Fedor Emelianenko was also one of the first fighters in MMA to utilize a genuine game plan, no time more so than when he faced the game’s most feared striker. 

The route to victory was obvious, but taking Mirko Crop Cop down was easier said than done. Four years into his MMA career, the Croatian had become the premier heavyweight sprawl-and-brawler. If ‘The Last Emperor’ wanted to take him into his world of ground ‘n’ pound, he’d first have to engage him in his domain – on the feet.

Most of the former K-1 star’s previous opponents were terrified to engage with Cro Cop, which allowed him to back them into a corner and plant his legendary high kick or straight left to their dome. But Fedor’s plan was to back him up – so he couldn’t launch his lethal attacks with the same effectiveness. And when Cro Cop did let fly with his patented kicks, the Russian covered up and hit back with quick counter kicks to buckle his standing leg. 

The defending heavyweight champion also attacked the body to whittle away at his opponent’s famed cardio. Emelianenko used straight shots and hooks as part of multi-strike combinations that kept Mirko guessing.

All of this eventually wore the challenger down and made him hesitant on his feet, which gifted Fedor with the opportunity to secure top position and flex his peerless ground assault. It was no easy task to take down a fighter of Cro Cop’s caliber, but Fedor made his job that much easier by doing the last thing everyone expected and outstriking the striker. It was a masterful performance and cemented his status as the world number one.

Leg kick masterclass

José Aldo vs. Urijah Faber, WEC 48

It would have been easy for José Aldo to get caught up in the atmosphere of the WEC’s first and only pay-per-view event. A partisan Sacramento crowd provided roaring support for Urijah Faber, but the world 145lb champion remained focused and followed the game plan, honed to perfection by his team at Nova Uniao.

“We studied Faber’s previous fights a lot to set the perfect strategy,” head coach Andre Pederneiras tells FO. “We noticed that he had difficulties blocking leg kicks and focused our strategy on it. During the fight, while we were successful following it, Aldo kept kicking his legs and hurting him.”

‘The California Kid’ had no answer for the assault on his left thigh. It was quick, powerful and unpredictable. It neutralized Faber’s offense by leaving him with no spring in his step to shoot for a takedown or jump forward with strikes. It also literally turned his leg black and blue.

“I felt like I was getting hit with a bat… It was pretty crappy man. I felt like crap. I didn’t realize it was going to do so much damage to my legs so early in the fight,” Faber revealed after the fight.

When the challenger switched stances to hide his damaged limb, Aldo moved his attack upstairs, before going straight back down when the opportunity presented itself again. Joe Rogan and Mike Goldberg winced in the commentary booth as shin thudded into thigh over and over again. The connections were so powerful, they eventually crumbled Faber to the floor. 

By the end of the second round, the Team Alpha Male leader had to limp back to his corner. And by the end of the third, coach Master Tong had to carry him there. Faber was broken yet there was little chance of mercy as Aldo continued to dominate until the claxon sounded after 25 minutes. 

“We joked between the rounds to motivate him to keep kicking the legs, that we wanted fried chicken thighs,” Pederneiras laughs, “and we ended up successful.”

Attack is the best form of defense

Alan Belcher vs. Rousimar Palhares, UFC on Fox 3

Alan Belcher made great use of this classic warfare tactic for his 2012 bout with the world’s most terrifying submission artist. “His jiu-jitsu skills in this fight are best served in defensive mode,” buzzed UFC color commentator Joe Rogan, interpreting what everybody thought we knew.

“He needs to use the jiu-jitsu skills he has to keep Palhares off of him, he will not be trying to attack Palhares with submissions... But this is MMA and crazy things can happen.” Ultimately, Rogan’s final statement would prove the most accurate. Belcher’s plan was indeed to dominate when the fight hit the canvas.

It took just 45 seconds for Palhares to get the fight to the floor. Yet the leg-lock specialist found himself under immediate attack from the Roufusport judo black belt, who came close to wrapping up a twister before the Brazilian escaped. 

Despite starting strong, Belcher soon found himself in a potentially career-threatening position, with his legs tangled among ‘Toquinho’s. Cast under the shadow of a long list of victims that had been sent for knee surgery, he had to act fast. Fortunately, he did his homework, and spent three weeks preparing with leglock savant Dean Lister. 

“This was just standard procedure for me, I’ve been doing this all the way through my training camp,” Belcher reflected afterwards. Instead of trying to wrench his leg away, which would have been like trying to escape from quicksand, Belcher fought Palhares’ hands, preventing him from securing one of the many leglocks in his arsenal. 

Keeping a cool head, ‘The Talent’ stayed heavy on his leg, yet never stationary, and patiently worked his way out of his opponents’ grip. Now in his guard, Belcher unloaded with a series of vicious, accurate elbows to finish the fight. 

“I wanted to prove that I can beat the best grapplers on the ground and the best strikers standing too,” said Belcher.

He flirted with danger and placed his head in the jaws of a lion, but emerged unscathed as the dominant victor. 

Reprogramming a killer

Carlos Condit vs. Nick Diaz, UFC 143

How do you beat an opponent who can’t be stopped? That was the question Mike Winkeljohn and Greg Jackson had to answer when they sized up Carlos Condit’s five-rounder with the most resilient fighter in mixed martial arts. Diaz’s iron chin and outstanding jiu-jitsu meant it would take a minor miracle to finish him.

“You look at Nick Diaz and he was a guy that I told Carlos, ‘He comes back from the dead.’ People just beat on him and beat on him and then all of a sudden he comes back,” Winkeljohn recalls to FO. “He has this endless gas tank, so it was about making sure we win those rounds, break him down – try to break that body down a little bit – and then go for it late in the fight. We didn’t want to throw 100% of what we had trying to knock this kid out and then be gassed.”

There was just one problem, however. Carlos Condit is absolutely the kind of man to commit 100% and try to knock an opponent out. ‘The Natural Born Killer’ rose to the top of the welterweight division by violently dispatching opponents in life-or-death fights to the finish. To overcome the significant challenge of Stockton’s most notorious bad boy, he’d have to tame that killer instinct.

“It was something we spent a lot of time on in the gym,” Winkeljohn reveals. “Me and the other coaches said, ‘Carlos, we’ve got to keep the distance on this guy, we know what he can do, he wants to get you to brawl. But you can stick and move on him, because he has no footwork at all.’”

Condit stuck to the strategy to the letter. He peppered Diaz with kicks to the legs, body and head; he countered with punches to the body; and he cut angles to create space to attack, stay off the cage and stay clear of danger. He was disciplined for 25 minutes to avoid being dragged into the kind of war of attrition Diaz excels in to earn a close but deserved unanimous decision.

“Carlos always gives me goosebumps when he responds to direction,” adds coach Wink’. “He knew right off the bat when we started talking about the fight what was going to be needed, and from the beginning Carlos was in on the game plan with us. It was as much his ideas as ours.”

Play to your strengths

Robert Whittaker vs. Colton Smith, UFC 160

As these two TUF winners closed in on each other at the start of their 2013 showdown, it was clear Whittaker was holding his lead hand unusually low. It was an unusual stance for MMA, but Smith’s first takedown attempt provided clarity on the strategy. Despite having limited wrestling experience, Whittaker effortlessly managed to defend the takedown as his opponent dived straight into an underhook and was lifted back to his feet. 

The architect behind the game plan was Tristar head coach Firas Zahabi. His approach gave his charge the best chance of staying on his feet, by looking at his opponent’s previous fight with one of his other students. 

“The game plan was to keep the hand down to force Colton to shoot into the underhook, because Colton likes to grab the waist. He shoots for the double-leg and if he doesn’t get a clean takedown he comes to the waist lock,” Zahabi says. 

“He did it to Mike Ricci repeatedly in their fight. I told Robert, ‘We can’t allow him to have the waist because he’s very good with it, we have to bring him up with the underhook. If you keep the hand down you might get tagged but you’ve got to stick to it because I don’t believe he has the power to hurt you – but you have the power to hurt him.’” 

Zahabi adds: “Robert got dropped very briefly in round one, but he scrambled up to his feet and kept his hand down. He stuck to the plan and didn’t get scared. He kept catching Colton with the underhook and peeling him off every time. 

“Up until then, Robert hadn’t done very much wrestling at all so it was very impressive that he was able to fend off Colton. That underhook did the trick.”

Whittaker’s unusually low lead hand not only gave the TUF 16 winner problems from a defensive stand point, offensively, he was able to land his jab and left hook at will. With the hand outside his opponent’s center of vision, Smith never saw the Kiwi’s left hand coming. Taking full advantage, Whittaker drew blood with his jab before a hard left hook put the wrestler on his back, which led to a third-round TKO.

Righting the wrongs

Eddie Alvarez vs. Michael Chandler II, Bellator 106

When Bellator’s two hottest lightweights met for the first time in 2011, chaos ensued. In an absolute barnburner of a fight, Chandler walked away with the belt after securing a fourth-round rear naked choke. The loss proved to be a learning experience for Alvarez. Going hell for leather was entertaining, but not necessarily a smart tactic when facing a cardio machine like the Alliance MMA standout. 

The Philly native realized he needed to change things up and subsequently moved to the growing Boca Raton-based Blackzilians camp. There, he started working with Henri Hooft. “When you have a fight like that it takes a lot out of you. But watching the fight back I noticed he was too eager. At times he was running into punches,” Hooft says.

“When Eddie came to us after the first fight I wanted him to be more complete and use his kicks. Everyone knows he has very good hands. I didn’t try to get him to move like Dillashaw or Edgar because those guys are one-of-a-kind, but I wanted him to apply pressure if he hurt Michael, as he let him off the hook too much in their previous bout.”

Utilizing a much more cerebral approach, Alvarez looked a lot more diverse the second time around. Picking his shots cleanly and showing great footwork, Chandler had a hard time cutting him off, as Alvarez used the full area of the circular cage to avoid many of the champion’s combinations and clinch attempts. 

Alvarez would circle one way to either bait the left hook or right hand from Chandler, then dart in the opposite direction as the champion committed to the punch. Often landing a strike of his own.

“Michael Chandler hasn’t developed much, he does the same thing with every fight. I think he over-relies on his toughness, like Eddie sometimes,” Hooft adds. “It’s good to be tough, but only when you need to be. He stood in front of Eddie too much.” 

Two of three judges agreed, and Alvarez regained the Bellator lightweight championship via a split decision. 

Action and reaction

TJ Dillashaw vs. Renan Barao, UFC 173

Renan Barao got more than he bargained for when he took on a heavy underdog from Team Alpha Male. Fans witnessed one of the greatest performances, upsets and game plans in MMA history at UFC 173. 

Dillashaw’s fifth-round TKO was simply the cherry on top of four-and-a-half rounds of calculated destruction. From the opening bell, Dillashaw looked cool and confident, like he’d memorized the blueprint of success and knew it was only a matter of time before he had his hand raised. 

A first-round overhand right floored Barao, and it was a sign of things to come, as the challenger mixed switch hitting, takedown attempts and counters in combination. But, how was he able to do it? How did a +700 underdog not only defeat one of world’s top pound-for-pound fighters, but put on one of the most one-sided beatdowns in history?

Through extensive research, as the mastermind behind the plan, Duane Ludwig, explains: “We worked on keeping TJ in position while getting Barao out of position. Sounds easy, right? Once you understand how to read someone’s patterns and make them react how we want them to react, you can predict the future.”

By applying pressure and acting on his opponent’s reaction, Dillashaw knew both when to strike and what to strike with. “Each opponent is his own instrument and after studying the opponent over time, you can find the proper frequency that makes someone do basically what you want them to do, when you want them to do it,” Ludwig adds.

“Barao routinely reacts the same way when certain things happen to him and when he reacts that way, TJ chooses which way to attack.”

Though the two-time World MMA Awards ‘Coach of the Year’ laid out the master plan to dethrone the champion, the victory ultimately came down to Dillashaw’s application of the techniques and ability to stay calm and stick to the strategy under enormous pressure in his first ever title shot.

Beauty in simplicity

Beneil Dariush vs. Daron Cruickshank, UFC 185

Kings MMA head coach Rafael Cordeiro may have received the most plaudits in March for masterminding Rafael dos Anjos’ capture of the lightweight belt, but his most ingenious slice of strategy was on the undercard of the same event. Sometimes, it just takes one technique to unlock a path to victory. For Beneil Dariush, the key was his left kick.

Faced with rapid-fire, high-volume striking, the BJJ black belt Iranian-American’s best chance of winning appeared to be by taking the fight to the mat and hunt for a submission. However, Cruickshank has become one of the most effective sprawl-and-brawlers in modern MMA. 

But Master Cordeiro put in the hours to study tape, and hatched a plan to take ‘The Detroit Superstar’ out of his comfort zone. He saw he would transition if things weren’t going his way, which is exactly what Dariush wanted. Over to the master of Muay Thai to develop that simple striking strategy to make their opponent switch things up.

Dariush explains: “My striking coach, Rafael Cordeiro, said, ‘When he gets kicked with the left leg, he never answers, which means you have a free kick at any time.’ I threw my kick: no reply. I threw my second kick: no reply. So I knew I had something there… I figured I’d throw it every time I got the chance.”

Sure enough, after kick after kick snapped into Cruickshank’s body and leg, he wanted no more of the standup. By round two, he dived for the takedown, and Dariush was ready. The fight was his. He used his superior ground acumen to sprawl, whip round to the back, secure a body triangle and work for a rear naked choke. Seconds later, tap, tap, tap, and that was a wrap.

Five more for the road

Frank Shamrock vs. Tito Ortiz, UFC 22

The MMA’s equivalent of the rope-a-dope strategy made famous by Muhammad Ali against George Foreman in the Rumble in the Jungle. ‘The Legend’ outlasted a brutal assault from the younger, bigger and stronger fighter until ‘The Huntington Beach Bad Boy’ exhausted himself by round four. Then Shamrock pounced. The first UFC light heavyweight champion swept and pounded his opponent into submission to finish one of the most dramatic fights in history.

Georges St Pierre vs. Josh Koscheck, UFC 124

GSP surprised everyone during the first encounter between these two elite welterweights by beating Koscheck at his own wrestling game. For the rematch, ‘Rush’ reverted to standup. With a stiff jab honed at Freddie Roach’s Wild Card gym, he landed 55 jabs over 25 minutes – and busted his opponent’s orbital bone in the first round – to cruise to a wide decision victory.

Miguel Torres vs. Antonio Banuelos, UFC 126

There are few better examples of using a reach advantage to completely dominate a fight. The rangy former WEC bantamweight champion kept his left arm outstretched throughout this three-round affair to keep his opponent at bay. Banuelos swung at air as Torres measured his way out of range and peppered him with a relentless jab to take a comfortable unanimous decision.

Rory MacDonald vs. Tyron Woodley, UFC 174

Tyron Woodley rose through the welterweight rankings thanks to a simple strategy. He backed up against the fence to lure opponents in, before firing back with takedowns or lethal counter right hands. But careful game planning by that man again, Tristar head coach Firas Zahabi, meant Rory MacDonald knew not to take the bait. Instead, his patient ranged attack and effective use of the jab prevented ‘The Chosen One’s counters and opened him up for punishment. 

Robbie Lawler vs. Johny Hendricks II, UFC 181

How to use the 10-point must system to your advantage. ‘Ruthless’ was a frustrated figure after the first fight between these two men at UFC 171. Despite winning the fight for long stretches, he came out in the ‘L’ column. For the rematch, he came out like a house on fire to take the first round, but eased off for much of the rest of the fight. However, high volumes of offense in the closing stages of the final two frames swung the bout in his favor and secured a close split-decision victory.