Issue 119

September 2014

For years, born-and-bred grapplers ruled supreme in mixed martial arts, but now with the help of Black House MMA wrestling coach Kenny Johnson, the strikers are learning how to fight back

Imagine this: You’re a striking supremo making your debut in the UFC. The hype train is firmly behind you as you’ve been knocking out opponents left, right and center, and no one has come close to defeating you. As you step into the Octagon you feel unbeatable.

However, despite all the knockout power you possess, your wrestling isn’t quite up to scratch and standing across the cage from you is an NCAA Division I champion, bred to take you down and pound your face until it’s as flat as the mat beneath both of your feet.

It’s a problem many fighters have faced in their career, and the wise ones will have spent months preparing in the gym, adapting and honing their wrestling skills, hoping to make sure they leave the cage with something other than a flattened nose and bruised ego to show for their time in the big leagues.

And the ‘wise ones’ are growing in number, according to Kenny Johnson, creator of Bolt Wrestling and grappling coach to the likes of Anderson Silva, Lyoto Machida, Paul Daley and Fabricio Werdum. 

He explains: “I’ve taught guys like Machida, Werdum and BJ Penn – guys who have already had success. However, the game of MMA has evolved so much.

“Now you are getting more and more guys who aren’t just good in one area but good right across the board, and that means championship-level competitors need to evolve their games too. They need to take a leap and explore the weaknesses in their game, and a lot of the time that weakness is wrestling.

“Sadly, wrestling isn’t as readily available as boxing or jiu-jitsu. Unless you wrestled in high school or college you really don’t have that much access to wrestling.”

Although being an athlete is an important factor when it comes to enhancing the wrestling abilities of those who haven’t trained in the art from a young age, Johnson also puts strong emphasis on building a tough wrestling mentality among those he teaches.

“Guys who are willing to work with me to improve the wrestling aspect of their game show the heart of a true champion,” says Johnson. “They don’t have to do this. They could stay on the same path and they’d do great, but there’s a difference between being ‘great’ and being a champion, and the guys I work with want to be a champion. That means they’re willing to put the Bolt Wrestling white belt on and start training.

“For them to be open to wrestling is the first step. Everyone says that they need wrestling but it’s difficult to find places where there’s quality wrestling available. All the guys I’ve been training have been willing to put their egos aside and take their ass-beatings so they can eventually start giving them out.

“The guys I’ve been training are such high-level athletes that they can pick up whatever they want to pick up pretty quickly. It’s just a matter of being pushed down that path, although a lot of them have enough self-awareness to push themselves down that path.”

But as Johnson explains, it’s not just as simple as spending hour after hour, week after week, grappling on the mats because a lot of wrestling skills and techniques just aren’t suitable for mixed martial arts. 

He says: “When I was putting together the Bolt Wrestling training program I realized I’d have to take into account such variables as how well some grappling techniques combine with striking and jiu-jitsu, and that left me with just a select few techniques to choose from.

“We’ve created Bolt Wrestling so that all the techniques can be used with striking and jiu-jitsu in the cage.”

And that kind of attention to detail seems to have worked wonders for Fabricio Werdum in particular, who hasn’t been taken down since he started working with Johnson just prior to his UFC return. 

But despite his belief that all top-level mixed martial artists need to be proficient wrestlers, Johnson is very keen not to turn his students into pure grapplers – he just wants them to be able to dictate where the fight ends up.

“I believe that most fighters consider themselves to be strikers or grapplers,” he says. “As a fighter you want to dictate where the fight goes. You’re learning how to control somebody and put them in the bad positions.

“It’s hard to teach takedowns to someone that doesn’t wrestle, but then again you don’t have to. If you’re a good striker then you should be

using your right and left hand to take them down.”

JOHNSON ON WORKING OUT OF THE CLINCH

“You need to learn how to control and attack the clinch. I don’t mean the Muay Thai clinch, I mean the wrestler’s clinch. When I’m watching fights I feel like there’s a big gap between fighters who not only know how to control it but shut it down when it occurs.

“I don’t feel that a lot of fighters know how to free themselves from the clinch so they can strike, turn it into a takedown or simply get away. Everyone should know how to identify the clinch, control it, stop it and then be able to attack from that position. 

“Wrestlers who aren’t training in Greco-Roman wrestling aren’t really versed because they have the option to attack the legs. Fighters who don’t have wrestling in their armory don’t really have much in terms of upper-body techniques, either, because there aren’t a lot of people to learn from.”

JOHNSON ON TAKEDOWNS

“There are a number takedowns you can use in MMA, but I think the most important is the single-leg takedown. Most people have no business shooting a double-leg. Sometimes it just looks terrible.

“A single-leg takedown is something you can get because you’re only grabbing one leg. If you get your hands wrapped around a single-leg you should be able to finish that takedown every single time.”

JOHNSON ON DEFENDING THE TAKEDOWN

“Just because you’re a black belt in jiu-jitsu doesn’t mean you should feel relaxed and confident if taken to the ground. You can get elbowed or punched and no one wants that. These guys are high-level black belts so they should be going to the ground so they can get into a superior position and not just because someone took them down. 

“If you’re a striker, which I feel is the most common background for fighters, then you definitely don’t want to be on your back. You can’t really let go with your strikes if you’re on your back.

“I think the most important thing people need to learn is how to defend takedowns from the center of the ring, when you’re sprawling and when your back is on the cage.”