Issue 116

July 2014

If anyone had forgotten UFC 185lb’er Luke Rockhold is as slick a grappler as he is a striker, they were reminded at UFC 172 when he tapped Tim Boetsch with a spectacular inverted triangle kimura.

When you’re really good at one aspect of MMA, people tend to forget about your other skills. Especially if you’re a fighter like former Strikeforce middleweight champion Luke Rockhold, who has knocked out his fair share of opponents in recent years.

However, before he even began MMA, his first love was jiu-jitsu. And while people always talk about his kickboxing, they should remember Rockhold has submitted six of his first seven opponents as a professional mixed martial artist.

So when Tim Boetsch, his opponent at UFC 172, dropped for a single-leg takedown near the start of the fight, Rockhold rolled through spectacularly, landing in the perfect position to wrap a sneaky inverted triangle choke on ‘The Barbarian’. But as impressive as that was, the triangle was only the beginning of Boetsch’s troubles.

“(When you’ve got the inverted triangle) you’ve got to get the right angle on it if you’re going to finish it with the triangle itself,” Rockhold explained after the fight. “But, for the most part it’s usually just a two-on-one situation with the arm so I look to finish with the kimura every time.”

While Boetsch, who had only ever been submitted once in his career before this fight, was trapped in the inverted triangle Rockhold searched for a kimura, and at 2:08 of the first round the American Kickboxing Academy middleweight got the tap. An early contender for ‘Submission of the Year’ at 2015’s Fighters Only World MMA Awards, the inverted triangle kimura is one of his go-to moves, according to Rockhold.

“It’s a submission I do daily and it’s pretty much one of my main submissions,” he said. “I go back and forth between a guillotine. I catch people everywhere with it. I knew exactly what I needed to do, I just need to find the right position.”

With two wins in 2014, plus the likes of Michael Bisping and Vitor Belfort considered as potential opponents for the Californian, Rockhold’s stock in the UFC continues to rise. However, the memorable submission came with a price.

“During the initial takedown I sprawled back and my toe got caught in the cage and something broke,” he explained. “I felt it right away. You’ve got to finish the job, though. It’s all good. It’s just a broken toe.”

You can’t win them all.