BTG 117 - Timing Closed Guard Ankle Locks

[Music] hello and welcome to another episode of Breaking the guard I'm going to review this past UFC in Tampa and I'm going to talk about two things later in the podcast one uh what I feel the role of closed guard is in MMA and Jiu-Jitsu nowadays and then to the resurges of ankle loocks particularly straight ankle locks but uh let's just quickly sum up this UFC because I did say I was going to talk about it I did make a prediction uh so spoilers are here I said that you know the main event Kobe Covington versus wem Buckley I thought Buckley was going to win and that was proven to be right again and for the exact reasons that I thought it would happen which is that Colby has been sitting on the shelf for too long and I think he's gotten stale he looked not great to to put it politely he not he didn't look like his usual self his shots were all far he was always bent over shooting and Buckley sprawl was great he looked like he was going for chess wraps and just really deep hips and I mean you could see by the physique he's just a powerful man and he was pretty easily defended most of those early takedowns from Colby and unfortunately for Colby he got cut really early in the fight it must have been like in the first couple minutes of round one it looked like he was like ducking down a little bit and Buckley threw an uppercut and the uppercut didn't really land as far as it didn't Conn of flush but it kind of grazed his right eyelid and sliced him open on top of the eyelid which is a bad spot to get it in right um because he clearly messed him up for the rest of that fight he kept leaking into his eye he kept grabbing his eye and trying to smear the blood off because unfortunately when you get the cut in the eyelid the there's going to get blood in your eye right uh so that's obviously another factor in it as well I don't know if that was everything because just movement wise he didn't look good um and he was just getting tagged a whole bunch and uh credit to him though his chin solid didn't look like he got rocked once although he got hit flush many times Buckley was just finding the mark stopping all the shots uh he did score a Tak down I believe in round two uh but did zero damage and Buckley stayed calm although I would say well I guess I had to look back now because at the moment I'm like man Buckley has no Jiu-Jitsu whatsoever because he got taken down and instantly side mounted but that might have been attached IC because he did stay safe from side mount he did not get hit once and he was controlling and the moment that kobby tried to advance he backed up to his feet and he seemed he got taken down another time and did a similar strategy so that might have been part of the game plan to allow kobby to pass because one of the things if you do stay in a bottom guard you are going to get hit a lot more because it's a hard it's harder to get up because your legs are entangled so now that you can't just stand up right like you have to extract one of your legs to create the hips because if your hips are pointed up you're not going to get up to your feet right you have at some point your hips have to point down and when you have your legs entangled you can't turn your hips down right you got to free one of those legs to turn them in anyhow um so that might have been a tactic but Colby wasn't really able to do any damage to this guy the the most that he did was bleed a whole lot of them particularly in the third round it looked like Buckley did a good amount of damage Colby was looking really rough and uh at one point it looked like he just conceded bottom position and Buckley stopped playing defensive and actually fought him on the ground started pounding him out a bit and that's when you could start seeing the very thick blood I mean it was like matted thick on his knee on the mat it was becoming pretty slippery at one point Point Buckley even went for a rear triangle but slid off and then gave Colby some top time inside his Clos guard however at that point when I saw the thick blood I was thinking to myself this fight's over because there's no way a doctor's going to let this go in the third round and sure enough they stopped it with 30 seconds in the third round uh to let the doctor looked at it they called the fight off and his cut had grown significantly it went from like this to almost all the way across the eyebrow to the point where the doctor on camera said he's going to lose his eyelid right so uh unfortunate for Colby but it was a doctor stoppage I did get that pick right I think I have to start betting on these fights I've been I've been on a good streak as far as uh picking winners I think I'm 14 for 16 so maybe I should be doing that but uh that was that fight uh and we had some good fights well tell you I was watching the undercard while I was lifting and I'm like H undercard is pretty rough because it's decision decision decision decision but once it got to who was it I think oh Woodson Fernando p and Woodson it started becoming a KO Factory right it was like a knockout there Joel Alvarez with a crazy knockout uh Michael Johnson again I think he's 41 still showing he's got it can connect a nasty right hook knock out uh yeah Dustin jacobe with a knockout Manuel Cape uh man Cape that was crazy he got kicked in the nuts three times in that fight and he was whooping that guy and uh I hate seeing it man because I know some people who've never been kicked out in the nuts think like he's haming it up like dude it hurts I've been kicked so hard once that I could not stand up for 30 minutes and I wanted to because it was my brother who kicked me in the nuts by accident I was throwing a roundhouse kick he threw a Stepside kick and it was just if you know how those look not a winning combination for me the square heel into the testicles and I dropped and he thought it was funny I was we're 18 19 whatever and I was mad and I wanted to get back at him but I couldn't get up to my feet like I would get to my knees and then just fall over you know so it really does impair you a lot and uh even with a growing cup the growing cup doesn't always save you sometimes it could pinch you right like you have a little bit hanging off to the side and the they hit the top of the cup and the cup tilts and now it just smashed you right so uh yeah the Cup's not always uh the best thing as far as like it's not always going to protect you 100% so yeah but he went out and then he scored a A finish at the very end of the fight ironically it looked like he also landed somewhat of a low blow I didn't I would have to see it again it might have been a low body shot but it definitely was low uh because it it caught him somewhere like close to the groin area if not the groin area but the ref didn't play a role in it and I saw some people complaining about that I'm like you live by the sword die by a sword you know uh finally cup Swanson Billy quo uh I mean Billy's been on a roll and you know Cub is also another guy pushing 40 uh I think he is 40 and scored a vicious knockout in the third round too so I mean good fights for a free card and the last uh UFC of the the year not bad I will say one thing about timing the disparity between Colby Covington and hakeim Buckley to me is all about timing right Colby now is 37 I didn't realize he's in the fight years he's old right he's been in the UFC for 10 years had 17 fights wae Buckley he I didn't get his age he's 30 okay so he's moving into the prime years of his life he's had 15 fights in four years in the UFC that's a lot that also means he is primed and he is obviously on this uphill trajectory he's got a sixf fight win streak now he was entering this fight with five uh fights W he's in this new weight class has obviously been a big uh boost to his career [Music] whereas Colby looks like he's been doing the Conor McGregor which is doing a lot of media a lot of talking not a lot of fighting right like I said before he's been fighting once a year for the past four years and then they had two fights the year before one fight the year before that so not a lot of activity right and in this game if you're not fighting a lot as a younger man you're wasting your opportunity because when you when you're his age now yeah maybe one to two fights a year is all your body could handle right but when you're a young man you can do those three to four fight years and if you're being smart staying in shape all year round you can handle it right and you're going to get a lot of valuable experience and you're going to keep the sword sharp but if you're fighting once a year man like you're really uh pushing your expectations as far as what you going to get done you just you don't have enough time time and you're not you're not going to have enough experience to build and I think clearly he looked very Rusty right didn't look like he had good timing on his takedowns or good setups wasn't able to get anything going I mean it looked bad from the first round like he was shooting and then pulling guard kind of I he would shoot and then just stay on his back you know hoping that Buckley would engage with them like it did not look good at all right um yeah that was a bad bad look like his stock definitely dropped considerably he's not going to be in the top 10 after that fight you know maybe not even the top 15 because he looked horrible right um at least that was my take compared to what I've seen him before where he could really push the pace he didn't look like he was getting tired but he wasn't pushing Pace either right um so you have to be careful when you find a moment where you're hot right and there's clearly a moment in col's career where he was hot right and if I look back at his record here that would have been from 2016 and look at the contrast here in 2016 wins one fight two fight three fight four fight uh four fights with Brian barbarena Max Griffin Jonathan manure oh three fights I'm sorry and then he goes into 2017 beats Damen MAA he beats dojos he beats Robbie Lawler so like he's clearly on this uphill path at that point but he then slows his Pace significantly right and now I get it he fought Kamar Usman for a title and uh basically took a year off right and his next fight was Woodley 1-1 waited a year for the rematch F mman lost waited another year F Mas doall won waited another year fought Leon Edwards lost right so and then another year fought Buckley right so I think when you're chasing these big money fights and I I mean I get if you can get a chance for the title I guess you you kind of had to wait but you know I I think that cost him and not to mention his whole legal battle with masol a former uh training partner former roommate of his and you know the whole Sucker Punch thing you had you know took up the court over it that's a lot of distractions you know and um I think that plays a a role when you get too much into things outside of fighting the whole media circus and then you're doing legal stuff and you're worried about money and you're not worrying about fighting which is what you got into the whole in the beginning I thought I think you lost a plot right for me fighting was always about fighting it wasn't about how I'm going to make money oh let me fight because that would be the stupidest thing you could ever say there's many easier ways to make a lot of money than fighting and most people don't make a lot of money fighting right it's difficult um this is something that you do because you enjoy it you like the challenge you like the the puzzle that it it presents to you and yes I want to make money doing it as well because I want to be able to pay for groceries support my family and all that but is this the ultimate way of you know cashing a check absolutely not right um so I've you know that's something to think about if you're a younger fighter about timing where do you want to go how far do you want to go how you going to spend your time you know because in my opinion he might have not spent his time wisely in these last few years right uh and I think at this point if this is like kby you know peaked you know like he like he doesn't have excuses about his training camp he felt everything was great like it's time to hang him up now because it's only going to get worse from here right um yeah because that was not great and for somebody who relied on that grind ability he clearly wasn't able to impose that right so like I said maybe this was just a really off night maybe I'm right that he was very distracted and that he didn't get the right training so he can come back and show what we expect to see if someone like Kobe but if that isn't there anymore then yeah to me you're done right whereas someone like Buckley you know sky's the limit right now I would definitely say though take down the fence keep working on it and ground defense keep working on it a lot because the upper tier guys are definitely going to try to take you down right because if I me seeing that fight what I see is if I get this guy to the ground he's going to make a lot of mistakes right and now he's a strong powerful guy so he was able and I think they did some good things with him about getting back up to his feet not worrying so much about jiujitsu points like oh you gotta go score s m like that's not a big deal right there's no points in jiit in MMA so like as long as they get up it's fine right especially if the guy's not doing any damage I think that's only to think about also right like sometimes because you do a lot of Jiu-Jitsu you forget that oh you know it's actually easier to stand up of sount that it is from half guard uh especially when the guy doesn't have good grips right so it might be beneficial to you to actually let the guy stand up I mean to to let the guy pass so that you can get up to your feet easier uh I know as a top guy in MMA if I want to keep the guy down I would prefer to keep him half guard because and basically in wrestling we have what it's called a Turk on the bottom leg the tra leg so that hip is not going to effectively be able to escape and then if I use some upper body pin like an underhook or an overhook right or you know like cross face I can keep them down and just wh away at the body a bit and wear them down first I don't want to jump immediately into side mount when the guy's very fresh because like I said it's easier to get away um but if I wear him down a bit first then I can go into side mount look for a strong pin like a a crucifix and finish from there right so I mean but new this I I think it was that his ground game wasn't that great uh so that would be the thing if I was Buckley I'd be putting a lot of time into his wrestling defense look pretty good his sprawl looked great uh he did get taken down off the fence and not because he didn't know what he was doing Kobe's a great wrestler so he was able to do it but I feel like somebody who's a really strong ground guy like you put him against uh Chima right or um God the the the Mongolian kid that just won against Ian uh Gary they're going to destroy him on the ground I think I had the right weight class right I think that's the same way class so yeah they have to or kamaro Usman you know for sure if he's not if he's not suffering you know as far is getting too old and the knee is not working well and now he's not able to score taked downs we sure for sure take him down and hold them down so he needs to work on that ground game a bit more uh be even more wrestling uh defensive so he can keep the fight in his feet and I will say also for a guy who's very explosive powerful good pacing didn't fatigue he looked sharp going into the third round slowed a little bit but not faded for sure it would have been good to see how he would have handled rounds four and five right because um that's usually the question that you have with guys who are very powerful and explosive how are they going to fair in in the late rounds right big because that's when that type of fast stretch Muscle really starts to fail you right cuz you no longer have all the explosiveness now it's just whatever is left you know and if you're not used to not having explosiveness it's rough when you don't have it right because now like you can't just spazz your way out of things you have to you know methodically prevent or uh calculate your escapes but enough about that let's go into now uh something I foreshadow earlier which is closed guard in MMA and in Jiu-Jitsu right I covered on Friday that there was a lot of people trashing on cron for his Clos guard pools not even pools really he was jumping closed guard in MMA and unfortunately for him it ended in disaster when Bryce was able to knock him out uh because of it closed guard still works right in fact he almost proved in his fight because he got two really tight arm bars one of them looked like he could have finished H but Bryce was able to escape so and Bryce is a really good just a guy himself one of the few people to pull off the twister in the UFC so it's not like he's a slouch on the ground but I feel when you are jumping into a closed guard it's a very weak sport move right no one in the street fight should be jumping closed guard and by that I mean your opponent is standing and I'm going to latch on to him like a woman who sees their long lost husband in the movies and just jumps for the Embrace right that's a lot of trust that you're putting in that person right and you know when it's your spouse okay of course you're going to trust them but if it's someone who's trying to break your face you should never be trusting that person because they could slam the hell out of you and you're relying also on the softness and the bounce of cage mats to not hurt you right again I I'm cracking on this because you know in the UFC or like the Gracies they like to say oh we do you know real self-defense not sport stuff that is Sport technique okay you try jumping a closed guard on concrete and having your opponent slam you and tell me how wise of a decision that was or how Street safe that was right cuz it absolutely is terrible you're going to get knocked out or killed right um and even groan pretty much got knocked out because when Bryce put that forearm in and then guard slammed him from the feet the forearm slammed the guy's uh Cron's chin and then the back of his head hit the mat and even the soft mats it's still a lot of damage that was done there right imagine on concrete so to me that type of pull is atrocious right you should not be doing that um that is a very sport move now if you're in the sport you know there are times that you can do that and I would say you're desperate at that point to get the to fight to the ground because to me the the better way of pulling guard would be to pull which implies that I'm going to pull him in I am controlling the fall essentially I take I'm taking him down but I'm putting myself on my back right versus when you jump guard you're letting your opponent decide how the ground is going to come into play right is he going to slam me down is he just going to put me down yeah that's why I said like you're trusting that guy to not hurt you which is silly right cuz they want hurt you if you p Guard though you're now sucking them in right and as a result you're controlling The Landing which is not going to be as harsh and you're probably going to land in the better spot to attack right so that's one thing right don't jump guard pool guard right the only type of guard that you can think about jumping off the top of my head that would make sense would be a guillotine right jumping a guillotine is not terrible it's not great it would still suck in a street fight but keep in mind his head is next to your lat on the floor so if he slams you guess what he's also slamming his own head right so uh not great for them either right uh and I I've known like I've even done this sometimes where I got a double leg and I slam somebody on a wrestling mat and I rock myself because my head cracks into their hip you know um so slamming does have some danger factors to it as well but if so caveat you know you jump the guard but you have a guillotine not great but it's not terrible either right like you can s usually you're in a better position to survive those balls because if you're doing a guillotin good you're kind of caved in this way so at least the back of your head is further away from the mat less likely for you to Ricochet hard off of it versus if you jump guard stiff here now like there's a better chance your head could bounce and the fact that their head is going to be rushing into the mat they have to be a bit more careful how they place you down as well in any case pulling guard is better uh or you know even sitting to a guard is better right now the problem with sitting to a guard is most people won't engage with you right but at least when you pull a guard you're being a little bit more proactive right like you're you're getting them to fall forward into you and then you you know you quote unquote jump your guard but they're already on their way down so you've made the fall happen I would say that right as far as strategically once you get the fight to the ground Clos guard still works quite well right in fact I play it a lot uh one of the guys I play the most with is probably Jake Shields because Jake is so good at passing open guards and half guards it is uh difficult to play an open game with him he's got great head positioning got great hips uh you guys heard me talk about him before like I've picked up a lot of passing techniques just off of him so I know also how to defend them but if I leave him in a strong position for a long time he will pass my guard so for me one of the best ways to nullify his game is to put him into a Clos guard all right now if your Clos guard is passive and doesn't do anything then yeah you're probably going to feel like oh this kind of sucks if this is MMA he can punch me and stuff like that but I tend to play a very active close guard and not by opening my guard because I wouldn't it wouldn't be closed I like using over hooks a lot because for MMA I try to get the overhook for risk control get the pin in the bottom side because now I can punch with my free hand and then I can set up my diamond pin and uh which also opens up triangles and arm bars or M platas right and it's like one the one position off your back where you you have a pin and you could do damage and your opponent can't right and particularly with elbows since their face is so close strong position right and and uh it's another the overhook guard to me is another position which everybody could play that makes it very hard for the top guy to strike effectively because the more he punches the more he opens himself to triangles right basically because you have the one arm wrap when he throws this way now my leg goes over his shoulder easy triangle setup I also like setting up the puet master there uh which striking makes easy as well so a lot of tools from that guard the other one I play a lot which should come to No Surprise is reverse uh Kim Series right where I work a lot into just using the reverse Kimora I use the arm drag from there use omoplata from there the triangle the flower sweep right so like there's a lot of stuff you can do playing a closed guard that keeps the top guy busy and with its posture broken what you don't want is a guy sitting upright in your Clos guard and you're kind of just holding on to the guard to keep him from passing but you're not controlling his posture that type of close guard is dead right that's not going to work well and the days of people putting their hands on your neck or shoulder are mostly gone so you're not going to get the easy armar setups from people just you know giving you bad posture right so you have to constantly be engaged in Breaking posture now I don't really have the game or the the the flexibility to play rubber guard if I did I would because it's a it's a great game for MMA as well because it's one of those positions once again is that you break people's posture I think rubber guard can't be spammed in that if you try to force it too much it's doesn't really work but if you're playing these other types of games and then you work into a rubber guard every so often it can really throw someone for a loop um and uh especially when they're trying to hold you down and this is when I've talked about this type of concept before which is when I want to try to make space they're going to try to close space so and and then you can use that to your advantage so like if I want to play a rubber guard game I don't want to play a tight guard game CU he's going to be weary of that and make a lot of space so instead I'm going to try to stand up a lot right so when I do that the best way for them to counter that is to try to stay really tight with you and now that they're playing really tight with me I can take advantage and go into a rubber guard very easily using their uh method of trying to counter my standup ability to my advantage and then when they do make space then it becomes easier to stand up right so you got to play both sides of this there so to me that's like one of the key functions of a good rubber guard there you're going to give yourself opportunities to escape not to mention the opportunity to submit if they they get stuck in it but that type of closed Guard works well right an active closed guard where the opponent's posture is broken what does like I said what doesn't work well when they're postured up and if you're playing that type of closed guard it's not going to last long right I think uh was it Eric hson who had done a study of closed guard in MMA but this is like '90s uh MMA and he said that it was an average of three minutes of a fight where the closed guard was an effective defense before it no longer was able to control the opponent and it just resulted in getting someone beat down and you know the conclusion of that uh study to him was that can't be on your back in MMA right like if you're planning to stay three rounds off your back you're going to lose you know now I think that's true to the point that well that's probably true regardless because the way judges score things they see a guy on top of you they're going to give the round to him even if he doesn't do anything which is silly uh it's funny because I saw someone saying oh Kobe won round two against Buckley cuz he finished the round on top EV despite doing zero damage it's like no he got his ass whooped for the that round he got one taked down and then you know what king got up it's like it doesn't count right like you got to do damage like to me takedowns only count if you hurt the guy doing the taked down like a big slam or hip throw or suplex but if I just you know trip the guy and he falls to his butt it's like what what are you going to do with that on the ground that really matters uh anyhow so yeah playing off your back for a longterm term M MMA fight is probably not going to work out well right just from the scoring criteria but you can control people quite well if you have a good guard right striking does change things but if you account for controlling like I said using something like overhook guard or using like the reverse Kimura you already got one of their arms pinned they only have one hand to use and using that hand opens up your submission game so like it kind of makes them a lot more weary of using it and they end up having to try to escape the position uh rather than trying to attack and when I could put them on the when I'm on the offensive they're on the defensive I'm safe now right I'm not getting hit so closed guard does work and in jiu jitu works great too right especially since there's no striking threat you can do a lot of control there if you fight a longle guy the last place you want to be and is in their closed guard because the especially that they're flexible because the legs are flying everywhere like as a top guy I don't want to be in their closed guard I want to be in their half guard you know or in the headquarters um not in the closed because I have extra work to do now to try to get out of this position so don't get it twisted playing uh old school closed guard is going to get you beat playing a a more modern or more active closed guard will keep you safe and get your wins that's my take on it anyways and uh the last thing I'll talk talk about here straight ankle locks they're making a comeback hard and I didn't watch actively the noi World Championships that just passed here in Vegas uh I did see lots of clips and black belt finals and I saw lots of straight ankle locks right and not just Aoki locks which is like a variation it's not really a straight ankle lock um but similar position but there were a lot of just classical straight Achilles holds and uh it's funny because we see this happen in Jiu-Jitsu all the time just like it happens in every other you know aspect of life where what's old becomes new again right and uh all sorts of grips it's see a lot of you know classical figure four straight ankle lock grips and getting finishes you know so even though I like to dog on that obviously still works well uh you know someone is making the claim that because I like doing a guillotin style grip cuz I feel like I can get a lot more lift off my hands right whereas when I do a figure four my hand is lower so I'm not going to get as much lift although and especially if you're holding on to their for their Shin right my lever is not high right so like I'm just here right so this if this ankle was here if I do a guillotin or or the really call ball in socket grip where I come here and I start to lift up I can get a lot of crank on that hand and the higher this hand is obviously the more closed this grip is and it'll be stronger but when you're doing a figure four here and holding their Shin you're not really getting that much over there you do get some extension I guess on the shin which you might say it's going to allow you to push your shoulder a little more effectively and obviously it works but as far as which one's better I like this I I will say someone brought up an interesting one where what if he he did the figure four but rather than holding on to the shin I just curl up it's like okay now you you have a little more of my attention because at least now since I get to curl this arm up more if you guys see the more you curl up the arm you see how my hand gets pushed because basically the space between the pit of the elbow is closed by my bicep and my my forearm so now that the hand has to rest higher uh and I know for reverse figure four which I do like I do do that sometimes and sometimes I still grab the shin as well old habits die hard what can I tell you but um anyhow there the straight angle locks are definitely in play and there's a lot more threat now especially with the ioki lock because you know the common Escape for the straight angle locks was just to pull your foot out but now that ioki locks are such a thing pulling your foot out is a very dangerous thing to do because if you just pulled the heel out you just put yourself in ioki lock because now you got your heel on their chest and now they're getting that twisting uh ioki lock so it's made that foot lock game a lot more dangerous right and I think the other factor is that it's a lot easier to control straight ankle lock than it is a heel hook right because the heel hook slips you don't really slip out of a straight ankle cuz I'm wrapped all the way around it usually pretty tight you know and especially if I'm doing a figure four I'm kind of holding your shin a little bit so your leg's not going to spin as easy and I usually have some type of leg entanglement like whether it's Ashi gami or we see double outside Ashi right or sometimes people doing the game over um so your legs are kind of stuck in there and not an easy position to work out of I think it's great I remember telling my brother like six month months ago I think or maybe it was more than that like we need to start pushing more straight ankle locks in the the students because everybody's going too hard on heel Hooks and it's going to it's going to be overplayed and sure enough jitu caught on to what uh we were thinking because in this noi worlds there were a lot of straight angle lock finishes I've seen in even the ebis and the pfls there have been a lot of straight ankle finishes I think perhaps the ioki lock helped bring that into more attention when that ioki lock started getting popular it's like where what's the best way to get Aoki lock well start from a good straight ankle lock and uh it's a good Synergy between those two submissions much like how heel Hooks and knee bars and TOS kind of go well together so to do those straight ankle lock Aoki locks and ioki locks weren't a thing back in the day like I didn't know about Yoki locks until you know the modern era I was just doing straight ankle loock you know when they would turn away it would become either heel hook knee bar toe hook so it's a great addition to the tool set and um I think that's helped spur that straight foot lock uh RI Resurgence if you will so I'm all for it I I like those I think it's I rather get caught with a straight ankle lock than a heel hook I'll tell you what straight ankle locks if you get your ankle popped from a straight exension usually not too bad you know as long as you didn't sever your Achilles uh you're usually fine in in in a week but a heel hook yeah it's going to ruin your your month your year so uh it would be nice to see that pick up a lot more Steam and I mean it has so it's nice to see that I like seeing what's old become new again and I think the techniques have come a lot cleaner you see a lot of people playing the straight ankle out game with Del heo hooks instead of going you know the CL classic uh reap so it's cool stuff right that's the one thing I love about Jiu-Jitsu more than the other sport it's adapting very fast right MMA is still kind of slow right like I I said before I feel like MMA is still really behind as far as the progression of the athletes whereas in jiujitsu man the progression of technique is Light Speed and it's constantly evolving so it makes it very fun to watch anyhow that's all I have for you guys for this week thanks for tuning in I will see you all next week