BTG 122 - UFC 311 Analysis

[Music] hello and welcome to another episode of Breaking the guard on today's episode I'm going to talk about UFC 31 again first pay-per-view card of the year and uh got to watch the whole main card fantastic great night of fights uh I'll start from the the bottom and work my way to the top so the first fight of the night uh on the main card the rer versus Holland this went pretty much how I expected it to go um yeah obviously spoiler alerts here so if you haven't watched it yet go ahead and hold off and listening to this until afterwards but the the rider dominated Kevin Holland doesn't really have takedown defense got taken down immediately was doing okay from his guard being active but the Raider is a very good Grappler and very calculating and fights very smart and this is my one criticism I always has of Kevin Holland is that he fights dumb he admits in his interviews that he doesn't listen to game plans he just does what he wants to do and if you're a coach and your athlete is not following the game plan you're very ineffective as a coach now because there's not really much you can do to help them you're kind of useless in the corner and uh everything you you do in Camp is kind of useless as well I I wouldn't honestly when to have a fighter that would behave that way it just makes no sense to me personally I'm I feel the the ideal relationship is if the coach is somebody that you trust and you have faith in their knowledge and their skills you would want them to be in full control because the coach is in a position where he more than likely has a lot more experience than you do and more skill but he just doesn't have the body to be able to perform but if he was able to control you as a fighter like as an avatar and manipulate you he could be amazing and that is to me what you're trying to get out of your coach you want to utilize and leverage their knowledge as much as possible but that requires some faith in them in believing that they know what's best for you if you don't have that then you have these type of situations in my opinion where you kind of doubt your your coach you don't think they understand what you're going through or they have the right skills so you're going to make a lot of improv calls don't get me wrong I me when I've coached Fighters I've always said you know you do what you feel is best but I'm going to tell you what I think you need to do right so there's there there's some situations where I might think they should do a certain thing the fighter thinks he should do another thing I'll call it out but he might ignore my advice that's fine but if you're ignoring a game plan that's not like an on like an improv move that we both just recognize like you're ignoring everything we worked on Camp in any case Holland ended up uh getting caught in a choke I think he got caught in a a we naked choke yep and tapped out pretty fast early in round one this got controlled on the ground wasn't able to get up didn't seem like he was trying to get up he was playing off his back but uh yeah it's hard to to say what where Kevin goes from here because he's essentially made himself a gatekeeper now uh doesn't seem that he's with this current mindset that he has that he could be a contender he would have to I think change his way of fighting which is instead of just trying to be a lck mouth entertaining and you know just having fun there start actually working on being the best and winning and I believe if you're going to win you need a plan you don't just show up that you have to be prepared however for theer great showing he took out a guy who even though it sounds like I trashed him quite a bit Holland's very talented right he's got good striking he's got good grappling I mean I mean the weakness and in my opinion he has very poor ground takedown defense and the Raider utilized a beautiful game plan to exploit that and use his Superior grappling to win so uh good job by the rider on that one the next fight we had was I think Helton Alida with spiv and I thought Almeida was going to win and sure enough he did there was some good back and forth uh and I'm I'm probably pronouncing the name wrong I'm sorry it's but SPAC I think it is took him down early then Almeida swept him then he got resept so there was a good ground battle going back and forth and actually SP was actually doing more damage from Top uh when he got on top after a sweep he was elbowing punching so uh for a second I'm like my my pick is not working out well but then they ended up back on their feet and in a exchange of punches Al made a landed a really strong punch that dropped him and he was able to follow through and and win the fight off of finish there so that put me up too we then had the the next fight which was one of the best fights in my opinion jiry patasa with um forgetting his name ah it come to me Jamal Hill right there we go uh now I wanted Jerry to win but I understood that hill was a very dangerous opponent uh especially since he's a cleaner Striker whereas jer's chaotic and a wild man but uh I like the story of Jerry more I like his character more and I I I don't think I'm alone in that he had a huge crowd pop especially in the weigh-ins and he even brought like there was a a fan of his a woman that was going through chemotherapy and she tagged them on I think Twitter where she cut her hair because you know you they make them shave their head not they don't make them but they they have them anticipate that they're going to lose all their hair so they shaved their head so she shaved her head but made the little hairstyle that he did before she completely shaved her head and I guess that touched Jerry so Jerry then uh flew her out to the weigh-ins and then he shaved his head completely uh to match her uh so that won the whole crowd over she was there at the fights as well uh so I think as he's a fan favorite just because he's kind of a weird character like if you watch any of the the the b-roll and the the quote unquote training footage from Jeri is never fighting it's always like doing Rocky four type stuff you know he's like lifting a lot or you know he's doing some weird things he's on a treadmill you know going backwards it's never training Jiu-Jitsu or kickboxing so uh but what was interesting he said this fight he was training a lot more on keeping his hands up right I like okay and then the so the fight starts and it's a wild fight and I think one of the things that really stands out to me is how good both of these guys are and how bad Alex made them look right because poan clowned the Jamal Hill really bad and he didn't Jerry didn't fa down much better than him either so I think people forgot like oh they thought these guys kind of suck like no they're great it's just that Alex is just next level and uh again definitely a scary fight because even though uh Jerry said he was going to keep his hands up his hands dropped pretty often right but what he did better he was moving his head really well and uh although he did get hit several times he did a good job of evading a lot of punches and counter punching he was particularly doing a good job of slipping left and then coming back with a straight left and um catching Jamal a bunch of times uh there was one moment he dropped them in round one I believe but uh Jamal got back up right away and it looked like J was going to go too crazy trying to get the Finish because it looked like it might have been a flash knockdown so he wasn't really like hurt because when Jamal got up which was almost instantly his legs were still underneath him but uh you know the the fight went well there I I'm trying to remember how I was scoring this fight if it was a one-1 or I think Jerry had both rounds in I'm not sure but it went into a third round and third round J was able to find his Mark and put down uh Jamal and finished the fight from the top so he got his finish you know and U I was happy about that I thought it was surprising that they had you know Jamal as the favorite and as big as a favorite that he was because I think it was like minus 250 for Jamal Hill to to win that fight and I'm like uh I think that spreads a bit wide I get that he could be the favorite but not by that much I I would have had it a lot tighter but very entertaining fight both guys showed up and and fought a good fight now we go into the best fight of the night which was morab with Umar num medov and this is the one that if you saw my um video on Friday I was very tentative to get give which fighter I was going to pick I ended up leaning on Umar uh and I still did before the fight I watched some more tape it was hard for me to pick because the real question is how good are is their wrestling games between each other because they I know they both have great wrestling but I don't know how their wrestling was going to match up with each other and then the second thing is how effective is Mor Rob's strategy and conditioning going to be against uh Umar if umar's wrestling is better right because if their wrestling is very even I felt like it would be advantageous to morab to make more wrestling because he could wear him out faster but if Umar was a better wrestler the strategy wouldn't work that well because he would just get counter wrestled and uh it wouldn't really wear you out and he might win the scrambles by getting takedowns or front headlocks or whatnot I leaned towards Umar but once again I felt the odds were very badly picked where they had again I think it was another one that was minus 200 or minus 250 for Umar who's the Challenger even though he's 19 and0 I mean morab is a proven commodity he's beaten a bunch of killers already um the first fight I mean the first round rather did answer answer some of the questions that I had which was I believe Umar was the better wrestler but by like a hair right he looked in the first round sharper uh he scored the take the first taked down on Mor Rob although it didn't it wasn't significant he did score it uh and he looked like he was able to answer those takedowns a little better striking was pretty even I think morab was Landing more but uh they were both getting shots in but the wrestling Edge was with Umar in round one round two a bit of the same like they I think they scored a taked down for morab and either late round one or sometime in round two which wasn't really Justified and mind you even though I said I was GNA I was thinking Umar was going to win the fight I was hoping that morab would win I think he's funnier has a good character so I thought it was interesting to see him win but it that wasn't a takedown like he brought him to his butt and he sprang up right away and it's not at least from my understanding of judging criteria like you have to have the guy on the ground and control him not that he just touched and popped up in any case so he was getting closer and what I noticed was that morab was getting better bites every time he went for takedowns in round two right so like the round one takedown attempts were completely annihilated they this never got closed in round two there was a bit more like he's trying to run the pipe and you know Umar had to balance a bit more so it it started to I was seeing it already that the shift was happening where the cardio was the weapon that was going to win this fight and round three was the deciding round where Mor Rob scored takedowns legitimately now the critique I had on Friday still held true which is morab does not control takedowns and I mean he tries a little bit but there it's not great he's not like kabib or Islam where once they get you down the ground you're never getting back up he has a hard time holding him but to his credit it doesn't seem like he even cares he just wants to take you down and then make you get back up so that he can take you down again and he has such a ridiculous cardio that it does not phase him at all whatsoever and he's always very good that when he takes someone down he and he knows that he's not controlling it he starts throwing hands immediately so even though you're getting up you are taking some shots as you get up the other thing that morab is very good at if you notice and you watch the fights he doesn't drop to his knees to shoot he's doing snatched single legs every time and it's mainly head outside singles like high crotches right where he's just going head outside dump right it's a very simple game plan right like it's extremely simple but I believe what he does really well is great timing because he's he's punching and striking a lot and he's dipping a lot so I think it's very hard for people to see the shot coming in because he's very fast his hand ey reaction time is amazing and he's able to get in on those legs very quickly and then go into you know running the pipe dumping his opponent and uh either he takes them down or as they're stumbling and he he doesn't complete the dump he just pops up and starts punching so the strategy to me is more about getting the fighter tired the opponent tired not about taking them down like if the takedown happens that's just a bonus but the fact that you had to defend the takedown down or get off balance by the Tak down the damage has already been done and by him not having to drop to his knees it conserves a lot more energy because he's not having to do a a squat basically right he's just doing a lower back uh flexion and then quickly running around so I think that's how he's also being optimal with energy expenditure but he does not phas like he's just as fast in round five that he was in round one and in round three is where he took over and he ended up winning round three four five the same way like he was just mixing his takedowns with the strikes and what ends up happening for Umar is that you could see he's tired right and even still he's still fighting a great fight still dangerous but it's hard for him to be able to execute because umar's Relentless takedowns every time he's defending a taked down or getting back up it's time that he's not attacking and now you never know when the guy is really going for that taked down and he's so much fresher than you that his uh speed is phenomenal and I noticed this when they had one of the the little contest they do with the fighters on fight week where they had like a hand ey Reaction game where they had a bunch of little sticks on a some type of device over the opponent over the fighter and they would just drop randomly and the fighter would have to react and catch and a lot of the fighters seemed to like struggle you know they were really had to focus and mor Rob was like like it was nothing to him he could have done it with his eyes closed practically so like this is a guy who reacts very quickly and uh it showed and the other thing is reaction time is a it correlates heavily with conditioning so when you start getting tired your reaction time suffers tremendously and that's what I felt happen to Umar in the beginning he was reacting very well to the takedowns and stuffing them completely but by round three he couldn't react fast enough and also his own takedown attempts were completely destroyed right like Umar was able to defend them easily even when Umar did get taken down in the first round didn't phase him at all you know and uh he was even showboating a little bit like he did not respect the takedown at all so that's a sign of somebody to me that's extremely confident and it goes to show you how big a weapon conditioning can be a lot of people sleep in it but if you have that much conditioning that much energy at your disposal where there's no bottleneck for him right there's not like he needs to rest period he could have fought five more rounds with the way he looked because he looked just as good in round five as he did in round one the conditioning of him is phenomenal and the name the machine makes a lot of sense but when you have that type of conditioning you can be very bold and brave with your with your game plan because you don't have to worry about getting tired you're like and in his case not only does he have to not worry about getting tired he it won't even matter because there's nobody that's going to Tire slower than him right he has very high confidence that if he got tired that means his opponent is already dead like there's no way somebody has as much energy as he does that is a huge asset to having a fight especially when you can control the fight like he can because he's a phenomenal wrestler also right it's it's interesting because like I said he doesn't have good takedown uh good control of his takedowns but in his case it doesn't matter he just wants to take you down to take you down and force a scramble and make you get back up and waste that energy getting up and he's fine punching you on your way up also so that put me now who is in a position to beat morab at this point because Umar was probably the best wrestler that he had faced and like I said I think Umar was like a hair better than him fresh but that was only available for about a like two rounds this be generous so that would be a tough one for anyone else in that Division I think morab and mor Rob's not a bad Striker either he can throw hands he uh he's got a good chin he can eat shots it's going to be hard for anybody to Dethrone that guy with that level of conditioning uh it's such a major weapon because the only way you're going to beat morab at this point you have to be a much better wrestler than him so that his wrestling game isn't going to be a factor that's why I said that's what I overestimated or underestimated um was the wrestling ability of morab versus Umar right now we know they're very close like I said I think Umar slightly better technically but uh not enough where he can negate the wrestling of morab right I felt once the energy dropped Mor Rob took over completely there's no one else in that division that can think that can match his level of wrestling uh so now you have to figure out to be you need a knockout or a quick submission I think the submission is probably going to be much harder because of the wrestling so you need someone who could score a knockout uh and be able to deal with getting up repeatedly right because like I said there's nobody else who can wrestle like him so you are going to get taken down and the problem with that is it's probably going to have to be a round one round two situation because you're going to get tired you probably don't have the the gas tank that this guy has so even if you're very good at getting up and like I said Mor Rob doesn't really focus in holding you down so it's conceivable people can get up a lot you're still not going to have the energy to score a finish because you're just going to be so tired from getting up the entire time and getting taken down over and over again and it makes it trickier to set up your your big shots when when you're worried about getting getting taken down so he's going to pose a big puzzle for just about anyone else I think in that division uh but very a very good fight overall just to see that game plan come into fruition which is just wear this guy out um final fight of the night uh kind of a bummer right uh if you didn't you've been a under a rock and you didn't hear the news Islam showed up to fight made weight unfortunately for him Armen got injured doing the weigh-ins wasn't able to fight and they threw moano in there uh hanato moano as a last minute replacement he was supposed to fight benil D darush in the main card which I was looking forward to also because that was a very good like style matchup but because of the Armen not being able to fight they basically scrapped that fight and upgraded moano into the main event which kind of sucked for benil although he got paid in full I was like like he won I mean you train in a fight Camp you want to fight you know it doesn't Advance your career not to fight even though you get a Payday so kind of a Bittersweet uh Payday for him and apparently they're going to make it up to him and get him a fight soon uh but moano said that he knew that this was a possibility I guess uh Armen did have an injury in Camp so the UFC brass was aware that something could go down uh at any point so M was training for five round fights and he was doing the game plan not too different to be honest because um at least for Islam it was going to be a grappling match regardless although moano tried to make it a striking fight did throw some hands and he was looking good until he wasn't right Islam took him down and that's all she wrote uh he held him down pretty good from half guard was looking to advance position at one point he got frames in space and if you if you guys watch I just put up a new course two new courses uh this month right uh so far we're going to have a third one coming out so I'm being very prolific this month right like I said we I I have uh one of my students here training with me here from the website right um and he's putting in a lot of work so I'm sharing a lot of that with you guys and it was great because well originally this fight would have been the perfect showcase that we were working on uh he's an MMA fighter focusing on getting up to his feet uh improving the wrestling attacking the turtle position and if you guys saw the clip on Saturday or the the breakdown I did of the first Islam Armen fight there was a lot of great scrambles like that so we were both really excited to see the rematch because we're anticipating seeing a lot more of these types of scrambles that we could study uh unfortunately it didn't happen we got this but this is one of the situations that we did Cover which is when you're trying to stand up from half guard or off your back most MMA fighters what they love to do is they'll just turn give their back stand up does work yes is it dangerous very especially when you're against a guy who's a back taking specialist because they get your back and then you might have a really hard time detach to them especially in round one and I think I talked about this the other day so I won't go in too much but round one it's you're both kind of dry you're both fresh that's going to be the hardest time to escape a back Mount so moano did the right thing he didn't expose his back he created a lot of space from his half guard got the feet and the hips pushed away but the mistake he made is rather than coming up like a technical standup which is you're backing out and you're creating a frame with the arm as you move away from your opponent and circle out ideally he shot in right so he created some space and then went to shoot in you watch that breakdown Islam is great at getting headlocks and there's a exactly what happened when you shoot in the guy now your head's under their chest now they can get you in a headlock and immediately Islam put him in a front headlock situation and was able to go into Dar choke and Islam's Dar choke must be the stuff of nightmares because it was like 3 seconds and M was Panic tapping right what's interesting you could see it in the fight with Charles Oliva but he also did it on this fight which is Islam does not his Dar choke traditionally like most people do with a figure four right where he's going all the way across like because if you guys imagine let's say the opponent's head here the arm is over this way I come in here and I wrap my figure four behind their neck right and this is what you usually see and people are using this arm because this levers right to curl my bicep raise the the my choking arm into the side of their neck for the Finish is doesn't lock it there though he locks it mid forearm right and he finishes it from here that is interesting right and you know I saw it on the first fight and I think he also did this to um if I'm not mistaken uh Dustin porier as well right also call him in ad Dar I'm sorry I got it mixed up he got porier with ad darus he had uh Charles arera with a arm triangle I mistake but yeah on Dustin he also had it midform right so uh my student was asking me about that I thought that was interesting and the only thing I could think of is that if you're going higher rather than here here you're raising the choking arm much higher now right because if I'm on the pit of my elbow you see where my for is is kind of low although I had the blade up it is lower so that's not going to punch in as much if I am gripping higher and I'm here that choking weapon is higher and by putting the fatter side of my fist on the bottom it can rest against my bicep here right because now I have this whole thumb knuckle holding up on the bicep so it's not going to fall down right with Force so I'm keeping the choking arm higher up versus when I'm here even when I curl it comes up a little bit but my choking arm is lower versus here all right subtle difference and again normally we I I would have always said this too and you know I've seen Robert Dale you know he's finished he's got a nasty Dar too he likes his wrist blade being here you have a little blade on this side also and it's sharp bone here too so you're still getting high pressure as far as like small surface area thin uh bone going into the side of the neck haven't played with this myself yet uh I I saw in the first ride but I'm not much of a dark sky myself because usually for me it's a reach issue I got shorter arms broad chest but short arms uh but I will definitely have to try it out because that it seems to be a game changer his most people did not tap to dar's that quickly right and it seems on both occasions his dares just and now everybody I I see a lot of people comment think oh he's just very strong is he strong I imagine he is right but that's not the only reason right I've had plenty of strong guys try to squeeze chokes on me that I was able to get out of I feel particularly when you could see something that obvious which is the change of grip of instead of being here like this you know being here like this that's um a major difference and I have to think just by analyzing it that there's a huge benefit to doing that he's not doing it by mistake right he's done a twice now and got two strong finishes out of it that I've observed so I imagine that's a a key detail that we can add there right uh and this why it's important to study tape you always got to learn things and the Islam well now well the Armen fight is still a fight that we want to see at least in my book because he's the only guy who's got that wrestling caliber that's high enough to challenge Islam I feel it's similar to the uh Armen and morab situation but Islam I believe is the better wrestler based off their first appearance their first fight Islam had the edge but again by a hair Armen did take him down once wasn't able to use it though because Islam was very good at standing up versus Islam was able to take him down a couple times and was able to control him longer not doing any real significant damage but he had better control time that's why I said like they're very close together so the question would be like who's made the most improvements uh since that first meeting which was years ago that's a harder uh question to answer and I feel that's the fight that needs to happen I know now because Armen had this uh last minute Dropout the UFC has already said he's not getting the immediate uh title match he's going to have to fight back to get it which uh makes sense you piss off Dana White he's not going to be happy with you and he already said I I understand I want to fight Charles uh Oliva for a five round Main Event so he's kind of calling his shot that's a not a of course Charles is a tough fight for anybody so that's a a good way of controlling the The Narrative there and if he could be Charles he's hoping that that's going to earn him another chance to fight for the title we'll see because everyone else I think uh Islam's already taken out so I get that the UFC wants to make him earn that shot again and I get it because if that fight would have been still still in the card I think the whole card would have been amazing the main card top to bottom because all the other fights were great finishes very tough fights uh at least from my so I was four out of five right I only got the morab one wrong and that was the one I was second guessing myself and there was a reason for it right um but overall really good night of fights and uh that's all I have for you guys for this week oh but I will leave you with something I I'll talk about it on Wednesday as well I'm going to be going to Florida in February I'm going to be down there from the 5th to the 10th I'll be teaching at my my gym the Freestyle Fighting Academy on the February 5th February 7th February 10th that's a Wednesday a Friday and then the Monday at 6: p.m. if you are a member of my gym and or combat athlete program or C program you can jump into any of the classes regardless of what your schedule's like uh if you are one of the MMA members you can pay 20 bucks to jump into that class uh and if you're not a member of the gym and you want to jump in you can shoot me an email David David mma.com or you can call my gym uh 305 225-4610 and jump in for a day pass to train uh but just make sure you do that earlier because these classes get really packed so we can't just have unlimited uh you know students from outside of our gym jumping in because our students are going to take up most of the spots but I'll be teaching uh as usual I still haven't picked out the curriculum yet I'm I'm going to figure it out because I'm always learning stuff between my visits of course and I only have so much time there so I'm trying to prioritize what I want them to learn that is the most Cutting Edge gamechanging thing that is uh the most MMA self-defense oriented so I'll have it ready by next week and uh but in any case you're going to be assured that you're going to be learning some really good stuff if you come down and train with me if you're not able to come down because you're not in the area no worries I'll be filming this like I I normally do so I'll be posting it up on the website so you guys can uh learn virtually from me as as you've been doing and now that's all I have for you for this week I'll see you all next week