BTG 151 - Bottom grappling in MMA is not a good strategy

[Music] Hello and welcome to another episode of Breaking the Guard. On today's episode, I'm going to talk about the difference between sport grappling and MMA. And this is going to be a spoiler for UFC Fight Night uh Dolitzi versus Hernandez. So, if you want to watch that and you haven't seen it, you didn't see it, then uh check this out later. Otherwise, two fights that I'm going to talk about in that card because they had big implications in this topic. One of them was Elijah Smith and Toshiomi Kazama, I believe, and then we had Anthony Hernandez with uh Roman Deli. Right. So, let's start with uh Kazama and Smith. Kazama looked like he came in to grapple because uh he got I I missed the first 10 seconds of the fight, but it was already on the ground. Kazama was like threatening to take the back. Then he ended up in his guard was pulling lots of leg locks and uh had some good bites at one moment. looked like he had, if I recall correctly, inside heel hook that had some good torque on it, but Elijah wasn't relenting and the whole time beating the crap out of him. Big punches that were landing and Kazama was absorbing them, but they were taking their toll. And uh after trying to go for this leg lock for some time and taking uh the ass end of an ass beating, he eventually went to guard. And then from guard quickly worked into a triangle choke. And that's when things took an interesting turn because if my old school, you know, fight fans will probably know this fight. One of the most famous knockouts in history was Quinton Jackson aka Rampage picking up Ricardo Arona from a triangle and powerbombing him to unconsciousness. And Elijah Smith did the same thing. Straight up deadlifted him all the way up and slammed him, even getting the headbutt action involved. But this was arguably worse because Kazama did not get up for some time. He was unconscious for a while. They had to take him to the hospital. Uh fortunately, they said all the tests came negative, so he I guess he just had a crazy concussion. Uh but nothing more serious than that. But this perfectly illustrates the point that grappling is not MMA, right? What you can do in grappling, you can't necessarily do in MMA. It doesn't mean that it's not physically possible. It just means there's more consequences that are involved. You guys heard me and I've been, you know, singing praises about PGF, right? And uh how crazy the leg lock game is. The last episode was about how dangerous Aayoki locks are, but you don't see any Aayoki locks in MMA. I don't think there has been one in the UFC yet. And I'll tell you the reason why this fight, right? It is a lot trickier to pull off leg locks when your opponent can punch you. Cuz when you're doing a leg lock, both your hands are occupied, right? You need to, you know, secure grip. Whether I'm doing figure four, you know, I'm doing butterfly grip, reverse figure four, you know, gable grip, whatever grip I'm using, it's generally going to be a two-handed grip. There's rare exceptions where you can pull it off with one arm. And against a tough opponent, that's pretty tricky. You're going to be using two hands, which means you have no hands to defend your face. And in these scenarios, your opponent usually has both their hands available to them. So, guess what they're going to be doing with them? they're going to be punching you. And a lot of times, especially, for example, in this fight, I I also see this as an error in Kazama in that he was applying leg blocks like you would in a grappling match, which is not the same as you would in MMA. What do I mean by that? In grappling, I could apply a leg lock from anywhere. I could be on my back. I could be on top, you know, it doesn't really matter, right? And my opponent could be standing over me. doesn't matter because he can't punch me. So, I don't have to worry about sweeping him or whatnot. MMA is different. If you guys saw early Japanese MMA, there were lots of Japanese fighters that were dropping for leg locks and there was lots of them getting pummeled because the guys standing over top of them would just beat the crap out of them. And that's what happens, right? If you don't sweep somebody in a real fight or an MMA and you're going for a leg lock, you're going to be eating a ton of ground on pound and it's going to make it very difficult for you to finish that leg lock because chances are you're going to get concussion. You're going to get a concussion before you're going to be able to finish that leg lock. Now, it's not every time, but most of the time that's going to be the case. And especially in the life or death scenario, I'll let my knee pop if it means I kill you, right? I'm going to win this fight. So, uh it's important to understand that Kazama didn't seem to because he never we the one time he was close to finishing, he did have uh Elijah, he wasn't on his back, but he was on his butt, right, with the inside heel hook. But after he lost that position, he kept hanging on to it and Elijah was just standing. He might have been on the knee, but he was definitely over the top of him. He wasn't on his back and just pummeling him. And they weren't all straight shots. A lot of them are hammer fists, but man, they were heavy hammer fists, right? These are not shots you should be taking. So, in my opinion, if I'm going to be playing leg locks, I should be sweeping the guy and looking to be at at the very least neutral. We're built on our butts. At best, I'm on top, right? Uh but definitely not guys standing over me. If a guy is standing over me, I don't have a good position for MMA or even for grappling to be honest. Uh but especially in MMA. So, that was a big mistake. And if we watch a lot of the PGF, you see a lot of this, right? A lot of guys dropping for leg locks. They'll let the guy stand over them and then fish the leg lock, you know, and they might get they I mean, they usually get the sweep at some point, but it's not imperative that they sweep him immediately. Whereas in MMA, in my opinion, it's imperative that the sweep happens immediately. Like I I'm not attacking the leg lock until I've swept you, right? Because otherwise I'm getting hit. So big mistake number one. And then big mistake number two. Once he did get into a guard, he went for the triangle, didn't hook the leg. If you let your opponent lift you off the ground, you're at their mercy. Now, in my opinion, you start getting lifted, open your guard, get your feet back under you. And I've done this before in grappling. uh whenever I I don't play guard too often in competition, but I have done this where, you know, at a certain point I feel like my hips are coming over their hips, that means I can put my feet down now, right? If they just lift me off like a foot off the ground, no big deal. If they slam me, like that's not going to do that much damage and it might actually help me because they might give me positioning. But once they lift me like two two and a half feet, whatever it is to to hip distance, now I'm in danger of of taking some damage. But it also gives me enough clearance where I can now open my guard and get my feet underneath me. And sometimes that opens up scrape opportunities for you, reversals, you know, just because you get the upper hand. You have to be ready to do that if you can't stop them from lifting you. Kazama didn't seem to recognize the threat there because he just stayed in a locked in triangle and there's a point of no return. Mind you, once a guy has his hips over your head, there's not much you can do at that point. You're you're kind of screwed, right? So you have to recognize the moment you start lifting off like I got to get my feet on the ground if he's able to lift me all the way up and because once he's a little bit higher than your hips now you're not going to be able to get your feet if even if you open your guard you're still getting slammed at that point right because your feet are not going to make contact with the ground and just like hooking the leg super important right like you got to recognize like that's something that PGF has which is that uh as a safety precaution, which should be a reminder to the competitors where if you're in a guard or even in a submission and your opponent's able to lift you over their hips, they stop the match and they restart it neutral. And this is a way of preventing people from getting knocked out, you know, or you know, God forbid anything worse. But it should be reminded, yeah, like you lost that, right? In real life, this was your death, right? You're you're getting a concussion here, you know? So, uh I'm not sure like there should be some type of penalty for the guy that gets lifted. If I'm being honest, like if I was thinking that I know it's a little sidetracked, but if you're going to stop the match and just make it go neutral, I think you should go a step further and say like, "Oh, other guy now starts in a bad position." you know, like the referee's position cuz he made a technical error by allowing the guy to lift him. He should have opened his guard or he should have not let the lift happen to begin with. So, anyhow, that's just a sidetrack, but point being, you can't let someone lift you. Doesn't matter if you not have a super tight arm bar or triangle, whatever submission you have. If you let someone lift you in MMA or in a street fight, you're in a lot of problems. So, Kazana made two major errors that unfortunately cost him severely. And I hope, you know, he recovers well and all that, but it's an example of how he looked like he's a very good grappler. He was going into a lot of these leg locks. He jumped the triangle really quickly. He was clearly, if this was a sport grappling match, I would think he was a superior grappler, right? However, this is MMA. And in MMA, Elijah defended everything the way that you would expect, which is staying standing, throwing lots of ground on pound, you know, posturing his way out of a lot of things. And when it came time, he was ready to power ball. So, even though I was singing the praises of how crazy the leg block game is, there's a reason you don't see it prevalent in MMA because it just doesn't work the same. Not to say that it's an impossible because if we move into the next match now, which is Roman Dolzi with Anthony Hernandez, Roman is known for his leg locks. is he had a big win with a calf slicer from the back mounted position and he is very proficient at leg locks. So, he is someone who has made it work in MMA, but if you notice the style of leg locks he does, uh, it's not usually or I can't recall the time where he's letting someone stand over doing a leg lock. And this match kind of highlighted even that type of grappling heavy strategy going arai. Initially, they looked like they were trying to trade a little bit and Roman was not getting the better of it. They were both landing, but Anthony Hernandez is a tank. He is I saw someone label it and it's kind of ironic. He is the middleweight Morab. And it's ironic because Morab is in Roman's corner. He's another Georgian fighter. But Fluffy did not get tired at at any point. And the pace of the match was very high, especially for middleweights. He looked very fast, solid chin, throwing lots of heavy shots, and just moving the whole time. Roman looked kind of slow. And uh I was rooting for him because he's trained in the extreme. So I wanted to see him do well, but not a good game plan. It looks like they thought that either one Roman was going to be able to get into the leg lock game easily or his submission game, which I could have told you that wasn't going to happen just based off his previous performances with someone like Ralph Vieiraa, right? Like no offense to Roman, but he's not Rolo Vieira. and Rulo had everything he could handle and ultimately got submitted by Fluffy if I remember correctly. So I would have not count on that. And I think the second thing they thought was that Roman throws heavy shots and would beat him on the feet. He does throw heavy shots, but Anthony is no joke. They might call him fluffy, but the dude's hard as hell. They at one point I think it was in the second round Roman like they were like exchanging a little bit and Roman like points to the center like let's stand and bang and fluffyly engages and they trade and they're both beating the out of each other but Roman is the one that gets tired and looks visibly hurt and Anthony is just smiling the whole way through. So, he's built different. And then again, like it's the old stereotype of the Mexican boxers, man. They those guys got chins and they can throw down. And uh Anthony definitely lives up to the stereotype, right? Because he did not look fatigued at all. Did not look like he was hurt at any point. Roman, especially after round two, was totally dead in the water. he was just falling over for any reason. And it looked like he was trying to get Anthony to kind of fall into a guard game. And he did it even in the first round and the second round where he would go down pretty easily off a takedown and try to roll to his he would roll to the fours trying to get Anthony to try to take his back and he would roll into this cast slicer setup. But Anthony was pretty wise to it from the get-go and never really engaged. He was able to uh ride like a wrestler. And if you've seen heard me talk in the past before, this is a solid way of anti-grappling, which is you don't throw hooks in. You don't try to go into your seat belt and try to take the back against a guy who wants to grapple because that plays into grappling. You ride them like a wrestler. You stay on the hips, arms under. You're not trying to get hooks in. You're just breaking them down, punishing them from the turtle position. So that they are not able to get you to commit to being on your bottom. Because remember, whenever I throw hooks, I'm committed. Now I can't disengage if I want to because the moment I throw the hooks in, he rolls to his back. Now I'm the bottom guy. He's the top guy technically. Even though I have the superior position, I can't disengage because the moment I let go my hooks, he's now going to be top guard at the very least. So, this is why like again GSP uses game plan against Nick Diaz, never threw hooks in. Kane Velasquez was big on doing this. Never threw hooks in, just rode them. And a lot of wrist control, ground and pound. And Anthony did the same thing to Roman. Never really tried to throw hooks, just rode them. A lot of crab riding, used a few cradles. And you can tell Roman didn't want that. Uh, and he ultimately would end up going to guard. And once he kind of flopped to guard, Anthony stood him up. And then Roman was forced to stand up again with this guy who's fresh and you're dead in the water as far as cardio is concerned. So uh this grappling based plan there was two things that I feel Roman did wrong. One he did not have the gas tank to fight a high pressure fight. He was also the slower fighter. him taking the chance of saying let's pointing to the ground and saying let's stand right here and trade to me was the fatal mistake in that fight cuz he was never the same after that point. He blew his wad and his chin at that moment and there was no coming back from it. If you have somebody who is a better cardio fighter than you, you cannot give them the edge on the cardio. You have to slow them down. You have to make them fight at your pace so that they can't exploit the cardio advantage. What Roman did by saying, "Let's trade," is allowed Fluffy to gain the cardio advantage in a huge way because he's probably going to be winning that cardio fight the whole time. like our energy meters are here, you know, uh, and empty to the right, you know, Roman's moving this way. But if I goof like this, the disparity is huge because now I'm empty. So every time I exert myself, I'm dead. If you kept it a little bit here, you know, you can make a last. Knowing this is a five round fight, too. Crazy of Roman to try to push it so hard. That's to me kind of signaling desperation, which is that I know if I don't put this guy away within the first couple rounds, the fight's already lost. That's a a wild way to go into a fight uh strategically in my opinion. I would feel if I was commandeering Roman, I would be trying to grapple a lot, not try to throw a lot of hands to slow the fight down and make the position stickier. He was relying a lot on like figning take giving away takedowns to go to turtle to try to roll for a leg lock. That's I mean against somebody who doesn't know you, sure you could pull that off. But against a guy who's obviously studied you, you're the main event and you know you're a ranked fighter. He's trying to get into the the lower rankings, he's not going to give away these easy wins. Like you're going to have to really really work for it or you're going to have to get him really tired. And that's the problem. You're not going to get him really tired because he's got better cardio than you, right? Unless you can pull him out of his game plan, you're not going to get him tired and arguably probably not. He looks like his conditioning is very very good, especially for that weight class and the pace that he was pushing. Uh so very uh tough fight to win there. He's going to be a problem, man. And that's why I remember I told you guys I was rooting for Roman, but like it's hard to bet against Anthony. He's now eight wins in a row, I believe. And I think that his last fight was against Kevin Holland, who dropped him and TKO'ed him. But that was over 5 years ago. And obviously, as a fighter, you evolve a lot over five years, especially when you're fighting at the top level like he has. uh would be an interesting rematch to see though. I'm sure he would want to get that that W back. Um but in any case, this is why again a grappling heavy game plan, especially if you're going very heavy on bottom position, is not advisable in MMA. It can work in grappling for sure. In MMA, I don't think so. A top game plan for grappling in MMA works very well. Obviously, we've seen guys like Kabib and Islam, you can totally dominate someone from top grappling, and that's the way it should be done. Grappling off your back as the main strategy is a very full hearty way of trying to win a fight. Yes, you can pull it off. All right. Of course, we've seen people pull off arm bars and triangles, you know, off their back. Very rarely do we see it with leg locks, but it's happened a couple times. But normally, you know, with other submissions, we can't see it work from your back. But against somebody who is fresh and is wellkilled, nah. It's too easy to posture out. too easy to ground and pound and you're too exposed. Especially if you're comfortable staying on your back because that means if I know my opponent wants to be down, that means I can be very tall in my guard, which makes me much more difficult to submit because I'm out of reach. gives me much more power with my striking because I'm not striking from stifle and you know just throwing short elbows or hammer fist. I can throw full length punches with a gravity assist. That's an awesome place to be. If my opponent is a standup threat, meaning that he's going to try to pop up at any moment now, I can't posture up that tall because that's going to give too much space. He's going to come up to his feet right away. So now I have to fight closer, which is going to make it harder for me to throw big bombs. And now I'm closer to him, which if he's a good grab guard player, he's more able to secure those sweeps and submissions because I'm closer to him. But if you're like, I'm just going to pull guard and I'm going to go for, you know, locks and stuff like you're going to get pounded. You're going to have a kazama happen to you or get, you know, instead of rampaged now, you're going to say you're going to get smiffed. You're going to get picked up, powerbombed, or you're going to get pounded off your leg lock attempts, right? And if you're just diving into turtles, setting obvious traps, you're going to get pounded, you're going to get rode out, you know, and uh it's going to be a long night for you. So, in MMA, you have to be a lot more careful playing off your back. All right? And I would say that would be the thing. Grappling is great when you're in top, not so great when you're under your back. That's the lesson I feel like everyone should learn from this from an MMA and self-defense context, right? I think this UFC was a very good reminder of why you don't see people pulling guard in MMA. There was a arguably one guy who did it really well that was famous for it and was also a bronze medalist in ABC I recall. Oh my god. and his name is slipping, but he was a lightweight and he was jumping into uh Minari rolls and getting inside heel hooks and stuff. He even got BJ Pen off of one. God I his name is on the tip of my tongue, but I can't pull it out. Founder Black Cold Juice, if I remember correctly, or 50/50, I think that's going to bother me, but all right, you guys probably know who I'm talking about and yelling at me and that'll be good. uh and his career was shortlived because that novelty only worked so far. When it's a surprise tactic and you're fighting someone who's not that experienced, you'll pull it off. But once people know the game and they know how to avoid it, you're going to end up sitting on your ass and then either getting stood up or getting soccer kicked and knocked out in a street fight at least. So, not a valid strategy in my opinion. If you're going to be a grappler in MMA, you have to learn how to take people down. You have to be able to engage on your feet using strikes to close a distance and then working through your takedown. Either that or the other thing you can do if you want to be a grappler, but you don't have takedown abilities, be very effective on your feet, especially with kicks. If you're a great kicker in MMA, posing a lot of threats, your opponent at some point might want to take you down. And catching your kick would be an easy way to take you down. But now, if you're a good grappler, okay, I'm going to work either a getting back up to my feet, which is going to force my opponent to try to stay tight with me. That's going to allow me now to grapple effectively from close range. Or I'm going to pop back up and I just made him waste all his energy taking me down. So that's another prototype you can use if you have very good striking. It doesn't have to be just kicking. But I always find that that's a underused tool for somebody who's a a good uh grappler that's also a good striker. Man, just let your kicks go. Like what are you worried about? the guy's going to take you down. You know how to work off your back and you can pop up to your feet again if you wanted to. Especially like for example Roman Fluffy did not want to engage with him on the ground when he was in his guard. Stood him up every time. If Roman wasn't so gassed and was just going heavy on kicks, he could have just been pelting someone like Anthony. Although to be fair, it's probably not be that easy to kick him, but just as a point, right? somebody who just didn't want to engage on the ground. Well, if that's the case, I don't have to be worried about getting taken down. I can just throw heavy, heavy kicks, you know, and whenever I got taken down, big deal. I'm going to get stood up or he's going to have to play in a world that he's not going to be comfortable in. So, those are a few scenarios where you can play a grappling game plan. But in most situations, the 90% you want to be on top. Don't rely on being on your back to win an MMA fight. That's a last ditch scenario. And we have to remember and stay grounded, pun intended, in reality, which is in a street fight, getting taken down could be the end of the fight. Your head hits the back of the of the ground and it's concrete. It's good likelihood you might get a concussion. And unfortunately, some people have died just from hitting the ground. It happened years ago. I think it was like in 2021 or 2020 here in Vegas. Guy got into some stupid street altercation with a a homeless dude. I think the homeless guy punched him. He fell down, hit his head in the concrete, died right there. So, and that's off a punch. You know, imagine if you got power bombed like this guy Kazama did. You're definitely dead, right? So, you have to be careful, right? And don't divorce the reality of combat, at least in my opinion, because I got into fighting into mixed martial arts and martial arts in general for self-defense purposes. So, I've never wanted to make my grappling different than my self-defense. The way I grapple is the same way that I would fight in a in a MMA fight as I would in a street fight because I had actually someone ask me over an open mat on Saturday like, "Oh, you know, do you play kg guard and stuff? Like, how do you train it?" And I'm like, "I really don't because it's not a guard that I would use in MMA. Uh, at least for my body type, it's not really that good because I don't really invert well to like roll and spin under. So, it's not something I'm going to do. And like, and we don't really use a lot of that in my gym because they're asking like, "Do you teach in your like not really cuz we're an MMA gym and this is not something that we're going to do in MMA." Uh it's a very open position that relies on in my opinion people playing and this is my criticism of it. You can disagree and I'm sure it's valid. I don't think that playing gay guard in MMA is a great strategy, right? And we don't see it. Not that I ever call anybody doing it, which doesn't mean it doesn't work, but it is showing that well, uh, no one's really doing it because it's probably dangerous. And grappling, we've seen it a lot. I think the guy that comes to my mind mostly is uh, Levi Leroy Jones. If you saw him at CJI, he was notorious for doing this. very difficult to pass his guard, but his game required engagement from the top guy to his was not a really proactive game. He was just kind of there and inverting a lot, going kg guard and waiting for people to try to pass that would give him the opportunity to attack. It's like, yeah, but in in real life, that doesn't really work. I'm going to soccer kick you. I'm gonna ground and pound you or I'm just going to call you up to your feet or walk away from you if you just stay on your ground. So like it's a game that requires me to want to play it. When you have a top imposed grappling game, it doesn't care if you want to play it or not. I'm imposing my will on you. When your game is bottom and it's not aggressive, it's two willing participants saying, "Okay, I want to do this and like, do you want to do it?" Because if you do, then we can play this game of this guard. Otherwise, it doesn't work. So, not a great strategy for me. I'm sure it's a obviously it's effective as far as defending his guard, but I don't see it translating into real life. So, I personally wouldn't be doing that, right? It's a game that requires the top guy to play along. I don't want that because if he doesn't play along, I lost that part of my game. I'm going to play games that I don't care if you like it or not. You're going to be forced to play it. And usually those are top games. So, anyhow, that's all I got for you guys. Let me know your comments and uh I'll see you next week.