BTG 181 - Getting the Job Done

Hello and welcome to Breaking the Guard. On today's episode, I'll cover the UFC that just passed, which we had a BMF title up for grabs and some other matchups on the undercard. I going to review my trusty phone here because you guys might know I always lose names here and there. The first fight that I tuned into was Alberto Montes and Ricky Tersios. Ricky Tersios won one of the Ultimate Fighter shows and Alberto was a newcomer and he definitely did not disappoint. looked very sharp in his feet, lots of uh good striking and apparently he was an Anaconda specialist and uh in the second round he was able to find that Anaconda and get the finish. I think he may have slept Ricky or at the very least super close uh because he just stayed down after the the match is over. So either way, clean finish. You know, anaconda chokes, pun intended, are not something to sleep on because for me, I've trained with quite a few long armed bandits. You know, when you got guys with really long arms, they could long darces and anacondas, you know, guillotines. To be honest, dar chokes I don't really think are that big a deal to me. I find that they're easier to counter now that I've I know what I know. However, a good anaconda, it's really hard to get out of. You can, you know, grab your your leg, some people do, to help open up the space. You could try a telephone. You can do this. And that can work on most people. But if you have an Anaconda specialist and they're able to lock it in, man, it's going to be really hard. Uh, so I I wish I had a lot more arms because I would be doing anacondas all day. I think it's one of the easier submissions to get into as far as chokes just because you just have to be able to lock up a front headlock, which is not that difficult, especially with modern MMA roles that somewhat encourage going to your force rather than going to your guard. So, not the hardest thing to lock up and for a very strong submission, like I said, uh not hard to get into. So, uh, unfortunately, I got short arms and a broad chest, which doesn't make it easy like some because I have a longer reach. My my arm span is like 73 and a half inches. Uh, for a guy who's 5'9, that's pretty big, right? I should have like a 69 inch reach if we're just going by height. However, I'm no Jon Jones, right? It's got it's like all shoulders, you know, like this is very broad. So, not only does that work against me and that my arms are that long, but also for me to cross my arms, I have to cross further. So, it makes it a lot trickier to get those type of chokes. So, you you don't really see me too often lock up anaconda or dar. And if I can, it's kind of like me with triangles. Like, you're in a lot of problems now. That's going to be super tight by default. In any case, it was a good showing for Alberto Montes. The next fight I saw partially was Cody Garbrandt and Liao. And this was one of the weirdest fights I can recall in recent history. Liao, as if we just judge the fight by what was going on, was the better fighter. He was out landing, scoring takedowns, but he was also scoring a ridiculous amount of fouls from groin shots to eye pokes repeatedly. So bad that he lost two points, not one, but two points. And you know how rare the judges are to take points away? They had to take two points away from this guy because he kept doing it and mainly the groin kicks because it was two groin kicks that he ended up getting points taken out of. And I think there was some type of language barrier. He didn't seem to really understand or it didn't I'm not sure just culturally like he looked like he was upset at some points and frustrated. I'm not sure what he was going through, but he ended up losing this fight just because of the fouls. He gave up two rounds off fouls. And you know, one of the rounds was a little closer that you could have given to Garbrandt. And I think that's what ended up happening that Garbrandt had perhaps won one round. This Liao probably won two at least two rounds, but since he gave away two points, it's a moot, you know. So, man, the fight IQ was terrible in this regard because it was easy to avoid. Stop throwing inside kicks. If you're thrown so many fouls, which he threw plenty, you can't trust your inside kick anymore. So, don't throw it. But he never stopped, you know. So to me, weird that he lost as some people like, oh, you know, I never seen a somebody who actually won the fight lose. I don't see it that way. I think, man, he fought so dirty and so poorly that he ended up losing. It's It's weird, but it's not unjust in my opinion. Uh, next fight, Gregory Rodriguez and Bruno Ferrer. I wasn't familiar with Bruno's game. I I I knew I do know I do know Gregory Robocop. Scary dude. And he continues to show that he's a scary guy. And the beginning uh Bruno was moving around a lot. Looked like he had a lot of pep to his step. Rubber cop, you know, usual. He's pretty methodical. Moves in. And some point, I believe towards, let me see here. Yeah, it was in the first round. It was like towards the end of the first round, Robocop just plants just a clean right hand, sleeps him, man. Made it look really easy. And you know, the guy he was fighting did not look like, oh, he was a walk in the park. Just it's the way it goes. When you're a power puncher, you can make anybody look stupid. You know, it just takes one shot and it's over. Uh so he continues to be a threat. Then we had Drew Dober and Michael Johnson. And uh this fight I thought Johnson was doing really well. I expected Dober to win this fight, but round one, Dober couldn't score his takedowns. And Johnson was looking pretty good on his feet. I thought he was getting the better of the of the striking. I would have given him round one for sure. Round two was looking pretty good for him until Dober hammered him uh with a combo and slept him also. You know, it's the way the striking games goes. Dober's a, you know, a powerhouse, so he's obviously not uh it's not a surprise when he knocks somebody out and he's shown that he's very versatile. He can fight his feet, he can wrestle, he can grapple. uh hard for Michael Johnson, you know, I mean, he's man, he's been in the league for a long time. He's fought everyone who's anyone. I can't imagine he or at least his coaching staff has aspirations for title belts at this point. I think it's just keeping a career and trying to get some W's in. But, uh, yeah, this one, uh, it's rough. Then we have Raul Sess versus Rob F. And uh I picked Raul because he was young blood and you know Rob Font starting to get older but Rob Font was doing a great job in this fight as far as from the feet. I felt he was dominating the striking. But SSA has some incredible cardio which improved from I the time he lost where it looked like he kind of gassed if I recall correctly. But SAP just made it a big wrestling match and kept taking him down. Kept trying to chase the back. Rob Font to his credit was able to defend all the back takes. Never really got took any damage to be honest, but he was getting controlled. I believe when I was watching it, I felt round one was definitely Rob Font, but then rounds two and three again, not a lot of damage from Sosa's part. A lot of control though, and I don't think Font really was able to get off any damage because he was just covered by Sosa who was just constantly on top of him. And it shows how good both of their grappling games are in that Font never really got into any submission danger. Uh despite the threat that Sosa presented, I wish that Sosa would have done some more damage from the top. He seemed to be full grappling mode and didn't really throw any ground on pound. And I get it. Easy for me to say from the chair here when you're fighting somebody who is also a very well-rounded fighter like Rob Fawn is hard to strike because the moment you start striking, he's going to start popping up. And I know I can imagine from how that fight was going earlier. They didn't want this fight to go on the on the feet, so he wet blanketed him the whole time. But not an entertaining fight to watch. I mean, there were some good scrambles because Font was doing all sorts of things to try to get up to his feet and to escape, but Sooza using a lot of good Matt returns and just pressuring. I I just like seeing people go for finishes and this fight clearly wasn't about that. This fight was about winning a decision, which uh SA did. And again, Fans a tough guy, so it's a big, you know, that's a that's a big win for him. But hopefully we can get some more finishing pressure on the next fight he has. Then we come to the last two fights, Chow Bro and RDR. I was going RDR here just because I thought he was going to go do some goofball stuff, which you know, he really didn't do this time. His cardio held up a lot better, but he still fights so weird, man. like for a guy who's I believe they say 6'4 fighting at 185 just such a tall did they say 6'4 or 66 I got to look it up now because yeah 6'4 so he's just a really big dude you know I mean Jabario is not small either he's 6'2 but uh the way that RDR is built he's like lots of legs it gives him the appearance that he's sitting up higher than he is, I think. But his striking is just so weird. And the way he tries to clinch is weird. He gives off the impression to me that he's always somewhat desperate to get into the clinch and grapple. But at least in this fight, he did not gas out hard. He He looked a little sloppy towards the end, but Child got tired. Like round one, child put a good beating on him if I'm remembering the rounds right, but as the fight started getting longer, it looked better for RDR, but he could never secure he didn't secure the takedowns early and when I don't think he got any takedowns. I he was able to get the fight to the ground at one point and I think that was late in the third round and Chiao obliged got on top of him and was able to flatten him out not let him do anything from his back. Remember he's a black belt also so it's not like somebody that you can just beat easily on the ground. I think a lot of people that RDR outclassed in grappling, he was just so much better than him. And in MMA, especially in the minor leagues, that's not hard to do. So, you can really let your grappling speak and dominate people. But at the UFC when it's at the high level where he's fighting at now, you got guys who are really good wrestlers and they have at the very least enough grappling savvy where you're not going to hold him down easily or catch anything easily. And I think it's starting to show that he's gonna have a hard time breaking through the current ranking that he's at just because now everyone below him or above him I should say in the rankings is going to be a difficult person to put away. You know, if he's fighting someone like Fluffy, I don't think he's taking him down and holding on the ground either. Oh, actually, I think he did beat Fluffy though, didn't he? Did I get my fights wrong? No, no, no. He didn't fight Fluffy. Okay, we're saying like crap. I know he No, he beat Boone Nickel. Yeah. Yeah, I don't think Well, maybe he could because if Sean Strickland got on with a knee, the one thing RDR has is good knees, you know. Um, but anyhow, Child ended up winning the fight by decision. I think it was two rounds to one. Uh, Child looked good. I think he he could have pressured a bit more, but against RDR, it's understandable. He's a weird dude. No need to get a little try to get crazy in the in the mix with him because he's just a goofy guy. Fight style. It's really weird. I I would feel a guy like him should be a much better striker, especially since he's Dutch. Uh he doesn't seem to use his hands as much as he should. and he would just lean in with knees. There's a lot of times that they were crashing in where a child would like duck in and I'm like, man, if I was built like him, I'd be throwing so many knees whenever somebody lowered their head a little bit because one touch and it's going to be over, you know? Um, so it seems like his striking is not really optimized for his build in my opinion. Anyhow, main event, Charles Olivivera and Max Holloway. I was rooting for Max. I thought he was going to be able to strike, stand, and bang. And boy, was I wrong. Olivivera dominated him everywhere. Was able to take him down, was able to beat him up on the ground. And when they got back up to the feet, he was beating him up on the feet also. Uh Max to his credit didn't, you know, get caught. Was able to go all five rounds and the last five at the end of round five, the commentators were talking about, oh, you know, he's uh Charles going to stand up and trade with him, but he was grounded in them. And he's and everybody was like, no, he's not going to do that. Doesn't make sense. He's on top. But sure enough, Max made it happen. Got up to his feet, escaped, and Charles obliged and hammered him pretty good. made him take a few steps back before the end of the fight. So, the BMF title transfers over to Oliver Vivera who well-earned some criticism from people like, oh, you know, this was going to be a BMF title and he just held him on the ground. I think it was like Ryan Garcia who's a boxer and I'm like, it's not boxing, it's MMA. But yeah, the grappling's prowess and striking of Oliver looked great. Good setup for him to try to get back into the title picture there. He he would have to be able to deal with the the the stronger wrestlers in the division, but obviously he's very dangerous in his back, but I guess we will have to see uh what builds from there. Other than that, we did have the PGF and the PGF was on Wednesday. I covered it briefly in the news clip I did on Friday. the big stars of this season on week one, Jet Thompson, which is not surprising, although you remember last season he scored zero points for like the first couple weeks and he ended up coming out of that hole and peaking right when he needed to to win the season. But this year, he's starting strong. He's on top of the leaderboard with 16 points, three submissions. You couldn't ask for a better day for him than that. He also showed some great body lock passing. And uh I'm going to I generally am not too good with body lock passing. That's probably why you haven't seen me teach it. I don't really like teaching things that I haven't been able to do well. And that's one of them. Uh, again, it might be the arms issue for me because getting this grip, I feel like I have very low base. Although, he was doing a variant where he was kind of going into a high tripod with the body lock and that might be able to work for me. So, I'll have to workshop that a bit, but he was getting lots of chokes uh and fast finishes as well. Uh, so just an amazing performance that he had that day. Then uh Sean Meansen was another one. He's been Instagram famous now and for showing all sorts of funny videos and good techniques. This was the biggest event that I knew of at least coverage wise that he was competing in. And he had a great showing too. He had two finishes and that one person he was really trying to finish but couldn't. But still, I think he's in second place if I'm not mistaken. And uh the guy, one of the guys that he broke the submission was another star who was really good. Um Austin Orende, which I'm going to do a breakdown of his day one because he had some great breaks also. But for Shawn to beat him in a leg lock battle, that was very impressive because Austin leg locked everyone else. So I think that he uh Sean's going to be one of the big threats as well as uh Austin and Justin. Those were the three big names. think of if I'm thinking of the three guys that posed the biggest threats based off week one performance, those were it. But there were lots of submissions. If you guys missed it, you can catch it on YouTube. If you don't want to, it's a long it's like three hours. So, if you just want to watch the highlights, they have a whole highlight segment. And there's a lot of highlights, man. I'm telling you. I I'm going to be going on a vacation uh next week. So, I'm going to be missing the live action as far as being there in person and kind of kicking myself. But if you can watch it on YouTube, it's the next best thing. It's the one form of grappling to me, like I said, that is always very entertaining. Something's always happening. Like, there was a Polaris and I think it was 36 also this weekend that I I didn't get a chance to tune into. I'll probably watch the replays, but there's a lot of decisions, a lot of long matches. I Yeah, I mean, at this point, man, I've seen so much grappling that I want to see good stuff, man. I want to see people going after it, you know? I don't want to see a grappling match where someone edges somebody by a point, you know? Like, man, I've been in the game now for 30 years. I've seen a lot of that. I've done some of that. I don't want to see that, right? I I want to see top caliber guys doing some of the best jiu-jitsu, the best techniques, MMA that the world has to offer. And uh sometimes you don't get that, you know. Sometimes you get people who are just they're not showing their full game. They are playing they made a risk assessment and like I just have to do this much to win. That's what I'm going to do. I'm not going to expose myself or try to get a finish. And I understand it. You know, as a competitor, you have a career to maintain. You got money, bills to pay, but as a spectator, man, you're killing me, right? It's just very boring, right? So, other rule sets have a harder time getting that to happen, right? It's going to be on the athlete, the type of strategy they want to play. And usually the best athletes are trying to get finishes because that means less math time, especially in tournament settings. That means they're going to be able to be more fresh for each match. But PGF, I'm telling you, the format is very solid. It forces action because otherwise you're not getting points. You're getting stalling call. They call stalling really fast. And the stalling calls I know over the past few seasons I've been watching earlier on they were a little trigger happy they weren't great but I felt like over the past two seasons you know this one I just watched the one before they have got a much better handle of it and it works like some of the matches they call stalling call and then the match gets finished by submission by the guy they called stalling on. I mean, that's a great feeling if you're Brenda McCarron, the guy the promoter of this event, the creator. It's like that's what you want to see. Like, you're pushing people to make positive action that is rewarding for them and for the fans. So, I really do enjoy PGF. Wish I was there to support it live. Uh, but uh vacation I've had planned for months kind of intervened, so I wasn't able to do that. But in any case, uh I would say you guys have every Wednesday now to look forward to that. Uh I believe four maybe 5:00 West Coast time. So adjust that accordingly. And uh yeah, I feel like uh that will be a good bet for me. Like I'm going to be watching it at least some of the highlights while I'm on vacation. I'm going to be going to Indonesia to a place called Wakatobi. It's kind of in the islands. We're going to be doing another scuba diving trip. So, a much uh desired reprieve of to be back in the ocean. You know, I do love Vegas and the desert, but doesn't have an ocean, and it's nice to get in the ocean every so often. So, um I'll be out there for a couple weeks before I return in April. And uh I'll be tuning in meanwhile online if you guys uh you don't have to worry about me not posting stuff. I've created a lot of videos in advance. I have a lot of instructionals and tutorial videos and so that I have maintained the discipline of new content every weekday and Saturdays. So, uh, you guys won't be missing me out there while I'm out there. Uh, but if you have stuff you want to recommend to me to to post, always you can send me an email. If you have topics you want to talk, what you want me to cover, you can always send them to me. I'm more than happy to do so. Other than that, I will catch you guys in a couple weeks once I return from vacation.