BTG 72 - Fighting Half Dead

Hey guys, David Avalon here with another episode of Breaking the Guard. Before we get on to the news, uh I'll give you some news of my own, which is I'm going to be in Florida, specifically in Miami, from February 21st to the 27th. So, if you're in town or you're in the M South Florida area, you want to train with me, I'll be at my gym at the Freestyle Fighting Academy teaching classes there. So, you're if you want to come in as a guest, even if you're not a student, you're more than welcome to. Uh you can just check in at the front there or call Freestyleacademy.com. We have all information there. And then I'm going to be in the Roatan, which is Honduras. So, chances are you're probably not there, but I'm there for a week before I get back to Vegas on the 6th. U. So that's just some what's going on with me. So again, if you're in South Florida, you want to train with me. Again, I'm going to be there from February 21st to the 27th. All right. Uh, now let's go on to the news. We have uh I actually watched this card, the UFC fight night 235, delete versus AMA. Uh, interesting fight card. Again, if you don't want spoilers, tune out now. Otherwise, I'm going to ruin it for you. All right. Uh, so of the notable fights that I watched, uh, that were interesting, one was, uh, Diana Belvida and Molly McCann. Meatball Molly as we all know her, she dropped the weight class and looked good. Uh, had a pretty solid performance. And, uh, you know, she was criticized a lot because she had been submitted the past two fights and notably with an armbar. and she actually won this fight with an arm bar. Pretty nasty one at that. Um, so kudos to her. Obviously, it looked like it was a good weight change and Belvita is not like a slouch either. She's a good opponent to to measure yourself against. So perhaps that it'll be a resurgence of her career there. Then there was Charlie Ratkkey with Gilbert Erbina. Um, Radkkey showed up really well and did a great job of winning that fight. Now, this fight in particular caught my attention, which was uh Randy Brown and Muslim Sakalof, the Kung Fu King. Uh, Randy Brown's really tall. Jesus Christ. They're fighting at 170 and I think he's like 63 or probably more. He he looked extremely tall, super fast, and he was able to put away Islam in one round, a Muslim, I'm sorry, excuse me, one round with a laser right hand that just ghosted him immediately. So, he's somebody to look out for. Then there was Drew Dober and Hinato Carnedo. And this was a very interesting fight. Money uh money Hinato, right? Moano, as they say. Uh, Dober is known for having very heavy power and uh, no doubt he brought it, but Moano was doing an exceptional job. This was a really close fight, too, which again, it looked like Dober kind of blew it. They memory is failing me a little bit, but I know Mana won one round, Dober probably won another round. So like the third round was like a pivotal round to win for either fighter and Dober was starting to get the better particularly the stand up exchanges. Uh and it was very clear that he needed to stay on his feet right whenever Makana took him to the ground he started to work him a bit. I yeah, I believe Makana won the first round and then uh Dober could have won the second round because he got a good take down and then was finishing some decent ground and pound from top, but it was clear that the game plan was to stay on your feet and then he because he had hit a nice lateral drop at the end of the second round uh to score top position. So third round comes in, they get into a clinch early in the round and then Dober goes for another lateral drop. And unfortunately for him, he ended up bottom and that pretty much ended the round for him because he was just grounded the rest of the fight, not able to get off his back and took a big L on that third round. Right? And these are one of those things where you have to be careful with the moves that you use, right? Like a lateral drop to me is a move that you don't want to use a lot because once you read it, it's easier to counter and unfortunately a loud drop is going to always end up with you on your back if you fail. So it's a it's a high-risisk move in my opinion. Now that's not to say not to use it. I've used a loud drop quite a bit through my career. It's one of those moves that you have to feel, right? like you have to have a good amount of pressure moving into you. There has to be great setup for it, right? If the opponent is not initiating. So in the first goound, he timed it perfectly cuz the whole time Dober hadn't really gone for a strong take on attempt. Mo was the one that was pressuring to go to the ground and he rushed into him and over under and boom, hit a beautiful lateral drop like textbook on the second round. The third one was kind of forced and I felt like I think u DC also commentated this as well. It's like he kind of felt like oh you know he worked once it's going to work twice and unfortunately I think with especially with a ladder drop I wouldn't go to that one twice. That to me is like a one-off move. Again I'm not the best throw in the world. I know I have some guys in my team that uh one guy in particular, Sha Babonis, has a killer lateral drop and he's probably a guy who could do it repeatedly, right? Um but even him, I don't recall him using it more than once in a fight and usually that's all he needed, right? U so yeah, it's not the type of move that you want to continuously spam, right? Uh but unfortunately that was a very costly mistake for him because in my opinion that lost in the fight. He wasn't able to get off his back at that point and it was just game over, right? Um so that was with Dober fight. So congrats to Marano who had a amazing post fight speech. That was one of the funniest things I've ever heard and he wasn't even joking. That's what made it even better. If you haven't, you should tune in to that postfight speech if you want a good laugh. It's pretty good. I won't spoil that for you. Uh, and the main event, Roman Dolitzi and Nasa Redin Imav was another fight that was pretty interesting, which was a was buil as a grappler versus a striker matchup. And Immab again looked the sharper of the two on his feet, very fast. Uh, whereas Delitza didn't look too comfortable on his feet. uh a lot of overhand rights and in the towards the end of the first round I forget what Imov landed but he had Roman on roller skates and got him on the ground and was pounding the hell of him and I think most if this wasn't a main event fight they would have probably called it because it was a savage beating that he took that he managed to survive which again super impressive that Roman probably at least a good 20 seconds of a solid ass beating, right? Like he really toughed it out and when the round ended, his face showed it. It was battered and he was hobbling to get to the the stool. So for him to endure that beatd down, very impressive. Unfortunately, he went into what I would call like instinct mode where he became uncoable because you can tell uh his corner Eric Nick is telling him stop throwing loopy rights, straight right hands, work for the takedowns, right? Uh you can, you know, crush this guy in the ground. And none of that registered. Now, on the flip side, Immolov was so tired from that finishing flurry, which I think was much longer than 20 seconds. Now I think about it, it was a while, maybe even 30 seconds of just non-stop attack. Um, but that takes a lot out of you as a fighter if you empty the tank thinking you were going to get a finish. So now he had four rounds left after essentially emptying his tank. So he was also tired. So, uh, this fight became a slopfest, right? Very sloppy. All right. Uh, with Roman leading the the fight pretty much because he would just throw a lot of overhand rights, go into a clinch, and just hold him against the fence. And I didn't really try to get out of the fence too much. Anytime he would do a fence turn, they would just return to the fence. Like, it was not It looked like he was fine resting too, right? Because in that second round, I would have given it to Roman just from cage control. Although he didn't really damage or anything that he was the one dictating the fight and Imamov didn't land anything significant in the second, you know, but that first round was definitely a 108, you know, so I would say like two to one. They go into the third round and I was a little more active, but Roman for all the control that he had on defense and pretty much a lot of times with high double under hooks and most of the time with a low body lock, sometimes you know an overunder. Didn't really go for any takedown, right? Like it's like he was thinking about doing a takedown but never actually tried it. like he didn't like do a hip toss or you know a trip or you know a knee reap or anything. He was just holding the position. And in my mind, I'm like, well, if you have this dominant position, at least fire knees, you know, where like if you're you're not able to score a taked down, just fire knees to the gut, you know, or at least to the legs. And the most that he did was a foot stomp, which is better than nothing, but I mean, you know, for like all the cage time that he had, he really could have done more work. And whenever they weren't clinched, he was always overhand writing every time. And that's when I knew like, oh man, this is a frustrating fight to be a coach because you can't reach your fighter. There's no guidance that you can give them that will register, you know, because once and I'll talk about this afterwards because this will be my, you know, topic of the day, which is like when you fight out of the instinct, you know, because whenever a fighter gets pushed to their limit where they're almost knocked out or they're dog tired, they're just completely zonked, right? like they just they totally tap the tank. They're going to revert to whatever is the first thing that they learn, whatever is instinctual to them that comes as, you know, second nature, so to speak. That's what they're going to do. And there's not much you're going to be able to do as a coach to divert them from that, right? And it's understandable, you know, it sounds like a kind of, you know, dog in a Roman, but dude, like his toughness is off the charts, right? his durability to survive that first, you know, assault uh that he had in the end of the round. Incredible. And he fought the whole five rounds. All right. After pretty much having his he's definitely had a concussion or two, you know, at the very least after that first round. So, like, hats off to him, man. That's hard. But, you know, objectively, you know, if you're watching the round, you're like, man, like there's so many things that we could have done as far as, you know, takedowns or striking off the cage or, you know, even just instead of looping the right hand, just throwing the straight right hand, you know, as the corner was telling him, but easier said than done, right? Your brain's so scrambled. uh it's pretty hard to do anything you know and I think it was in the fourth round where they actually took a point away from Ivoth because he had Roman on a high tripod position basically from headlock and Roman had his hand on the mat so technically you couldn't strike him in the head and then he threw a headkick right uh so they took a point off from that so at this point Now, his 108 round became a 10- N round, right? So, still, I mean, this was going into the fifth round that happened, right? And I, if I remember correctly, I think Roman got a taked down whether I think it was in the fourth round where he reversed a a position, didn't do much with it, but he did get a top position. So, you know, there's an argument could be made. Well, this fight might be determined in the in the final round. Although, I would think Immov probably still had it. I would have to watch it again. But basically, the fifth round was important to really, you know, go out and get it. But fifth round was more the same really. It was the same type of fight. Lots of cage control. uh not the greatest looking fight, you know, but again, easier from the spectators uh standpoint to say, "Oh, you know, I can Monday morning money Monday morning quarterback the hell out of this thing, right?" But from the fighter perspective, this was a dog fight, right? Uh and they were just both ex they got really worn out in the very first round for good reason. And it just showed for the rest of the fight because there's a I know there was one situation that Roman had a decent leg bite. Uh he could have probably gotten a good toe hold or scrambled to the back, but you can tell the decision-m wasn't there anymore. Like the speed was off. Uh so that goes to Immov the the fight by decision. So, this goes to my point here, which is when you get that tired or that concussed or you're mentally compromised, you have to try to expose yourself to that in training. Now, obviously, I don't want to get a baseball bat and smack my fighter in the head and then say, "Okay, now fight, right?" That's not going to do you any good. So, the only way we can get close to that is by exhaustion because a lot of people don't realize this, but when you get hit in the head a lot and you're taking, you know, damage to your brain, it makes you tired, right? Uh if you've never been in a street fight or a fist fight before or you never been hit hard in the head repeatedly, it fatigues you because you remember your sensation of energy or vitality is related to the signal of your brain going to your muscles, right? If you ever been tired enough where you see your hands start to visibly shake, right? That's a signal issue, right? What happens is normally like your hand could never stay perfectly still. It could look still, but it's not, right? Because what's always happening, gravity is constantly pulling down on my hand and then my hand has to pull up against it. So, normally these little adjustments are somewhat imperceptible if you have a really still hand, right? Because your signal from your brain telling your hand to lift up to maintain its current position is so fast that it's a very subtle uh vibration. But as you get more tired, that signal starts to get slower. And as that signal gets slower, then the the jitter or the the vibration starts to become more apparent. Okay? So, uh, when you feel tired, it's also a signal issue, right? So, when you get hit in the head a lot, guess what? The signal processing center is getting all scrambled up. So, that's why fighter's legs start becoming like jelly and they start losing coordination, right? It it's experienced and it feels like fatigue. So, uh, you could simulate, it's not exactly the same, right? But you can simulate getting close to being concussed or or having a concussion with extreme fatigue. Again, it's not exactly the same, but it's close, right? Um, and this is where training in those conditions kicks in. Now, this is also an area where you probably heard me before that we don't want to train toughness every day. And this is definitely toughness training, right? Because when you're that tired, you're much more likely to get hurt. So, there has to be some caution from the coach's side of managing the expectations of what's going to happen here and uh making sure that we don't overexpose our fighters to compromising situations. But it should be done. you know, especially if you're a professional competitor, you need to be able to push yourself in those deep waters before actually entering them, you know. So, you want to be at least in a simulated kiddie pool, you know, where uh a lifeguard could jump in and save you, you know, without getting hurt versus doing it for the first time out, you know, over that Mariana's trench and wondering if you're going to drown or not, right? So, we should have some protective measure mechanisms as a coach, but we do want to get that heavy fatigue and see how we can how you're going to perform, right? One of the best ways of doing this is Shark Tanks, right? And that's very familiar to most people, right? Where basically Shark Tank, one guy stays in, new people come in every round. And for whatever reason, psychologically, this is very difficult. Doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me because the reality is if one guy does a 10-minute round with one guy, it's not really a big deal. But if I switch out 10 guys by putting a new guy every minute, even though these guys might not be on the same level, right? like they might not be as tough as the first guy. The fact that there's a new person coming in every minute is taxing. And I've seen because we do this in our uh belt testing to FFA where where essentially, you know, have new guys coming in every round for MMA sparring and you will see some of the toughest dudes become soft as butter and it's it's just bizarre, you know, but it is a real thing. So, it is a good way to really fatigue somebody. And I've had this done to myself and, you know, I'll get caught, you know, late in the rounds where we'll do I remember one where I was doing Shark Tank with a new guy until I got tapped, right? And it was like I think if I if I finished them, new guy would come in or it was like every minute. I forgot the frequency, but it was pretty deep in and one of our better guys eventually caught me. Um, and again, I think he was probably he was a wrestler, a really really good wrestler, blue bell. Um, but in a normal matchup, he wouldn't be able to catch me. But under heavy fatigue, yeah, right? Like you can get somebody. So, this is a good way of being able to simulate extreme fatigue. again doing a a shark bait, right? Where one guy stays in and you just keep throwing new guys at a time interval, right? And like I said, depending on your level of condition and your level of skill, you might be able to survive longer, but telling you around that 10-minute mark, it's going to start to hurt, right? And obviously, the other thing I didn't factor, which is of course obvious, is that these guys coming in are well-rested. So, they're usually giving you their one minute sprint, whereas you have to kind of pace yourself a little bit if you want to try to survive, right? But sometimes when the guy's sprinting, you have to sprint to survive. So, you're getting pushed really deep. Uh, and it's going to really take a lot of your energy reserves. So, that's how you'll get the most out of this. If the guys that are doing the shark bait rounds are being soft, it's not going to be a big deal, right? or not as big as a deal. Psychologically, the new guy still kind of shifts you because again, it's a whole different strategy and all that, but the the pacing is what really makes this work. So, the instruction should be the guy who's only coming in for a minute should be going berserk in that minute. Yeah, essentially a one minute sprint. And you know, the later round guys will have obviously the higher advantage of being able to to punish you and you know, capitalize on your mistakes. But this isn't just to get you tired and say, oh, you know, like, well, I can get tired and get beat up. You want to be able to control your actions as you get more fatigued, right? And in this example I was telling with Roman uh he had essentially become uncoachable because he was so fatigued that you really couldn't reach him. So we would want to try to instill some type of basic game plan for this guy to execute when he's under extreme fatigue. Right? So this would have to be given to him beforehand right in the training session with the understanding look when you get under when everything is going wrong you're you're dead ass tired and you have nothing in you we want this type of game plan right or I want you to do this type of thing here and then we can do those you know shark bait rounds and see if we can actually get those to register and so that you execute them All right. Um, so it's not just getting you tired just to get you tired. We're trying to get you tired and then go for a particular game plan. And of course, there's many ways to get someone tired. You don't just have to do shark bait. Shark bait is just an easy one, right? Uh, a lot of times when we were doing our fighter triyouts back in the day, we would just put people through a brutal a brutal uh, conditioning routine where we can do like a 5x5, you know, where we're doing um, you know, those giant tractor tire flips, sledgehammers, sprints, you know, uh, hurdle jumps and stuff like that. So, after 25 minutes of that, then we bring you in and start sparring. And again, most people are already very fatigued after doing a brutal conditioning workout. And now we put you into sparring with people who are fresh. Same type of thing. You're going to have a rough time, right? So, we just have to fatigue the fighter or the athlete enough where they start becoming a little mentally compromised, right? They're just really, really tired. And once we could put them into that zone where they feel like they're about to go into instinct, then we got to make sure we can instill a game plan so that they can still be somewhat coachable, right? Uh like I said, it can be hard. If they are really tuned out, it might be impossible, right? I know some guys that it's just that you can't reach them. Like you could be talking to them, I don't think they're listening or hearing any words that you're saying. they're just like zoned out. So, I'm not sure if this is just on an individual basis, right? Like some people when they under extreme stress, extreme fatigue are just completely uncoachable or, you know, it's just a matter of training, right? I feel like I can be reached at the very ends of things, right? even when I'm dead super tired that I still have an ear uh and I can still hear advice, right? Uh so that's one thing. The other thing you have to also have to consider is trust, right? Sometimes you might be hearing advice from your coach, but you don't trust it. And this is also a big problem because you might hear something from your coach and you're like, "I don't know about that. that doesn't feel like that's going to work right now. Now, the fighter always has the call, right? So, he gets to decide whether he listens to the advice or not. However, if you don't trust your coach going into a fight, you're at a huge disadvantage because the coach has the outside view and if he trains with you well, he should know everything about you. So, he should almost know you better than you know yourself. So if he's telling you to do something from the outside where he is not compromised, he's not um you know tired or anything like that, so he's clear-headed and seeing from a third person view what's going on, he should be able to be making better decisions than you are, right? if he isn't capable of doing that, um either a maybe he needs to get some more training or more understanding of his athlete because he should be able to have a good read on you, right? And and your opponent, but the circumstances where you would not listen to your coach's advice, particularly when you're in the losing end of a fight, should be very rare, right? And uh but for example in in this fight with Deliti didn't really listen to anything right where his advice I think was spot on. The the overhand rights were never landing. Um a straight right probably would have had a much better chance of connecting especially since he had thrown so many overhand rights. He would have not expected the the one coming down the pipe. And then the takedowns of course everybody could see that that was necessary. And I think only once did Roman drop to the legs and that's when he got the taked down, right? Every other time he stayed on the by lock and never got anywhere. So, uh that's a second factor that we have to consider as well, which is do you trust your coach enough to follow the advice even when you think that it might not work, right? Or even if you're like, uh, that's not something I would want to do right now, but if the coach called for it, there's a good chance that it would work. And ideally, if the coach called for it, you would just follow it unwittingly because if you're going to do a move that you think is going to fail, that's already on a bad path, right? But if you have confidence in your in your game plan and you have faith in your coaches when they call for you to do something, you do it and you and the the way it should be interpreted like, "Oh, this is what I'm missing. I I just needed to hear this piece of information from the coach." Boom. Go and execute, right? But if you're secondguessing what your coach is telling you, there's already a problem here, right? Um, like I said, especially if you're losing, it's one thing I can understand more if the fight's even or you're winning and the coach is telling you to do something where you think like, I don't know, man, that's risky, right? I can see that more like, okay, they're they're you're being try you're trying to be conservative. What you're doing is working. You don't want to change that. But when you're losing and things are going bad and you're still not listening to coach, that's a weird call for me. That's pretty unacceptable, right? Like obviously something has to change here. If you if you're doing the same thing, you're going to get the same results, right? So, u that's I'm just trying to clarify. It's not to say that you can't, you know, ignore coach's advice, but if you're losing and you're doing the same type of stuff, you're kind of crazy for not following the coach's advice, right? like I don't know the explanation you have to give me right now. Sometimes which does happen, a fighter's injured, so you're calling for something and they know they can't do it because they're physically impaired. They won't be able to execute and the for whatever reason the coach doesn't recognize that you're injured, right? But that wasn't the case here, right? Um, so again, if you're dead ass tired, completely fatigued, mentally compromised, like I was saying, chances are you're going to revert to your fighter instincts, right? And you're just going to do the same stuff over and over again. So, ideally, we want to try to engineer that a little bit by simulating high fatigue training, right? Like I said, shark bait rounds, doing lots of heavy conditioning beforehand. Get yourself pre-exhausted. So, the training is really starting once you really want to be done with training, right? And then working specifics there, right? Where the coach might give you the instruction, okay, once you start getting really tired, we want you to go, you know, buy lock into the cage or we want you to drop for the double or, you know, whatever the game plan is. So that there is a lot more direction into what happens when things get desperate, right? Versus just getting the guy really tired and just having him do what he's going to do. I mean, that has a use as well because then you're going to learn what his instinct is once he's fatigued, right? And then we can engineer it a little more by doing these types of high fatigue drills. And as a athlete and as a coach, we have to make sure that the bond of trust is 100%. Right? Or as close to as we can get. So that whenever the coach gives instruction, the athlete follows, right? And that the athlete not only is following out of like commitment or obligation, but out of faith like he has 100% faith that whatever the coach is telling him is is in his best interest, right? So it's not just blind uh obedience, right? there's confidence, there's faith in the judgment of the coach, right? So, uh especially if you're a professional athlete or or competitor where you're going to be putting it on the line and you are going to be in those positions where you're extremely tired, fatigued, we need to have those things lined up, right? Where we have some uh extreme conditioning and like I said, this is what I would call toughness training. So, this is not something that we do every day or maybe even every week, but it's going to be in there somewhere, right? um your hell week or whatever it is that it's going to be your brutal training week. We have to have that mixed in somewhere so that we know okay this is what to expect when the things get go south right and how we're going to pull out. So uh hopefully that gives you some insight at least to my psychology of how to approach these types of things and you guys got some value out of that. I'll see you all next week.