For much of the last ten years, Charles Oliveira has been a beloved institution in the UFC. His appearances on main cards and undercards over the decade have always entertained—whether he was scoring a submission victory or imploding in a knockout loss. He came to the UFC undefeated at 13-0 and suffered eight blemishes on his record under the company, getting beaten and bloodied and even submitted, but now more than ever it is important to focus on growth and results more than simple numbers. In the course of the last few years Oliveira’s striking has begun to catch up to his submission skills and from 2018 to 2019 he finished six fighters back-to-back. But there were always those keen to point out that he just hadn’t beaten the cream of the crop. He could submit mid tier fighters with a consistency that was unmatched, but when he met the true upper echelon he tended to fall apart. Yet in March of 2020, Oliveira finally moved into the elite of the UFC’s most competitive division with a victory over Kevin Lee.
Where Oliveira’s submissions are sinister and he is a master of front chokes, Lee was the much stronger wrestler going into the match up. Lee didn’t just get opponents down though, he could pass guard with a pace and effectiveness that was matched perhaps only by Khabib Nurmagomedov and finished a great many of his opponents from the back. Furthermore, Lee carried a ludicrous reach for the weightclass which he was getting better at applying and was a thudding hitter to boot. Yet it was the wrestling that was the keystone: it seemed as though Lee would dictate where the fight played out and Oliveira would be forced to make the best of it.
From top to bottom, this was Charles Oliveira’s finest performance. No one trick saved Oliveira or carried him to victory, it was rather an array of tools from his skill set that combined to produce a masterclass. From the flashy to the mundane, Oliveira was always doing something cute and it kept Lee from building up any head of steam.
Working Around The Jab
In his previous fight, Kevin Lee had smoked the undefeated Gregor Gillespie by skewering Gillespie with his jab, timing a counter right hand, and kicking him in the head as he stumbled backwards. With a 77 inch reach on a five foot nine frame, Lee’s improving jab spelled trouble for anyone in the division. Oliveira stormed out of the gate and immediately began front kicking—often with jumping, bicycle kicks to the head and body. Not only were these long techniques which Oliveira didn’t have to set himself in front of Lee to throw, they pushed Lee up out of his stance and forced him backwards towards the fence.
Working from a higher stance, Oliveira kept the pressure on Lee by the cage wall and lanced him with jabs of his own. More effective was Oliveira’s use of long clinches to strike. This is a factor of his game which has flown under the radar as he has been fighting lesser opponents, but to see him apply it on a fighter of Lee’s ability was encouraging. When his opponents step in Oliveira will often advance to greet them and shoot his left hand past their head, clapping on a single collar tie. This goes against the instincts of most fighters—if you can put your hand past his head, shouldn’t you be hitting him with it? Oliveira will sometimes pivot his opponent around on these quick clinch entries, and they help to break the opponent’s rhythm and break off prospective combinations. Nik Lentz was chopped up with elbows and uppercuts from the collar tie in his third meeting with Oliveira a few months prior to the Lee fight.
Rather than end up in a jabbing contest as Gregor Gillespie had, Charles Oliveira palmed the jab or slipped inside of Lee’s right hand to acquire the collar tie with his left hand. From there he was able to use the right uppercut to drop the collar tie and initiate power punching combinations. In this way sliding into the collar tie often replaced the need to close with the jab.
Oliveira was able to pull and slap Lee around and score good uppercuts throughout the first and second rounds, applying pressure so effectively that Lee began making poor decisions. For instance in the second round, Lee threw himself forward and Oliveira slapped him with a left hook which he then turned into a collar tie. Lee began swaying deep at the waist to try and free himself but Oliveira kept Lee’s head low and as he popped up on the elbow side, Oliveira nailed him with a right straight.
Floyd Mayweather adored this technique—allowing the opponent to pop up like a bubble from under a submerged glass, and nailing them just as they seemed to be free.
The variety in Oliveira’s standing attack was key. Front kicks to the body and outside low kicks threw Lee’s jabbing off. Oliveira’s own jab surprised Lee, and his left hook worked around Lee’s parry or allowed him to enter the collar tie on the counter. Spinning techniques caught Lee out as he circled along the fence looking to create some space to think and to adjust. But when Lee was pushed to it, he proved that he was still the master of the wrestling portion of the fight. Nothing Oliveira did on the feet would have amounted to anything if he hadn’t been able to neutralize and threaten Lee so effectively from his back.
Leg Entanglements
Over the last five or six years grappling competition has been revolutionized by a renewed focus on leg attacks, particularly the inside heel hook. John Danaher was heavily influenced by MMA fighters, Rousimar Palhares and Mazakazu Imanari in creating the system of leg attacks his team used so effectively in no-gi competition. The part that might have fans scratching their heads is that there hasn’t been much of an uptick in submissions by leg attack in MMA since then. But to focus on the lack of heel hook finishes is to miss the value of the leg entanglement. Against strong grapplers, Oliveira lives and dies by his ability to attack legs.
There exist a lot of variations on leg entanglement, but the four key positions that Oliveira attacks are the leg reap, the calf slicer, the inside sankaku or saddle, and the 50-50. All were used against Lee and more than just having four key attacks, Oliveira chained them throughout the bout. Lee is a very competent grappler and Tristar is a camp that values leg attacks and often brings in elite heel hookers to train, but Oliveira’s transitions allowed him to stay aggressive from the bottom and, most importantly, prevent Lee from striking on top.
“Reaping the knee” is the jiu jitsu tournament terminology for using the outside leg to force the opponent’s knee inwards. This is the cardinal sin of jiu jitsu, so Marcelo Garcia and others explored the single leg x guard position as a leg entanglement that led to sweeps, but had to mind their manners constantly to avoid a disqualification if their trapping leg strayed too far towards the opponent’s centreline.
When reaping the knee is legal the outside heel hook is an option, and readers will recall that Jack Hermansson recently finished Kelvin Gastelum with this attack. But the hidden use of the knee reap in MMA is in forcing the top man to turn away and cutting off his striking offence. This is very similar to the impact of the calf kick on combination punching—it is very difficult to start throwing your weight in, especially with rear hand blows, when your lead knee is pointed across you. Once the knee is turned in the top fighter is going to struggle to drop heavy blows on his opponent and, if he tries to turn all the way around and slip his leg free, he gives his opponents space to re-establish guard or scramble up to his feet.
Here Oliveira reaps Lee’s knee (2) and forces him to turn away (3). Oliveira continued attacking the legs but the crucial point is that Lee could not strike down on Oliveira while his knee was being reaped across his own centreline.
One of the ways in which Oliveira entered his singe leg x guard and leg reap against Lee was from the bottom of half guard. After being reversed on a takedown attempt in the opening minutes of the fight, Oliveira popped his hips and projected Lee overhead, threw his trapping leg over the top of Lee’s free leg to create the reap. He did exactly the same thing to get out from underneath Lee in the final minute of the second round. You will have seen Alistair Overeem repeatedly use this leg entry against Curtis Blaydes in their fight as well.
Another key position for Oliveira was the saddle. While the Danaher Death Squad made this famous four or five years ago, Oliveira was attacking it back in 2012 against Eric Wisely and even from the bottom when Hatsu Hioki tried to smash pass his guard back in 2014. Against Lee, Oliveira used the single leg x guard to switch to the saddle at several points. But he also had success when Lee attempted to split his guard by stepping up the middle. Oliveira would use a modified x guard sweep (sometimes called a Y-guard sweep) to tilt Lee over the top of him.
From a headquarters position (1), Oliveira underhooks Lee’s far leg (2), allowing him to turn to his other hips and carry Lee over the top. Notice Oliveira’s right knee inside of Lee’s, and Oliveira’s left foot posting on Lee’s leg, ready to extend away.
Rather than attempting to come up and pursue a takedown of his own, Oliveira used the sweep to get Lee’s weight off his left leg. At that point Oliveira threw his right leg over the top and passed Lee’s foot across his chest to achieve the saddle position.
Oliveira checks Lee’s far leg with his left foot and frees his right leg to swing over the top (2) to create the saddle, passing Lee’s foot to the inside to complete the transition (3).
To see a cleaner example of this Y-sweep to saddle that ends with a heel hook against an elite grappler, check out Dillon Danis versus Jackson Sousa.
In the saddle Lee’s striking was again complicated by having to deal with the threat of the heel hook and compromised balance. One of the selling points of the saddle in grappling is that it is a longer distance leg entanglement than the 50/50 or basic inside heel hook—in that it places the attacker’s hands and head further away. In grappling that means it can be trickier for the opponent to stall out the heel hook with hand fighting. The carryover of that in MMA is that it is also much harder for the defending man to score blows to the head even if he is “on top.”
In this instance from the second round, Lee turned in to throw a right hand and as he did so, Oliveira turned belly down, rolled all the way through and yanked Lee’s foot up into his left armpit. The final position of this sequence is what is commonly called the back-side 50/50 and it is the one which Lachlan Giles and Ryan Hall have been having success in recent years.
Lee swings in a right hand from the top of the saddle (2) and Oliveira turns belly down, grabbing Lee’s foot and pulling it to his armpit (3). This turns Lee away and places Oliveira in position to attack the inside heel hook again.
If you are unfamiliar with the back-side 50/50 and its relationship to the regular 50/50 it is well worth watching Lachlan Giles' incredible run in the ADCC 2019 absolute division. Three submissions over giants, all of whom were chopped down into the back-side 50/50 and turned back into the regular 50/50 as Giles was slapping on the heel hook. And while Ryan Hall’s submission of B.J. Penn happened in what seemed like a split second, it ultimately took place in the back-side 50/50 as well. Both men have since published brilliant instructionals on their approaches which are well worth your dollars.
And the back-side 50/50 in turn tied into the calf slicer. Calf slicer submissions are as scant as rooster teeth even in pure grappling but much of the calf slicer’s value comes in exposing the opponent’s back—once again, turning the opponent away. In fact in the second round, Oliveira was slowing down a little on the bottom and after winding up in that back-side 50/50, Oliveira followed Lee with a calf slicer, and then simply held on as Lee turned back towards him. This meant that the next minute or so was spent with Lee trying to establish a dominant top position, while his leg was all bent up behind him with Oliveira’s shin sandwiched between his calf and hammy.
Here Oliveira is attacking the heel hook from the back-side 50/50 (1). As Lee flees, Oliveira sits drops his left shin into the crook of Lee’s knee (2), creating a messed up calf slicer position as Lee turns to come back on top (3).
Finally, Lee was able to turn into Oliveira and stand in a 50/50 entanglement. At the basic level the 50/50 can be worked in the same way an old school low single takedown—each time the opponent stands, the bottom man can pressure against the inside of his knee: forcing his knee out, toppling him back to the mat and exposing the heel hook. Lee was disciplined with his positioning and stood over Oliveira with his knee turned inwards. Oliveira did a great job of flaring his leg underneath Lee’s armpit to create a frame and complicate ground and pound. Most importantly, Oliveira threatened the upkick with his free leg—honestly the most valuable technique from any kind of guard.
As the second round was drawing to a close, Lee tried to finally get some offence off from the top of the 50/50. As he swung a right hand down on Oliveira, Oliveira turned underneath him, buckling Lee’s knee to the floor and bringing Oliveira into that back-side 50/50 position attacking the heel hook again just as the round expired.
After a strange religious pep talk in his corner, Oliveira got back to work immediately in the third round. Moments in, he scored another biting front kick to the body and Lee caught it on the way back.
Of the many unexpected synergies that have been discovered in MMA, the one between the front kick and the guillotine is among the most beautiful. The guillotine itself is often applied best against the single leg. If he is caught off guard with a good double leg that catches up the hips and drives straight through, the defending fighter will often just end up with a “throw-and-hope” guillotine in closed guard. The single leg is a more nuanced battle on both ends and that is why from B.J. Penn to Jose Aldo, smart fighters have always enjoyed feeding it off the shot. Against the single leg a fighter has time to hop and work and his opponent’s influence on his balance is just a little more indirect.
The front kick, meanwhile, has finally found its place as one of the finest attrition weapons in MMA. It’s a long, sniping shot and if you don’t do anything about it you run the risk of being torn up with body digs over the rounds. Men like Sean O’Malley and Conor McGregor have used it as a base from which to counter fight—putting some urgency in the opponent to “get something back” for each kick. But one of the reasons that the front kick to the body took so long to catch on in MMA was that it was perceived as a low reward strike: offering little chance of an immediate knockout and being easy to get a hand to. Those were the days when a caught leg was seen to be as good as a takedown.
With that being said, in Muay Thai and kickboxing the front kick is a range maker and a range keeper. If you jam your foot into someone’s midsection, you can stop them stepping in on you in that moment. Where a round kick to the leg can get caught and the other man will simply run through your standing leg, you don’t often see that happening with front kicks where the knee serves as an obstruction. Oliveira had been front kicking Lee all fight and getting away with it. When he front kicked Lee in the body at the start of the third round, Lee seemed to feel that need to “get something back” and to make Oliveira pay for it. He chased the leg back and found himself on a loose single leg with a lot of room to move and a lot of work needing to be done to finish.
As Lee chased the single leg, his head came out ahead of him and Oliveira was able to slide his left hand straight underneath Lee’s chin. Oliveira clasped his hands under Lee’s throat with his chest over the back of Lee’s head and as Lee tried to drive forward to complete a takedown, his head popped out from underneath Oliveira’s chest and into the guillotine proper.
Having consolidated his grip, Oliveira sat to the mat and forced the submission, scoring his biggest victory to date. Similar to Marlon Vera’s fight with Song Yadong, Oliveira’s bout against Lee confirmed that improvements he had been making weren’t just down to a stretch of lower quality of opposition. It was also a reminder that while it is easy to say “Oliveira just loses when he meets an elite opponent” there are an enormous number of moving parts and change has been happening in Oliveira throughout. There are not really “levels” to this, just people, skill sets and performances.
Oliveira’s early UFC run was that of a jiu jitsu savant with some nice flicky kicks. That younger Oliveira would barely recognize the man who fought Lee—who boxed, kicked, wrestled, leg locked and struck from the clinch so freely and flowingly and creatively. And while we have focused on just how well Charles Oliveira performed, we run the risk of writing off Lee in the aftermath and missing the moral of the story. Evolution like that shown by Oliveira or Dustin Poirier or Justin Gaethje might be unlikely, but the story isn’t written on any fighter if he is still capable of incorporating new ideas.