Almeida vs Lewis

The Jack Slack Breakdown 

UFC: Almeida vs Lewis was not a highlight of the 2023 fight calendar. In the main event Almeida, the heavyweight division’s most hyped grappler, worked just effectively enough to stay in dominant positions for twenty-five minutes and not really hurt Derrick Lewis. That did not leave the fight without glimmers of promise.

Derrick Lewis’ ground game is often reduced to the idea of “just stand up” and this can overshadow a sort of craftiness that other, less behemoth-like fighters, might still benefit from. Lewis primarily demonstrates the difference between grappling for the sake of grappling and grappling in a professional fist fight. He will take risks that you will see other grapplers shy away from and this often leads to him escaping in those “just stand up” moments.

Of course there are aspects of his game that would not hold up were he not a three hundred pound man-mountain. For instance, much of this fight saw him on the bottom of mount, holding Almeida’s wrists to the point that Almeida could not (or perhaps “would not”) strike. In the first round Almeida attempted to break these grips by sliding a knee over them—something Sergei Kharitonov used to TKO Semmy Schilt from a mounted crucifix in PRIDE. He then got so frustrated that he stood over Lewis and lost position altogether.

But a tactic the average grappler can certainly replicate was Derrick Lewis’ gator roll from underneath Almeida’s mount. When the fighter on top of the mount postures to throw strikes, the bottom man has the chance to bridge and roll. The problem is that without the bottom man trapping an arm and a leg, any sentient top player is not falling off. They will brace themselves on the floor and allow the bottom man to roll underneath them, giving up the back. If you watch the old Gracie challenge videos with fights between early Brazilian Jiu Jitsu practitioners and karateka or kung fu fighters, this was the most common finish to the fights.

Figure 1 shows Lewis defending from the mount and turning to his front. He is framing away with straight arms (a). In Jiu Jitsu, you are taught to armbar someone who does this on day one. But in MMA, when the bottom man knows how to grapple, this can be risky and result in sacrificing a good mount. Anderson Silva used stiff arms from the bottom to make it hard for Travis Lutter—a very good black belt, if not the Michael Jordan of Jiu Jitsu—to hit him.

Fig. 1

As Almeida postures to try to strike, Lewis bridges (b) and rolls to his knees (c). Notice that Almeida posts his right hand on the floor. In the old school upa escape, Lewis would have needed to catch that hand to prevent it from posting.

The sequence continues in Figure 2. Without looking for Almeida’s hand, Lewis knows it had to post as he rolled, so he can immediately grab the wrist with two hands (d). This allows him to continue the roll through (e) and wind up with Almeida on his back (f). That might not seem like a good thing in the traditional positional hierarchy, but in MMA he just went from a position where Almeida could strike him and place weight on him, to a position where Almeida cannot strike, cannot place his weight on Lewis, and is tied up entirely in the handfight.

Fig. 2

Notice in (f) that Lewis passed the wrist across his head during the roll, the beginnings of a back escape and removing the threat of the choke. If Lewis can turn back into Almeida there is a real threat of him coming up on top.

One important point that separates this crafty giving up the back from the Gracie Challenge examples mentioned above is that Lewis did not get stuck on his belly. Mounted back control might be the real worst position in MMA. Lewis goes from his back, to his knees, and then to his side, never allowing his generous belly to touch the mat.

The idea of changing from one disadvantaged position to another and then back again while gaining a slight advantage in the transition is a very valuable one in grappling. In fact, when Tony Ferguson was preparing for either Kevin Lee or Khabib Nurmagomedov, there was an episode of Mastering the System where he and Eddie Bravo drilled the concept of gator rolling while trapped in back control to improve hand position and begin fighting out.

Almeida must be praised for his takedowns in this fight. There was considerably more variety to his shots and when he hit the wall of Lewis’ hips, he switched off to a single and chain wrestled through. His set ups were also a little better than just throwing a front kick and immediately ducking. Often he would strike—throwing legitimate high kicks to threaten Lewis—and then level change under Lewis’ return.

But the stand out moment for this writer was a brief occasion when Almeida was on the bottom. He made tremendous use of a deep half guard position that we have discussed before, and also demonstrated the concept of switching sides from the bottom—a tricky thing to do.

Figure 3 shows Almeida in the unenviable position of being underneath Derrick Lewis, mid swing. He sits up into Lewis and acquires a left scoop grip behind Lewis’ right knee, and a right underhook on Lewis’ left side (b). (c). His right leg is also draped over Lewis’ left from the outside, as is necessary to come up to the dogfight or coyote position.

Fig. 3

Figure 4 picks up the action. Almeida switches his left scoop grip behind the knee for a grip on Lewis’ foot, pulling it in tight (d). Almeida shovels his hips in underneath Lewis and is able to begin off balancing Lewis over the top of him (e). As space opens up between Lewis’ hips and the mat, Almeida releases the ankle and spins into deep half guard (f), extending Lewis’ left leg like a lever and putting himself in great position to start wrestling up (g).

Fig. 4

From here, Almeida slipped his head out to the back side, next to Lewis’ backside. This put him in a reverse half guard.

This reverse half guard is a good sweeping position in the gi, but in MMA it is mainly used by gassed jiujiteiros like Rani Yahya and Mackenzie Dern to hide their head from punishment. Almeida used it masterfully to change sides and perform a half guard sweep on the other leg.

Figure 5 shows Almeida raising his left knee to his chest to bump Lewis forward and pop his head out the back door (a). From here Lewis drops his hip to the mat (b), and retracts his left leg as Almeida turns towards him (c).

Fig. 5

But you will notice that Almeida now has the underhook on Lewis’ left side (c). Figure 6 continues the sequence.

Almeida throws his left leg over the top of Lewis’ trailing right leg (d). With the left underhook and his left leg across the top of Lewis’ right, hooking his ankle, Almeida can now begin to build up. He gets to his elbow (e), and then his hand (f) as Lewis keeps an overhook. Almeida’s left leg is still hooked over Lewis’ right ankle, and as Almeida circles on his knees, towards the camera, Lewis is forced to fall in a “stanky leg” manner (h). You will recall that Jon Jones used this technique from top position to topple Cyril Gane from his knees to his back.

Fig. 6

On the whole the fight was terribly boring. And aside from Nicholas Dalby’s brilliant comeback and Elves Brenner’s weaving left hook, the entire event was pretty bad. The other stand out from the weekend for tactical and technical reasons was Tofiq Musayev. The former Rizin champion was co-headlining their first trip to his homeland of Azerbaijan against the decent Koji Takeda, and he was razor sharp.

The first thing that stood out was Musayev using shin kicks, but actually making them count for something. Fine, if you are a light heavyweight who can kick shin-on-shin and somehow have the opponent come off worse, stick to just that, but Musayev built off it in a way almost any good striker could replicate. Figure 7 shows the basic shin kick and its main overlooked benefit: it breaks the opponent’s stance momentarily.

Fig. 7

The obvious way to use this—which the UFC light heavyweights will still ignore—is to enter immediately with punches. In Figure 8, Musayev is loading up a left hook as his foot returns to the mat, then drives forward with a classic 2-3, catching Takeda on the end of the right hand.

Fig. 8

The shin kick is a bad calf kick. It exists because some fighters are southpaws and some MMA fighters would rather throw their strong leg to a bad target than learn to step up kick with their other leg. Like the calf kick, fighters who use the shin kick often rely on it to do a lot of their work when they don’t want to have to close the distance. So throwing the shin kick can encourage tit-for-tat exchanges of shin kicks. Musayev showed Takeda a half dozen good shin kicks, and the moment Takeda came back, Musayev closed on him with the right hand and pushed him to the fence to continue the assault.

Fig. 9

In round two, Musayev dropped Takeda along the fence and this provided an interesting contrast with Jailton Almeida’ successful half guard play. Figure 10 shows the action.

Takeda has a knee shield all the way across Musayev’s waist and has two hands on Musayev’s left wrist (a). He kicks his leg through and follows it with his left arm, getting the underhook (b). He then uses his left leg and arm to pull Musayev back on top of him (c). This gives him a nice high underhook, but because Takeda’s left foot is not on the floor and he has no knee shield, Musayev can walk on his knees to put Takeda flat on his back (d). This kills the get up or single leg and Takeda was stuck on the bottom for the rest of the round. In frame (e) you can see how far Musayev would commit his weight on Takeda’s left side to keep Takeda flat.

Fig. 10

But the most impressive part of Musayev’s performance was his counter-clinch work. Figure 11 shows an early example. Takeda boxes into a clinch and gets double underhooks but Musayev’s hips are already back (a). Musayev posts his head, clamps down the whizzer and angles off as he backs away from Takeda (b). Finally Musayev comes to rest in a position with a cross frame with his right hand and a strong whizzer with his left hand clamped inside Takeda’s thigh.

Fig. 11

Figure 12 shows Musayev doing it from an offensive clinch. He is attacking Takeda along the fence and Takeda digs an underhook. Musayev cranks Takeda’s elbow inwards so forcefully (b) that he is thrown around in a clockwise direction, where Musayev gets his cross frame and head position (c).

Fig. 12

Like Leon Edwards’ head post, Musayev attacks with knees to the body from this position. Figure 13 shows a great example. Musayev lands the knee (d), then his left arm switches from cranking down on the whizzer to being thrown up and then retracted straight down between Takeda’s neck and shoulder (e). Musayev stays in range and immediately throws a left hook (f),(g).

Fig. 13

That switch from cranking down on the whizzer to taking the arm up to the neck and dropping the elbow straight down was key to slipping free of the underhook. Here’s Ben Askren demonstrating it in his great instructional on handfighting.

Fig. 14

We consistently discuss clinch striking, and breaking from the clinch into striking, as the most overlooked areas of modern MMA. This made Musayev scoring the TKO off a clinch striking exchange even sweeter. Figure 15 shows how it went down.

Having pushed Takeda to the cage of his whizzer and cross frame (d), Musayev catches Takeda’s free hand with a two-on-one wrist grip (e). After feeding the wrist to his left hand, so that his left arm is occupying both of Takeda’s hands, Musayev loads up a right elbow (f) and chins Takeda (g), following up with further strikes on the mat for the finish.

Fig. 15

Tofiq Musayev’s Bellator career has been put on hold momentarily after losing to Shabliy in the second round of the Lightweight Tournament (and because Bellator is noisily winding down its business). That means you have to go a little out of your way to see him, but when Musayev is “on”, he is worth almost any amount of hassle to watch.