The Tactical Guide to Volkanovski vs Holloway II [Preview]

This is the first section of a much larger article which you can read by becoming a Patreon boi. This section covers the meat and potatoes of Volkanovski’s successful gameplan in the first fight.

Max Holloway’s record reads as a guidebook of notable featherweights in MMA. If they ever made even a little noise by throwing fists, Holloway has probably fought them and there is a reasonably good chance he has already beaten them. By the time he earned his first shot at the UFC featherweight title, Holloway had fought almost every other prospect in the division. He deconstructed the great Jose Aldo twice, back-to-back and was crowned the king of the one hundred and forty five pounders in June 2017.

There were those who thought Holloway had suffered his ‘prospect losses’ early and was only now hitting his stride. He was showing new looks in every fight and now it would surely be a running up of the numbers in title defences for years to come. There were others who recognised that mileage is the inescapable rule on fighters and Holloway had fought a great deal just to get to the belt: it seemed like the peak might have already happened and Holloway could be nearing the point of diminishing returns. Max’s early 2019 trip to lightweight—where he was outgunned by old featherweight foe, Dustin Poirier—had fans thinking that reality might be sliding towards the worse outcome. Holloway returned to form in a conservative but convincing victory over long-toothed veteran, Frankie Edgar in July 2019 but as many were quick to point out: Edgar was old and had always been more of a technician than actually dangerous.

When Max Holloway met Alexander Volkanovski in December 2019, he found himself in one of the most spirited contests of his career. The bout was an exciting, technical back-and-forth. Brilliant gameplanning and adaptation carried Volkanovski to within reaching distance of the title and an absolute refusal to be outlanded or outpunched secured the belt for the Australian. While a rematch was assured, this weekend sees the two meet under the strangest of conditions at the UFC’s Fight Island debut on Yas Island. The stakes are incredibly high and the first fight could be reversed with small adjustments, yet almost everything about the preparation for both fighters has been less than ideal. Before we ask how Max Holloway can recapture the belt, let us first examine just how well Volkanovski got the measure of the featherweight great in their first meeting.

Killing Holloway’s Volume

Alexander Volkanovski and his camp realized that as a volume fighter Max Holloway takes control of fights as the differential in strikes landed becomes more obvious. Simply put: Volkanovski could not let Holloway land two or three punches for one in return. When you boil it down to “don’t get outscored” there are really only two options each time Holloway (or any great volume puncher) starts striking:

– You can try to meet him punch for punch and follow him out of the exchange, or

– You can try to cut him off at the first punch

The first option essentially boils down to out-hustling the opponent, and to Volkanovski’s credit he did a good deal of this. If his efforts to cut Holloway off didn’t pan out, he tried to outpunch Holloway and chase him out of punching range anyway. Volkanovski might be the somewhat bigger hitter but he kept pace with Holloway in a bout where each man threw over three hundred strikes, which is pretty remarkable when you remember the lacklustre third round of Volkanovski’s fight against Jose Aldo.

In terms of cutting a combination fighter off, there exist a number of options. One of the most obvious is Floyd Mayweather’s go-to in boxing: if you don’t like where you are as an exchange starts, duck the first punch and smother the other guy in the clinch. No one can keep punching properly when the target is stuck to their chest. In boxing and kickboxing this is a great way to reset—the referee will break the fighters apart and they get placed outside of striking range before action recommences. Of course in mixed martial arts there exist a great many offensive options from the clinch and, due to the rules respecting this, an even greater ability to kill time there. This wasn’t the meat of Volkanovski’s strategy in the first fight but he did use takedown attempts to enter clinches along the fence and hold for a time.

Another option is to cut an angle and leave the exchange before they can get going. If you are familiar with the careers of Nick and Nate Diaz you will know that this is their kryptonite and has led to anyone who circles out on them being labelled a coward and a runner, but also winning. Volkanovski used lateral footwork to stay away from the fence and get out before Holloway could start piling up the points.

But the new kid on the block and the weapon that earned Volkanovski the UFC featherweight title title is the low-low kick. This is an idea that we have explored quite a bit lately but one of the key reasons that the low-low kick or calf kick has come out of nowhere to dominate the MMA landscape is that MMA fighters were just beginning to explore the potential of boxing. To combination punch, you need one foot out in front of you. To move your head economically and be in position to counter punch, you need your feet staggered so that you can move your trunk from over one knee to over the other. And to make use of the jab—the most obviously underused weapon in MMA and something that fighters were finally using to make the difference—you need to bounce in off the back foot and put the lead foot down in front of you.

Max Holloway is pressuring towards Alexander Volkanovski (1). As Hollway steps in to jab and begin a combination (2) Volkanovski times a low kick that buckles Holloway’s knee in (3). Holloway is slow on the return because his knee is turned inwards, and Volkanovski further complicates it by covering the jab, keeping his left forearm high, and stepping out to his right side rather than straight back (4).

When Renato Moicano chopped up Calvin Kattar’s lead leg, Kattar tried on the fly to invent a way of boxing without putting his lead foot in range to be kicked. It didn’t work. The feet are the base of boxing and therefore you cannot box without, at some point, putting them in range to be punted. Throughout the twenty-five minutes of action, Volkanovski was able to cut Holloway’s three and four punch combinations off at the jab by laying into the lead leg each time Holloway began to plant it.

Volkanovski had further success by chopping and changing when he went to the outside with the low-low kick, and when he went to the inside with a traditional inside low kick. The step up inside low kick has been missing from MMA for a while but Zhang Weili and Volkanovski lean heavily on it in almost all of their fights.

Volkanovski is hand fighting with Holloway (1). As he steps up with his rear foot (2) he pulls Holloway’s lead hand out of position (3) before scoring the inside low kick (4).

Countering off the Low Kick

Max Holloway’s answer to Jose Aldo’s low kick was pretty simple: he stood with his knees bowed out like Wyatt Earp and waited. When Aldo kicked, he shot the right straight down the pipe and let Aldo know that this was the plan. Aldo low kicked a handful of times across their pair of fights. Part of that was likely the threat of the return and part of that was the fact that Aldo seems to barely care about anything but boxing in his modern incarnation. But the tactic is a very sound one generally: show the low kicker that every time he throws you intend to fire up the centre and to catch him on one foot.

Volkanovski lands a jarring outside low kick (1). Holloway has to recover from his buckled-in position and attempts to make Volkanovski pay, chasing him with a jab (2,3) but eating a cross counter over the top (4).

As Holloway took the calf kick or inside low kick, recovered his balance, and tried to press forward to punish Volkanovski for it, Volkanovski would counter punch as he came back down onto both feet. This is something we examined in The Chaotic Footwork of Andy Ristie: using the low kick to draw a counter and throwing your own counters as you back out. Everything about Volkanovski’s kicking was exceptionally tight as he got his foot back to the mat and began sliding back or to the side every time Holloway came back at him. When Volkanovski was at his best he was low kicking, counter punching as Holloway tried to get one back, and then low kicking again as Holloway retreated from the exchange.

The greater range of the low-low kick also meant that Volkanovski could lead with it. A quick feint would get Holloway backing up, then the calf kick would knock his lead leg out of position and as he was getting back on guard Volkanovski would be rushing him with a left hook.

The Switch to Southpaw

This is the first part of a longer article, which continues with Holloway’s success after he switched to southpaw, and concludes with hypothetical gameplans for the rematch. Check that out at Patreon