Blachowicz vs Rakic:

Slacky’s Secret Post Fight Notes

It is easy to be drawn into a negative frame of mind by repeated light heavyweight main events. The division used to be the standard bearer for MMA and, as the lower weightclasses have been granted more screen time and weight cuts have gotten bigger, light heavyweight has become a no man’s land where the fighters are just as sloppy as the heavyweights but slightly too small to hang with the truly monstrously sized men of that division.

In this malaise of low expectations, the fan can end up resenting the fighters who do best in this dreadful weightclass. This writer must constantly remind himself that if a technique or tactic shouldn’t work and does, it is not down to the fighter applying it to apologize and clean up his act. He is well within his rights to abuse that idea until his opponent gets better or falls to the mat.

Jan Blachowicz versus Alexander Rakic was a perfect example of this idea. The story of this fight is not going to set your pulse racing: the two men hacked at each other with naked calf kicks and the one who at least tried to check them ended up winning as the other one’s knee exploded. But there’s a little more to it than that, obviously, because the leg that gave out under Rakic wasn’t the leg he had been getting kicked in. That was more to do with Rakic’s tendency to simply flee from striking range whenever it was Blachowicz’s “turn” to strike: Rakic wound up throwing himself onto his back knee, did it a little awkwardly, and the knee gave out under the weight of him.

But that one-size-fits-all defence of backing straight up brings us back to the original idea: almost every Blachowicz lead (spare the stand-alone low kicks) was a left hook to the body, right straight to the head combination (Figure 1). He threw this about a dozen times with little else in between. Is it dangerous to lead with a left hook to the body? Yes, you must drop your hand out of your guard before you can attack and open yourself to counter punches, and you must also get closer than you would do to throw a jab or even a right straight. Is it bad tactics to do the same thing repeatedly and expect no response? Also, yes. But if the opponent shows no sign of doing anything about it, are you not ruthlessly exploiting his ineptitude exactly as you should?  

Fig. 1

The onus was on Rakic to stop him. It didn’t matter that Blachowicz was opening his left side for counters repeatedly and predictably because Rakic at no point used that information. It was his job to stand his ground and throw a right hand down the pipe, or pitch an overhand counter as Blachowicz jogged into this same combo. The ending of the fight came under unfortunate circumstances, but the fact that Rakic was never able to bite down on his mouthpiece to throw back, and treated the fight as a game of alternate “turns” was allowing Blachowicz exactly the kind of fight he usually wins—however clunky that may be.

Nascimento vs Hadley

There were obvious shades of Charles Oliveira in Allan Nascimento’s performance against Jake Hadley to open the main card. The flying kicks and front kicks to the body read more like a poor imitation, but Nascimento seamlessly emulated some of the grappling tactics that have made Oliveira arguably the sport’s most effective Jiujiteiro.

The majority of the fight was spent with Hadley on the bottom and Nascimento smashing his way through Hadley’s half guard. In mixed martial arts the half guard is one of the best places to pass from, and one of the best places to get up from if you can dig the underhook and it is a battle of controls and counter-controls. Hadley repeatedly dug the underhook and tried to sit up or turn in on a single but found Nascimento impossible to move. Figure 2 provides a great example of Nascimento’s counter control.

Fig. 2

Hadley digs the underhook (a), but Nascimento’s hand behind Hadley’s buttocks and his head post underneath Hadley’s jaw (b) prevent Hadley from pulling himself underneath Nascimento or Nascimento over the top of him.

In (c) and (d) Nascimento punches Hadley in the head, uses the punch to grab the cross face with his biceps turning Hadley’s head towards the ceiling, and walks into Hadley to put him back flat to the mat. Notice that Hadley’s left knee is no longer between him and Nascimento. Figure 3 shows how control of the head with the crossface changes half guard from a guard—with leg involvement and movement—to a flattened chest-to-chest pin for the top man.

Fig. 3

Every good fighter knows he must fight the crossface at all costs on the bottom and Hadley did a good job of preventing Nascimento from flattening him out through most of the fight. This allowed Nascimento to get to work with one of the most underused weapons in MMA: the knee to the body on the ground.

Fig. 4

In Figure 4 Hadley is using a two-on-one wrist control to prevent the crossface and avoid being flattened. But his chest and solar plexus are facing directly into the path of Nascimento’s left knee. Figure 5 demonstrates how Nascimento paired this knee to the body (b) with the old fashioned Team Quest half guard crucifix (d)—going from knee-to-the-body to knee-over-the-biceps.

Fig. 5

This half guard crucifix position is fleeting and not a sustainable trap, but it allows the top fighter the opportunity to 1) punch, 2) grab the crossface, or 3) attack a guillotine grip over the top, as Nascimento does here.

We often reference Charles Oliveira’s exceptional use of leg attacks, even though he does not have many leg lock submissions on his record, and Nascimento demonstrated that same idea perfectly when Hadley got on top of him in round one. Firstly, Nascimento tried to spin on a leg and found himself in a position called outside ashi. That is effectively a regular leg entanglement or straight ankle lock position, with both legs on the outside of the opponent’s body, rather than a knee between their pelvis and yours. Here’s Eddie Cummings himself in the outside ashi, exposing the heel.

Outside ashi is a powerful heel hooking position and Eddie Cummings devastated the no-gi grappling scene with it a few years back. The problem is that more than any other leg attacking position, outside ashi exposes you to being squashed or having your back taken. Figure 6 shows that though Nascimento attacked his way into outside ashi, Hadley was able to lock his hands around Nascimento’s upper body and came up to threaten Nascimento’s back.

Fig. 6

In (c) they are locked in the awkward position where Hadley is almost on Nascimento’s back, but his knee is all twisted up because his foot is still overwrapped by Nascimento’s right arm.

Figure 7 shows the continuation of this scramble as Hadley unlocked his hands (b), placing one on the mat in order to try and build height and get on top. This gave Nascimento the opportunity to place his right foot on the mat and perform a partial inversion, hip rolling into Hadley (c).

Fig. 7

Notice that as they land, Nascimento’s right foot sneaks between him and Hadley, creating a buffer that didn’t exist in the outside ashi position (d), (e). Where many of the world’s top grapplers now avoid outside ashi for the most part, Gordon Ryan has had great success using the position to sweep—as against Kyle Boehm and Ben Hodgkinson, and even transition to more secure leg entanglements as in both his matches against Felipe Pena.

Finally, in his brief moments on the bottom, Nascimento was able to use the calf slicer to reverse position just as Oliveira so often does. Figure 8 shows that as Hadley stood up in a leg entanglement (a), Nascimento was able to use a lat post to invert underneath him (c). Nascimento chopped down on the back of Hadley’s knee with his shin and figure-foured his legs (d). As Hadley hit the mat, Nascimento rolled back over his shoulders (e) and turned into Hadley’s closed guard (f).

Fig. 8

Ultimately, a “failed” leg attack that isn’t going to show up on any records or statistics, but one that changed the fight entirely. The same was true of Smolka vs Grant—the last fight we’re going to study today. Smolka was dropped as Grant “split” his jab in the first round. Clearly hurt, Smolka was able to use leg entanglements from the half guard to buy time and prevent Grant from following up and pursuing the finish. Figure 9 shows how.

Fig. 9

As Grant attempted to create space to finish, Smolka underhooked his right leg (a) and drove his left knee across Grant’s midsection, forcing Grant’s weight backwards (b). As Grant pushed back into Smolka, Smolka inserted his left butterfly hook and threw his right foot over the top of Grant’s hip to achieve single leg x guard or a basic leg entanglement (c). The sequence to this point is one of Craig Jones’ signature leg entries and one that he even used in IBJJF and Quintet matches when he wasn’t allowed to directly heel hook opponents.

Grant removed Smolka’s left inside hook with his hand (d) and this allowed Smolka to swing himself into the calf slicer (e). The number one reason MMA fighters should be using leg entanglements even though the submission rate is so low is that leg entanglements put the opponent into unathletic positions on the mat where they cannot hit effectively, or turn the opponent’s knee away. The calf slicer and the knee reap are two perfect examples of turning the opponent’s knee away, and in (e) and (f) you can see that there is no way Grant is getting in his strikes to achieve a finish while his knee is facing the opposite direction to the one he wants to hit in. Grant slipped his leg free after fleeing from the entanglement and Smolka got back to his feet to continue the fight in a less stunned state than when he hit the mat.

Grant vs Smolka was as much fun as expected, and a story of power versus grit. Grant whacked Smolka with broadsides from the opening bell, and Smolka dilligently plodded through trying to establish clinches and drag the fight to the mat. After a rough first round Smolka actually managed to get some of his own work going on the feet in the second, before being stopped by a knee-jarring low kick and some follow up ground and pound in the third.

There was a good deal going on in this fight but perhaps the most important facet was that Grant managed to navigate the right balance between his unorthodox power swings and more scientific or—as I’m sure he imagines it—“boring” striking. For instance, Grant was able to counter or “split” Smolka’s jab with his own a good many times through the fight. This was how he dropped Smolka in the first, but it also gave him the chance to throw his wider swings in the beat that Smolka was stuck on the end of that jab.

None of this would have mattered if Grant did not prove surprisingly disciplined with his footwork. It wasn’t as pretty as Jose Aldo’s textbook pivots but Grant left every exchange on a different line to the one on which he entered. Every time he hit Smolka, he spun ninety to a hundred and eighty degrees and left Smolka playing catch up. In this way Grant was able to avoid almost every attempt to clinch. Figure 10 offers a great example of this:

Fig. 10

Grant splits Smolka’s jab (b) and then steps to his left in order to slide down the side of Smolka as he swings his right (c, d). He throws a left hook as Smolka covers up and turns to face him on his new angle (e), and Grant pushes him away with a front kick (f).

Figure 11 offers a more extreme example as Grant enters with a right straight to the body (b), follows up with a left hook to the head (c) and continues to turn all the way around Smolka and shove him off before he can solidify a clinch. Notice that Grant’s back went from facing the camera to facing the opposite side of the arena.

Fig. 11

Grant’s victory was built on deviating from the line of attack—whether it was Smolka engaging or Grant himself. Smolka was able to push through a lot of the punishment and, had Grant backed himself onto the fence more often, Smolka might have punished him for it and dragged him into fence wrestling exchanges. If Blachowicz’s work in the main event was not enough, Grant helped to remind us that you can have the strangest striking mechanics in the game and they will often work great if the less tangible stuff between the punches is well executed.