Chingiz Allazov fights give me life. He is an offensive whirlwind in a division that has traditionally been held ransom by defensive craftsmen and in March he proved his success was no fluke by comprehensively besting the longtime 70kg Glory kingpin, Sittichai. He is booked to face Superbon for the ONE featherweight title this weekend and now seems a great time to examine just what makes him so effective and so fun.

A huge part of Allazov’s success is his dexterous lead leg kicking. While he often drifts into southpaw stance so that his left leg becomes his rear leg and this allows him to kick with full force, he is a decently powerful kicker off a quick T-step or even straight out of his stance. He uses nice teeps and round kicks to the body off the lead leg to end combinations in an annoying way, but the real danger for his opponents is the threat of the high kick which he can use to close out combinations or even as an awkward intercepting counter.  

This links in well with our discussion of Ilias Ennahachi’s lead leg high kicking. He uses the lead leg high kick to close the door on his combos, but switches stances to ensure an open stance match up. While the high kick is often best thrown to the open side—e.g. left high kick against orthodox fighters, right high kick against southpaw fighters—whipping the high kick over the opponent’s lead shoulder on the closed side can be especially threatening to the opponent as either a counter or as an offensive final thought. It calls for quick, sneaky kicking rather than powerful, full-bodied kicking.

Here is a nice example of Allazov’s lead leg high kick sneaking over the southpaw Sittichai’s lead shoulder on the counter:

Another way in which Allazov uses his lead leg dexterity is to push himself into a retreating switch of stances. Allazov rarely perform a full step through or switch to get power on his lead leg kick, but he will dig with the ball of the foot on push kicks and round kicks when he wants to cause some damage, and other times he will use the kick more as a frame to push off his man. Either way, he tends to use it to bounce off his opponent and retreat to southpaw.

Here is a nice example of Allazov using the left kick to draw Sittichai out and swatting him with a retreating right hook.

But perhaps the best example of Allazov’s mid combination stance switch in action came against Smokin’ Jo Nattawut. Allazov threw a close range punching combination into a step up left kick, retreated to southpaw and immediately reacted to Nattawut swinging back at him. Nattawut had been dropped once already and he likely thought that if he landed a good shot he could get Allazov off him for a moment, but in the chaos of the flurry Allazov had set the trap for that lethal open side counter: pitching a southpaw left hand across the top of an overextended orthodox right.

Allazov is a breath of fresh air amongst switch hitters in that he doesn’t tend to work out of both stances for extended periods just to show that he can. He is not fooling himself into thinking he is equally dangerous off both sides: he goes to his southpaw stance only when he’s trying to accomplish something and it is almost always:

1) Mid combination or flurry.

2) Retreating off the left kick.

3) In the course of cirlcing along the fence, usually in order to pitch a big overhand left as he runs.

The other notable exception might not be a true stance switch but is still a good point scorer for Allazov. He will throw a back leg kick in order to miss or have it parried, allowing him to step through into a momentary southpaw position and spin through on a backfist.

Just as Allazov’s left high kick can become a more devious weapon against southpaws, this right kick to spin also benefits from an open stance match up. This is because the right kick is always long and obvious—making the missed kick a delicious bait for a counter, and the spin takes the backfist into the open side—where the opponent’s rear hand is the only defensive obstruction and it is likely already being thrown back at him.

Before Yoshiki Takei abandoned his post as kickboxing’s best strawweight in favour of boxing, he was a wizard with this set up. A southpaw, Takei would throw a long left kick from too far away, often pursuing his opponent across the ring. They would immediately bite on the chance to punish him for his awful kick, and jump right onto the backfist or back kick.

Another sneaky stance switch to spin that Allazov employed came off the inside crescent kick. While this is largely considered a flashy nonsense kick, you will occasionally see some interesting applications and follow ups on it. Allazov slapped Sittichai with a couple from orthodox:

And then, when Sittichai was pursuing him in the third round, Allazov switched to southpaw, threw a hopeless lead leg inside crescent kick against Sittichai’s guard, but used it to spin into a backfist on the open side again as Sittichai opened up to counter.

Another major principle of Allazov’s offensive game is combining round strikes with rising ones. It is a pretty simple notion but the more you can threaten to sneak hooks or round kicks behind the opponent’s forearms, the more they will tend to hunch into their guard, and this makes the uppercut and knee far more successful. Add in some level changes to body punches and everything gets much trickier for the opponent.

Allazov’s work against Jo Nattawut in their short fight distilled his style down to the essence. Sneaky round kicks and southpaw counter punches caught Nattawut when he reached out of his stance, body shots and uppercuts hammered him when he tried to stay tight.

Sittichai

Allazov’s finest achievement came in his last fight: when he bested the longtime lightweight great, Sittichai in a three round fight. Sittichai’s losses are few and far between, and none of those opponents handled Sittichai as well as Allazov did.

An element of this match up that makes the win all the more impressive for Allazov is the fact that Allazov is an offensive fighter, at his best in rapid combinations. Sittichai is an infuriating defensive savant. His Glory reign was largely a well timed left kick or left knee pounding in every time his opponent dared to open up. This, combined with his beautiful distancing, led to a loss of confidence and a massive drop off in activity from many of his opponents.

Allazov was never able to work in the kind of buzzsaw flurries he demonstrated against Kehl or Nattawut or Sana, but he did his best to keep Sittichai on the defensive and score when he could. From the get go he was committing to a full cross check, trying to get his knee up even for high kicks.

After half a round of belt-and-braces checks, and throwing his own high kick to try and draw hard kicks onto his checks, Allazov began to get closer to Sittichai and take kicks on his arms. It was then that he began landing a right straight to the body off Sittichai’s round kick.

Sittichai—genius that he is—isn’t much for volume or combination work. Between punishing Sittichai’s his kicks, drawing him onto spinning backfists with deliberate misses, and a healthy amount of feinting, Allazov was able to turn a relatively low activity - high accuracy fighter into a low activity - low accuracy fighter who was getting outpointed.

That is not to say that the bout was a cakewalk for Allazov by any means. Allazov seemed to fade in the third round and Sittichai did a good job of trying to chase him down. Allazov also routinely displayed the same flaw he had in his ONE Championship debut against Enriko Kehl: a tendency to run his back onto the fence and try to fight his way off.

Against Kehl, Allazov spent the first half of the first round awkwardly getting roughed up along the fence, fought his way back into the bout, and then fell into the same pattern in round three. There were several occasions where Sittichai could have pushed his advantage along the boundary but was not able to.

This was not for lack of trying but rather down to Sittichai’s style and choices. Where Kehl would swing eight or nine punches and doggedly win the firefight he created along the fence, Sittichai would jump in with a good left hand or left kick, and then grab a hold of Allazov to land a knee.

It is tempting to write this off as Sittichai being a Nak Muay in kickboxing, but he’s been fighting under kickboxing rules for a decade at this point. While Glory rules changed over time, typically kickboxing organizations will allow you to land a good knee and then insist you break from a clinch. Sittichai was landing a good knee but he was making the choice to limit himself to just that the moment he grabbed a hold of Allazov.

This weekend, Chingiz Allazov has a lot on his plate. He meets the ONE Championship featherweight champion, Superbon Banchamek. Superbon is on one of the greatest runs in kickboxing history having bested Sittichai, Giorgio Petrosyan and Marat Grigorian back-to-back. Do not miss it.