Cub Swanson - Tactical Madness

Cub Swanson holds the distinction of being one of the few fighters I would travel or stay up late to see. He never quite became the best guy in the world, but his style is something all his own. Whether it is an overthrown punch that carries him, staggering into an off-rhythm kick off the same side, or a massive headlock throw that lands him in a precarious position that he proceeds to simply scramble through—Swanson’s game is about deliberate overcommitments, and these often pay off in dramatic ways.

But men who want to put on the Fight of the Night are a dime a dozen. Part of Cub Swanson’s appeal is that he is so difficult to bog down or stall out. Today I want to shine a light on the way that Cub Swanson has gotten up off his arse, time after time, through twenty years and forty-three professional fights.   

The Cub Swanson Get Up

To initiate his get up, Swanson performs three actions. Firstly, he uses his left triceps to push the opponent’s head off the middle of his chest and create space to turn onto his side and sit up (a). Secondly, he posts up on his right elbow or hand to get his head above his opponent’s. Thirdly, he inserts his left foot as a butterfly hook (b).

Fig. 1 shows the next step against an opponent who simply wants to say on top of Swanson, Swanson wraps the head and begins sitting to his left hip to apply a guillotine.

Fig. 1

Put the idea of “playing guard” out of your mind. Swanson is not hoping to trick his man into a triangle or omoplata, and in spite of this get up being built around the guillotine he has only two guillotine submissions in his career. What Swanson is doing is playing the dynamics of the position. He would like to stand up so he would like the opponent to disengage him. If the opponent tries to push him flat, he can punish them. One side is largely protected against a guard pass, and the side that seems less protected has a trap attached that makes it more of a knowledge check.

So what is with the single butterfly hook? A single butterfly hook and the other leg outside the opponent’s body is occasionally called a “broken butterfly guard” because for a lot of old school, from-the-knees passers this is where the fun starts. If you grapple, there is without a doubt an old brown belt in your gym who will shuffle up to your guard on his knees, put one knee between your feet, and immediately start driving his way over the single butterfly hook you have left. At the highest levels, Pablo Popovitch called the single butterfly hook his “lockdown” and staged a lot of his offence from there.

For Swanson, the single butterfly hook is important because it allows him to place his foot on the mat in front of the opponent, which is crucial to the get-up. The entire problem with closed guard—and why so many wrestlers stall from there—is that the bottom man’s legs are shelved over his opponent’s thighs and his feet are elevated. If you are planning on getting up, getting your feet in front of the opponent—one way or another—is a priority.

A second benefit of pummelling one leg to butterfly links back to the submission threat. Once Swanson wraps the head he can improve his chances by kicking the butterfly hook foot through his opponent’s legs and put himself into a half guard. Being on his side makes it easier to crumple the opponent’s posture up like a ball of paper—one mechanic for finishing the guillotine—but also places the opponent further away from the side they would hope to pass to in order to relieve the guillotine.

Fig. 2 shows the “knowledge check” part of this position. After three or four get ups, Swanson’s opponent attempted to step over the butterfly hook (b) and pass the guard on what seemed like the path of least resistance. Swanson wrapped his head and fell to the side to lock up the half guard (d).

Fig. 2

This half guard guillotine position is one you will see men like Luke Rockhold and Gordon Ryan build from. One of the benefits is that the top leg—Swanson’s right leg—can now get involved. Inserting a butterfly hook and sweeping is a legitimate option. Swanson tends to use either the ball of the foot on the hip or thigh, or a butterfly hook, to push away and scramble up as in Figure 3 and Figure 4.

Fig. 3

Fig. 4

I have heaped praise on Ricardo Lamas’ guard play in the past for the same reasons I am praising Cub Swansons. It is not a hub from which to throw a thousand different submission attempts, it is a position which can be easily achieved, and which offers a very simple threat of a submission, a stand up, and a sweep.

Lamas’ opponents tend to react to his guillotine and get up threat by trying to flatten him, and then get elevated by his reverse knee shield. Swanson’s opponents, desiring not to be pulled into the half guard with the guillotine, tend to pull away. When they do this Swanson can hitch a ride with them up to standing. 

Fig. 5

The sweep threat is not as significant from Swanson’s sit up position, but the way that he positions his right foot in the opponent’s hip gives him more of a means to force the stand up, kicking the opponent away as he plants his right hand and butterfly foot for the stand up. It also gives him an option for if the opponent tries to tripod over him: he can simply launch them back and stand up from there.

Fig. 6

While that opponent tried to tripod over Swanson, Swansons right foot can be brought to lever against conservative opponents just as well. Dustin Poirier tried to hunker down after a takedown late in the round and Swanson used his right foot on the hip to kick out and force the get up. His left leg trailed and was picked up as a single but this gave Swanson the chance to try an Yves Edwards hopping knee.

Fig. 7

One of the key considerations in Swanson’s get up is the goldilocks positioning of his posting hand, which is almost always his right hand. His post must be close enough to him to create height to threaten both the guillotine and the stand up, but he must also be cautious of the opponent chopping that hand out into a Dagestani handcuff type wrist ride. In Figure 8, Ricardo Lamas is attempting to do just that, but Swanson’s base is wide enough that his hand is out of reach (b).

Fig. 8

Lamas attempts to sprawl off Swanson’s butterfly hook and put himself back in closed guard, but he brings his right arm and shoulder back to do so (c), and Swanson wraps the neck (d), sits to his side, and eventually locks a closed guard while attacking a formidable guillotine attempt.  

There are also plenty of examples of Swanson getting to his hand, inserting the butterfly hook, and the opponent simply standing up away from him. This is not a guard to hold opponents though: the point is to get up and the opponent is offered the opportunity to back out right up to the point a guillotine is sinched and sometimes even afterwards.

Our theme today is Swanson’s taking of risks to force action and so it is important to note that there is risk involved in his favourite get up. The position lives and dies by his right foot position. When he posts it on the opponent’s hip he can kick them away or keep them in place. If they manage to hop it—as in Figure 9—he has been smashed into a flattened half guard.

Fig. 9

This brings us to Swanson’s other tactics on the bottom. These tend to be a bit more reckless than his slick get up / guillotine double attack. Something that often gets Swanson into trouble and looks a lot like his get up is his empty half guard. We discussed this a while ago when Rani Yahya used it to survive on the bottom after gassing out horribly against Enrique Barzola. The empty half is draping your inside leg over the top of the opponent’s trailing leg from the bottom of side control.

Fig. 10

Empty half is a crafty position. It can be used to stealthily insert the other leg as a butterfly hook and fight your way back to guard, or it can be used for some big sweep attempts as Dricus Du Plessis did against Derek Brunson and Luke Stewart did against Andre Galvao. Yahya in fact used it to turn to the turtle as Barzola turned his hips to free his knee.

Swanson tends to get the empty half while turning back into the opponent from the turtle. He successfully used it to put Chad Mendes back in his guard, but Figure 11 shows how this tactic can get him into trouble.

Turtled against Ricardo Lamas (a), Swanson turns back into him (b) and lands with his left foot grapevined over Lamas’ left leg (c). Swanson drapes his left arm over the back of Lamas’ head, as he does in his regular guillotine get up sequence.

Fig. 11

In Swanson’s guillotine get up sequence and in Ricardo Lamas’ reverse knee shield, both men look close to being arm triangled even when things are going well. But Swanson’s butterfly hook, and Lamas’ knee shield, prevent the opponent from closing the space. From the empty half guard, there is nothing stopping Lamas from grabbing around Swanson’s neck (d) and diving forward to finish the arm triangle (e).

Lamas is a notable top player, but this same sequence played out against Max Holloway and almost got Swanson arm triangled once again.

Swanson makes similar tactical overcommitments from other positions. When his opponent is close to passing he will hold onto a switch until he either escapes or the opponent climbs on his back. If he ends up in the bottom of half guard, he will time a big bridge to either explode back to his get up like a hero, or wind up belly down getting strangled by Renato Moicano. And the sit up escape from the bottom of mount that he used against Moicano is something I’ve seen work maybe two other times in all of MMA and grappling.

Yet that is Swanson. He does not stand for incremental improvements of position to start working back towards neutral over the course of a minute or two. The moment the opponent gets his feet off the mat, he wants to get back to work as soon as possible. He takes risks to do it, but the successes have so drastically outnumbered the failures that I am certain Swanson believes his style has been worth it.

Cub Swanson fights Billy Quarantillo this weekend and while he has made no promise that this will be his last fight, he has been talking about retirement in recent years and competing at forty-one in the featherweight class is already absurd. We may not have many new Cub Swanson fights left, but the back catalog will forever be full of bangers.