Glover Teixeira vs Jiri Prochazka

Slacky’s Secret Post Fight Notes

From a technical perspective, Glover Teixeira versus Jiri Prochazka delivered exactly what was promised. Teixeira is a grindy old man with a few tricks honed to mastery. Prochazka is a confident, unapologetic mess of a fighter who will try anything but repeatedly leave himself wide open in the process. Teixeira is Warren Buffet with his “circles of competence” from which he never strays. Prochazka lives by the sword with an attitude of “What’s the worst that could happen? Oh, that.”

What couldn’t have been expected was the amount of punishment both men were able to absorb. Prochazka spent much of his time on the feet throwing uppercuts, up jabs, jumping knees and upward back elbows—all with the intention of punishing Teixeira on the level change. He couldn’t have anticipated Teixeira at several points in this fight eating flush knees to the face in order to seize the kicking leg and complete a takedown. And on the other end of it, the Glover Teixeira mount has been a death sentence over the years and Prochazka kept finding himself at worse checkpoints along the route: including both bellied down and in a locked arm triangle, before frantically squirming back to relative safety.  

All of that is to say that this was among the finest UFC title fights not only this year, but perhaps any year. If you have not seen it, go and find it. Now let us delve into the many tactical switch ups this fight offered.

The Book of Jiri

Prochazka began the match by trying to assert his authority on the feet. It was no secret that this was the realm where he had the best chance of getting the job done. His length alone would make him troublesome but over the last few years he has begun to get trickier. Prochazka’s waving teep made an apperance and it is a technique that is as easy to perform as it is obnoxious for the opponent to deal with. Simply transfer weight forward and wave the right hand as if to swing an overhand, and then throw the right front kick instead. Figure 1 shows Prochazka scoring this against Teixeira.

Fig. 1

I cannot recall if I have written extensively about Prochazka’s samurai fetish and admiration of Miyamoto Musashi, but there does seem to be something of Musashi in him. The value of Musashi’s writing is that among the mountains of work written on bushido by men from the samurai class living amid centuries of relative peace, Musashi was a legitimate duelist. His work is not concerned so much with techniques and counter techniques but with seizing the initiative and then relentlessly crushing an opponent. Find an opening and end the fight, not “if he does that, you do this.” The Book of Five Rings is concerned with timing and feeling, but not just flowery nonsense about vibes and ki like The Demon’s Sermon on Martial Arts.

Perhaps that book is the reason that Jiri Prochazka’s recent work has been built around feinting and playing with timing in order to enter with a good shot, and then pushing his advantage until he is forced to stop. His jab irritated Teixeira from both stances, but many of Prochazka’s better connections were more what you would call point-fighting type trickery.

Figure 2 shows Prochazka executing a technique we examined in A Filthy Casual’s Guide to Francisco Trinaldo. After exiting a clinch (a) he breaks his stance and begins walking around to his left. The fact that he is standing upright and cross stepping tells Teixeira that he is walking the ring and not fighting. Teixeira reacts by doing the same thing as anyone else: he leaves his stance and strides around the cage back into the centre. It is almost an unwritten agreement that if one man circles off out of stance the other says “okay, let’s reset.” That is until Prochazka strides into a left step, plants his foot (e) and drives off it to thrust in with a good left straight that catches Teixeira walking in.

Fig. 2

Another great example of Prochazka using footwork and timing to take the initiative and land a great blow can be seen in Figure 3. Retreating from a Teixeira flurry (a) he bounds back to an exaggerated distance (b). Even the worst striker has one means of control over an opponent: when he steps back, the opponent will almost certainly step forward. As Teixeira moves to close the distance, Prochazka drops into stance with his head over his lead leg (c). He sneaks his rear foot up underneath him (d), and thrusts into a left straight again (e). The combination of Prochazka’s length, drawing Texeira forward with an exaggerated retreat, and sneaking up the back foot all work together to give Prochazka that Machida-like illusion of unreal speed in closing.

Fig. 3

When Prochazka scored a good connection and stole the initiative he tended to switch into a swarming mode—hand fighting, head feinting and loading up big uppercuts, knees and back elbows. It was rarely Teixeira’s counterpunching that broke this pressure but rather his takedowns.

Teixeira’s own striking suffered the usual sameyness it always has. Prochazka always knew what was coming because he didn’t really have to do any work figuring it out or getting his reads. When Teixeira left his comfort zone to try something new, it tended to work decently. His right straight to the body made a couple of appearances as it did against Blachowicz and it looked to be annoying Prochazka.

In fact, when Teixeira stunned Prochazka in the final round it was a change up of both his technique and his rhythm. Forever throwing in pairs and leading with his overhand, Teixeira double jabbed Prochazka back out of an exchange before dropping the right hand on him. While we are always mentioning the double jab in terms of chewing up distance and controlling the cage, it also functions to lengthen a fighter’s combinations when many fighters like Prochazka are simply looking to pull their head back from what they assume will be the opponent’s single counter-swing.

Hard-Nosed Wrestling

Glover Teixeira’s successes were mostly with his bread and butter wrestling and his smothering top game. The Teixeira playbook has always been: single leg, pass from half guard to mount, arm triangle. His single leg looked fantastic in the early going as he hoisted Prochazka aloft twice in the opening round. Figure 4 shows a simple chain wrestling staple that Teixeira still uses at the highest levels.

Fig. 4

Having picked up Prochazka’s lead leg, Teixeira has it between his legs but wants to lift it higher (a). Teixeira steps back with his left foot and drops his right shoulder onto Jiri’s thigh—what is called “running the pipe”. This can be a finish in itself but most often just results in the opponent hopping back and catching himself. Teixeira uses the running of the pipe (b) to get Prochazka hopping and uses this chance to hoist Prochazka’s leg up into the crook of his right biceps / left armpit. Figure 5 shows the same chain from a different angle.

Fig. 5

Notice that after he gets Prochazka’s leg onto his right biceps (c), Teixeira hoists it all the way up onto his left shoulder, before running Prochazka down and kicking out his standing leg (d).

In this division full of front runners, both men’s tenacity and resilience must be commended and nowhere was that more obvious than when Teixeira failed on takedowns or was hurt and tried to turn into a takedown from his knees. In one instance in round four he hit a gorgeous peak out and ran around to Prochazka’s back (Figure 6).

Fig. 6

This works when the opponent is sprawled on top of a failed takedown (a) and has both arms over his opponents’ (that is to say: not a front headlock.) Teixeira built height with his hands on the mat (b) before popping his head out under Prochazka’s right armpit, throwing his right knee through, and flinging his left elbow back into Prochazka’s armpit to throw him back overhead (d). As Prochazka’s hands hit the mat, Teixeira runs around to his back (e).

On another occasion, Teixeira got stuck under Prochazka and the latter began to attack an anaconda choke (Figure 7). Remember that to attack a D’arce choke the fighter’s arm goes from armpit to neck—so he has to move to the side and take an angle. The anaconda choke can be attacked from in front of the opponent because the fighter’s choking arm goes from neck to armpit. Notice that Prochazka goes from a front headlock (a) to his left biceps against Teixeira’s neck, with his left hand locked to his right biceps behind Teixeira’s armpit (b).

Fig. 7

The risk of the anaconda choke is that going for it puts the attacking fighter closer to being sucker dragged. In (c) Teixeira has built height with his hands on the mat once again, and he performs the sucker drag by pulling his left leg back (d), turning his head and grabbing an arm drag grip with his left hand (e), before throwing his right hand high over Prochazka’s back as his head pops out (f).

Ground Control Counter Tactics

The most exciting facet of this bout—to this writer’s mind at least—was that both men had prepared well, specifically for each other on the ground.

Prochazka had been trapped under Dominick Reyes in a flattened half guard and only escaped by bridging as Reyes botched Teixeira’s favourite guard pass. Teixeira is a duffel bag full of concrete on top and is one of perhaps only two or three fighters in MMA who can still use the mount as the kill zone it was imagined to be when Brazilian Jiu Jitsu was first coming to the fore. For Prochazka, making the same mistakes against Teixeira could prove disastrous.

That nightmare scenario became a reality in the first round of the fight as Teixeira mounted Prochazka and began dropping elbows and punches. Prochazka tried to escape but soon committed completely to a double elbows cover up. This allowed Teixeira to smash his chest down and begin isolating the head and arm for the arm triangle choke. In a moment of inspired genius, Prochazka dug the point of his elbow into the fence to prevent Teixeira from driving his elbow up to his head on several attempts. I believe the unified rules specify “no grabbing with the fingers or toes,” and Mark Goddard was looking right at it, so mark it down as savvy.

Fig. 8

Later in the fight, Teixeira began isolating the head and arm out in the open mat. Prochazka turned into Teixeira as best he could to prevent the choke coming on, but was finally forced flat. It was then that he used a beautiful escape that he had clearly spent the last few months drilling religiously (Figure 9).

Forcing his own wrist down as if to kimura himself, Prochazka created a little breathing room and swung his legs to take him into a roll over his shoulder. To pull this off against tired grapplers who are worse than you is tough, to perform it against an ADCC veteran whose entire game is built around his killer arm trial is genuinely astounding.

Fig. 9

Glover Teixeira himself clearly prepared for an explosive, scrambly opponent. Throughout the fight he repeatedly went to a form of side control that you will sometimes see called “wrestler side control.” You might have seen Josh Barnett or the late, great Billy Robinson use this form of side control and it somewhat resembles the classic pro wrestling “hook the leg” pin.

Fig. 10

The main reason you might want to go to this is to prevent the opponent turning in. Particularly if they already have an underhook on your armpit, keeping the crook of the elbow inside their thigh can prevent them completing the turn to their knees or at least slow them down and give you time to begin moving to the front headlock. The trade off is that if you are trying to hold down a flexible, triangly opponent he might try to shove your head between his legs and get an upside down triangle. Through much of the fight this position proved a nuisance for Prochazka, and Teixeira used it to transition to north south and threaten kimuras.

Another transition that linked to this north south kimura hunting could be seen in the first round (and in Figure 11). Prochazka has turned his back and begun to build up along the fence, while Teixeira is threatening a choke (a). Prochazka fights the right hand off his neck but Teixeira controls Prochazka’s left wrist (b). Teixeira straighten his legs and stands over Prochazka (c), then pulls Prochazka back through the space between his legs (d), and drops into the teabag kimura position that crowds the world over can laugh at (e).

Fig. 11

The trick that won Prochazka the fight was the classic bridge-off-the-fence. It has been with us since the earliest UFC events, but it remains exceptionally powerful. As Texeira assumed mount in round five, Prochazka used his hand and leg to turn from head towards the fence (ideal for wall walking from a guard) to feet against the fence.

An explosive bridge is a pain in the arse when mounted on someone, but it takes energy and through grapevines, shifting of the hips, and posting of the hands the bridge can be killed. Bridging off the fence allows the bottom fighter to raise his hips high over the opponent, effectively performing a back roll underneath them.

The answer to it? Right now I’m not aware of any techniques once the opponent has his feet on the fence that are going to stop him generating a very high bridge that will throw the top man off. But he has to walk his feet pretty high up the cage to get that full bridge, and his butt has to be right next to the cage wall for that to happen. As with anything, if you don’t have a direct answer to the technique, good ringcraft and awareness is an ounce of prevention. Worst comes to worst, it might be time to dismount until you can pull the guy away from the fence.

But to say this trick won Jiri Prochazka the fight is an oversimplification. What won Jiri this fight was lasting longer and finding his moments until he got one step ahead of Glover just long enough to score the finish. It could have happened the other way around at numerous points in this fight. Both men were fighting with remarkable discipline and awareness despite being obviously exhausted for at least the last two rounds. That is the truly exceptional part of this fight: it went back and forth and both men demonstrated not only heart and patience in bad situations, but stamina and technique—all nuggets of pure gold in the river of slop that is most MMA above middleweight.

If you’re in the mood for more martial arts technique analysis, check out last week’s article on Combat Jiu Jitsu and Grappling in MMA, my Dustin Poirier Advanced Striking study, and Anderson Silva for good measure. Or keep an eye on the Patreon for the odd Sunday when I feel like writing a UFC post fight breakdown.