Makhachev vs JDM Notes
This is not the way most expected Islam Makhachev to make his way to welterweight. When Makhachev was lining up his lightweight title shot, Kamaru Usman was the long reigning king of the welters. By the time Makhachev was champ it seemed like Leon Edwards was going to have a lengthy term of his own, and then everything began moving very quickly. Makhachev’s friend and sometimes training partner, Belal Muhammad beat Edwards.
That seemed to take the possibility of Makhachev at welterweight off the table again, and Muhammad had the unenviable task of defending his belt against the welterweight boogeyman, Shavkat Rakhmonov. That fight fell through and Jack Della Maddalena stepped in to take Rakhmonov’s spot. The young Australian, who had been on the Australian regionals just four years earlier, fought a blinder and took the belt. Now Makhachev’s path up to welterweight has been cleared, and the unlikely Jack Della Maddalena stands between Makhachev and what would be his greatest accomplishment: a second UFC title.
The Double Collar Tie and Transitional Offence
The double collar tie has been an integral part of Makhachev’s game since his first fights in the UFC. He uses it to strike, to acquire stronger clinches, and to break from clinches on his own terms. As one of the closest effective striking positions, but one of the longer range clinches, the double collar tie serves as a bridge between areas of the fight. So of course a fighter like Makhachev, who has great pride in both his boxing and wrestling, can benefit enormously from frequently reaching out for his opponent’s head during a punching exchange.
As a striking position the double collar tie affords a few opportunities but the gun on the wall, that both attacker and defender are staring at throughout, is the threat of the knee. Jose Delgado is a hot prospect in the UFC who quickly starched Hyder Amil with a collar tie knee off a boxing combination, and almost did the same to Nathaniel Wood at several points. Here the double collar tie punishes the opponent for breaking his own posture in using his head movement.
In this way the double collar tie either directly punishes head movement, or encourages the opponent to abandon it. In his first fight with Alexander Volkanovski, Islam Makhachev found some success with the double collar tie, so in the second fight he was utterly ruthless with it to punish Volkanovski’s level changes.
This is where height comes in. The double collar tie is a lot easier to abuse if you have a couple of inches of height on your opponent. That is the reason that Makhachev employed it so heavily in the second Volkanovski fight, and it is the reason that gangly fighters like Jon Jones and Mansour Barnaoui find themselves drawn to it. With Islam Makhachev making the move from being a big lightweight to a not-so-big welterweight, you might be right to wonder if he can employ the double collar tie as effectively against bigger, stronger men.
The opponent’s answer is always to try to maintain posture. In many instances this gives Makhachev the chance to pull them into closer, chest-to-chest tie ups, or even to level change on a shot. Here against Dustin Poirier he uses the double collar tie to pull himself into double underhooks and begin wrestling Poirier.
Here is another example against Thiago Moises against the cage.
The Jab and Dip
Breaking Inertia
If today’s theme is transitional work, it is worth lingering on the grappling game of Jack Della Madelena. When he first turned up on the Contender Series against Ange Loose, something about his grappling stood out. To boil it down to a word it might be called “scrambly.” Even with the knowledge that Della Maddalena only recently began working with Craig Jones, there was something Jonesian about his movement.
Perhaps it is because defensive grappling is so often marked by a cautiousness. The fear of exposing himself often leaves a fighter static on the bottom. I ranted about Dricus Du Plessis hugging Khamzat Chimaev from the bottom because that is the common knowledge: you keep your elbows in, get your frames in front of the opponent, and then begin working.
But that is just the traditional outlook. If you get your frames in and keep your elbows tight, but then cannot generate movement, you are simply stuck underneath the guy just as you would be if you hugged him.
Craig Jones has some interesting ideas on being underneath traditional pins and has famously said that top side control is not nearly as useful because it is harder to hold the opponent flat. One crucial facet that Jones and Della Maddalena share—and have done since before they began working together—is an emphasis on turning to the knees and an almost refusal to re-guard.
One famous Craig Jones escape, which I do not believe has a name, is the pendulum he used against Meregali in the gi. Gripping inside his own hamstring across the back. When Luke Rockhold gassed out horribly underneath Paulo Costa, this grip over the back prevented Costa from advancing position or even creating space to drop short elbows.
From this stalled out position, Jones can pendulum his legs to off balance the opponent. This is most often enough to get their hand and feed it to his legs, then perform a scissoring of the legs to turn their arm into a kimura-type rotation, and build up to turn them over. Against Meregali he performed the pendulum with his legs and got straight up to an elbow to turn Meregali over.
This is the balance that Jones strikes between holding (or damage limitation), and then creating movement on his own terms.
Returning to Della Maddalena, he has not used that particular escape but the way that he creates movement from the bottom is remarkable. The great old red belt, Pedro Sauer likes to say that escaping bottom pins is about “breaking the inertia.” That is to say, creating some movement and not simply trying to do the safe, well known, but ultimately ineffective escape techniques. In a sport where time on the bottom is scored just the same as if you were being punched and not punching back, breaking the inertia and making something—anything—happen is vital.
This is why you will see Della Maddalena address anything that will impede his roll to his knees. He is a diligent proponent of the “octopus guard”, even when it is not truly a guard: coming from bottom side control. This is the standard sequence that everyone is familiar with, but which still works well at the highest levels of the game.
Della Maddalena gets both hands on the crossfacing arm and pushes it away (b). This frees his head and creates a space underneath Hafez’s elbow, allowing him to turn in underneath it (c). Ideally he would get his elbow high on Hafez’s back, but Hafez brings his crossface back in front of Della Maddalena (d). But he has dropped his weight back to do so and cannot prevent Della Maddalena getting up to his elbow and heisting his bottom leg out. Della Maddalena ends up in a strange all-four position where he is still sitting on Hafez’s calf (e) but simply quad-pods up, arse first, and stands into a front headlock on the feet (f).
The Double Collar Tie
- A Counter to the Level Change
- A counter to wall work
- To hold and hit
- To acquire underhooks
- Vulnerability to body shots
Makhachev’s striking
- Counter Left Hand
- The high kick
- Falling forward into the right hook
- Shots