The examples used in this article are taken from fights that Bellator has made freely available online. You can check out all of Archuleta’s Bellator fights at his Bellator profile or on Bellator’s youtube channel and I highly recommend that you do.
The golden rule of Bellator is that when Mike Goldberg isn’t repeating cliches that make little to no sense in the context of the action he is commentating, he is busy dropping names. Normally this is simply a list of training partners, or coaches, or men from vaguely the same place as one of the fighters he is actually being paid outrageously well to talk about. But when Juan Archuleta is on screen and Goldie is rambling off a list of The Spaniard’s training partners you cannot help but notice their influence. Trained by Joe Stevenson, of the original season of The Ultimate Fighter, Archuleta keeps Stevenson in his corner but also trains extensively Cub Swanson, Aaron Pico, and with bantamweight great, T.J. Dillashaw and Dillashaw’s long-time mentor, Duane Ludwig.
The trappings of Ludwig are there to see—the shifting steps to set up high kicks and body kicks being the most obvious. And the influence of Dillashaw is readily apparent in the stance switching, the backwards jogging, and the level changes that Archuleta uses throughout his bouts. At times it skirts the line of being a poor T.J. Dillashaw impression as Archuleta even affects some of Dillashaw’s less useful habits (such as the shift to quadruple southpaw jab that got him kicked in the head by Ricky Bandejas). But when it comes together well, Archuleta is able to use Dillashaw and Ludwig’s looks to lean on his wrestling far more heavily than Dillashaw does, without the headache of simply trying to jab-and-shoot.
The Treigning Lab and the Bang / Dillashaw connection have given Archuleta the illusion of depth. Like Josh Emmett, most of Archuleta’s dancing and stance switching serves only to distract from the very basic striking techniques he finds a home for. Take a look at Archuleta’s knockout of Robbie Peralta and you will see the direction changes and lateral movement draw Peralta forward, a level change and thigh slap have him tripping over himself to defend a takedown attempt, and the overhand booms in across the top to ruin Peralta’s chance of pulling the upset. It isn’t high level technical striking but all the window dressing serves well to distract from Archuelta’s limitations.
On offence most of The Spaniard’s game is charging in on straight lines, going up-down-up-down, and attempting to fluster opponents. When it works it looks effortless: the very first charge that Archuleta made against Ricky Bandejas completely bamboozled Bandejas as Archuleta hit an effortless Edgar-style knee tap and transitioned straight to a back bodylock. But as the fight progressed Bandejas quickly got a read on Archuleta’s intentions and—by refusing to chase Archuleta and run onto easy overhands—he made Archuleta’s life very hard from then on. While looking much like a malnourished Rory MacDonald, Bandejas adopted MacDonald’s strategy from the Tyron Woodley bout: marching Archuleta towards the fence and droopping away, and countering as Archuleta charged forward on a straight line.
Yet once he hits the fence Archuleta’s chain wrestling has been a joy to watch through his Bellator run. Often linking two or three takedown attempts together, Archuleta also finds good success with his strikes in between. He will even post his head and bang the body from time to time—something which should be the staple method of striking for good wrestlers but which we are still happy to see even once or twice a fight.
Flying versus Hopping
One peculiar Archuleta quirk is his repeated use of a vertical jumping knee out of the clinch along the fence. Often from a collar tie or an underhook, Archuleta will quickly disengage and then jump straight upward behind a knee.
From Juan Archuleta vs William Joplin, March 2018.
The fence is the usual place for a jumping knee but in the world of mixed martial arts the jumping knee strike is almost always more accurately described as a flying knee—that is to say it is performed with a run up, carrying the fighter across the cage. Archuleta’s knees are much more like those you will see used from close range body punching exchanges in Kyokushin style karate competition. Basically a standing knee where the jump only serves to bring the knee strike a few inches higher, we might well call it a “hopping knee” to distinguish it.
These examples of Norichaka Tsukimoto using the hopping knee demonstrate its utility in knockdown karate. The rules prohibit punching of the head so close range moments turn into heated body punching exchanges. By stepping to the side and bringing the knee strike up next to himself—far out to the side—and hopping with it, Tsukimoto could quite often find the point of his opponent’s chin.
To see that idea adapted to a kickboxing environment (where fighters might actually protect their faces), study Masaaki Noiri. Noiri has mastered a dozen different angles and curves on his knees and is about as adept a knee striker outside of the clinch as you will see. In order to land a curving knee to the side of his opponent’s head, Noiri will jump so that his hips are high enough to facilitate the knee arcing in on a curve almost parallel to the ground. Noiri will aim to bring his knee through at the tape of his opponent’s wrist, often parrying or trapping the opponent’s hand as he begins his jump.
The common theme you will notice among those jumping knees is that they take place in sports where takedowns don’t exist. This is one of the reasons you will see that cannonball-style flying knee far more than these upward jumping knees performed from directly in front of the opponent in MMA. Archuleta helps prevent the opponent bundling him over by driving them into the fence first and hiding his jumping knees between his grinding cage work. Archuleta has also hit on the same idea as Yoel Romero—jumping knees and takedown attempts are the extremes of the level changing game and, while it might be labour intensive, a jumping knee can immediately become a level change onto the opponent’s hips when you come down, especially if they are against the cage and out of their stance.
From Juan Archuleta vs Robbie Peralta, June 2018.
The Task At Hand
This weekend Juan Archuleta finds himself in a title fight against Bellator featherweight and lightweight champion, Patricio ‘Pitbull’ Freire. Freire has as many fights with Bellator as anyone and is truly one of their home grown talents. He began his Bellator run as a squared up banger but over recent years he has worked with Brazilian karateka, Mano Santana. Since then his stance has gotten longer and he has found better use for movement, feints, and occasional kicking in his fights to the point that many are willing to lump him in with that group of MMA’s “karate-boxers”.
Freire’s wrestling has been molded by Eric Albarracin—a man who was largely unknown in the wider MMA world but who now trains two “double champs” in Freire and Henry Cejudo. The smaller Pitbull may not have a notable wrestling pedigree but he can stop a takedown and always has the threat of a wicked guillotine.
The real problem that Archuleta has in this bout is that if Freire can maintain distance and use feints to draw Archuleta out, it could get very ugly for The Spaniard over the scheduled twenty five minutes. Freire has timed and starched many more competent strikers as they reach for him, most recently having timed a cross counter over the top of Michael Chandler’s jab that won him the Bellator lightweight title in a minute flat.
But more than cracking fighters as they close, Freire’s best weapon even before his karate lessons was always his left hook. A quality left hook is the be all and end all of close quarters punching exchanges. Archuleta gets caught way too often with his hands down and his chin up in the middle of working out what he’s going to do next, mid flurry—and that could spell disaster against Freire.
Archuleta is also far less comfortable shooting towards the centre of the cage, as opposed to flurrying towards the opposite fence and usually completely a takedown off it. When Archuleta has his own back to the fence he will often wait for his opponent to step in and then duck onto their hips and sweep around to turn them onto the fence that he had originally been standing against. This only really works, however, if they commit their weight to an attack. When Bandejas hung back and countered, Archuleta had a great deal of trouble.
Elements of Juan Archuleta’s game seem like a great test for Patricio Freire who is far from infallible. If Archuleta can get on him early and stick to him with his chain wrestling and fence work, then strike from the position of being a round up, he could very well dethrone Pitbull. However the defensive shortcomings and offensive over commitments really are a concern against a counter puncher of Freire’s severity.