Kattar vs Emmett

Despite the quality of the combatants, Calvin Kattar versus Josh Emmett offered few surprises. The read on this fight was that Kattar intended to jab, and Emmett would try to swing across the top and land more telling blows even if he could not land as often. The battle between Kattar’s jab and Emmett’s closing was established in the early moments of the fight and remained in the balance until the bout’s close, with neither man really seizing control of the fight.

As always Kattar’s rhythm manipulation was on full display. From the early going he advertised shoulder feints for Emmett to swing at and would rock back out of range after every suggestive shrug. Late in round one Kattar demonstrated that even if both fighters are aware that the feints are feints, they can still be capitalized upon. With Emmett holding himself back and deliberately disregarding the shoulder feints, Kattar used the shoulder feint to get himself a little closer, and threw a straight right that bounced off Emmett’s dome. This was the exact same shoulder fake to straight right that Alexander Volkov used against the reaching Jaizinho Rozenstruik a couple of weeks back.

Another subtle look that fighters should be stealing from Kattar is what I am now terming his “Columbo Jab.” Kattar sways onto his lead foot to shoulder feint, then sways back onto his rear foot and just as he seems to be leaving striking range he pops out the jab as if to say “Just one more thing…”

Kattar also found some success shooting his cuff with an upjab off his one-two, but for the most part was unwilling to push his advantages off the successful jabbing. And while his jab is certainly a formidable weapon in its own right, his refusal to build off it only cemented the narrative of Kattar’s jab versus Emmett’s meaningful punches. This combined with Kattar’s tendency to cover up and retreat on a line meant that Emmett could flurry and force Kattar to run backwards into the fence. Emmett for his part did a good job of putting in a more active performance than usual, but it was still a little surprising that his corner were telling him that he won every round and that he picked up the decision. 

Kelley vs Yanez

Adrian Yanez stole the show once again as he systematically took apart Tony Kelley in under four minutes. Yanez is often likened to Jorge Masvidal in appearance, and there are certainly some similarities in their upright boxing style, but Yanez is so far managing to avoid the part of Masvidal’s career that was spent winning and losing close, technical decisions on undercards. In this victory however he brought to mind Masvidal’s victory over Donald Cerrone as he made excellent use of a cross parry against Tony Kelley’s kicks.

A paradox of mixed martial arts is that for a long time there was a great fear of kicking because a single caught kick could result in a round on the mat. Yet when fighters begin kicking confidently above the waist—the forearm and head especially—they are almost always able to do it for free. The technique of finishing a single leg or double leg takedown is well practiced in mixed martial arts and stepping in on a low kick will put you in position to do this, but using the correct technique to catch and parry kicks in order to capitalize has still not been mastered in MMA.

This seems like a great time to wax poetic about the classical Muay Thai parry. Against a kick above the waist, the fighter takes the kick on the nearest forearm, and brings the other hand across to palm the kick down and across in front of him. Yanez can be seen doing this against Kelley in Figure x.

Yanez failed on his first five or six attempts at parrying Kelley’s kicks but the classical parry is a great belt and braces technique. There isn’t a whole lot that can go wrong from the opponent’s leg slipping free provided the parrying fighter doesn’t rush in ahead of himself. Furthermore the act of reaching across to perform the parry puts the fighter in the habit of taking a round kick on both arms instead of one.