Mikey Musumeci, Shinya Aoki and the Aoki Lock

We are quite a few years removed from the golden days of the Danaher Death Squad and Craig Jones’ first ADCC run. Thinking back to that exciting time in no gi grappling, it looked so effortless that it seemed as though opponents just fell into the saddle and exposed the inside heel hook on their own. Marcelo Garcia has said much the same thing about his famous single leg x guard: when he began using it his opponents often fell over with no real sweeping technique from him, yet within a year or two he was having to fight his way forward from there like any other position.

Over the last five years the leg lock game has continued to develop in surprising ways and Mikey Musumeci’s victory over Shinya Aoki—albeit an obvious set up—gives us a chance to talk about three key innovations in the leg locking game.

The Aoki Lock

The fact that everyone is terrified of being heel hooked in any leg entanglement has led to a resurgence of the straight footlock in no gi grappling. Partly because it is unexpected and partly because grapplers will unthinkingly make a ballerina toe-point and turn their heel in to hinder the heel hook, making them much more agreeable to being footlocked. But the straight footlock has also experienced something of a comeback in the gi due to experimentation with the Aoki lock. The trick of it is to get the opponent’s heel out of your armpit and place it on your pectoral. It is just as the opponent’s foot is about to slip free that he is in danger of the most damage.

Fig. 1

After rambling about the Aoki lock and Musumeci’s love of it for some time on the pre-fight podcast, I returned to study Aoki’s bouts. Aoki’s only MMA victory by straight ankle lock came against Tatsuya Kawajiri and revisiting the fight footage revealed that Kawajiri’s heel does in fact slip in front of Aoki’s body.

Fig. 2

On the broadcast, Kawajiri’s cornerman (fellow PRIDE and DREAM lightweight, Mitsuhiro Ishida) can be heard shouting “you’re almost out” as Kawajiri’s heel slips clear of Aoki’s armpit. That is seconds before that heel slip allows Aoki to destroy Kawajiri’s ankle.

Fig. 3

Another example of Aoki demonstrating the technique exists though. In the Rickson Gracie Budo Challege, he submitted an opponent in the gi using the Aoki lock and demonstrated an interesting wrinkle of the position that you will see other grapplers play with. Aoki used the outside leg not to hook over the opponent’s thigh and push on the hip, but to hook below their knee and push away, attempting to focus his whole body on extending the one joint.

Fig. 4

The Aoki lock in the gi has caused some controversy though. Getting the heel in front of the body can cause a more powerful lever on the straight achilles lock, but with the same grip and a slightly different movement—bringing the opponent’s heel towards the centreline—a rotational lock can be applied, attacking the knee joint in the same way as an inside heel hook. Things reached a boiling point when the crafty Victor Hugo caught Muhammad Aly in a very obvious rotational variation to win a tournament in 2021.

This led to much handwringing in the gi jiu jitsu community and has still not really been solved. It is similar to the inconsistent rules regarding toe holds: outside heel hooks are illegal but toe holds are allowed, often applying the same rotational pressure on the knee joint.

Butterfly Ashi

Another development that goes hand in hand with the Aoki lock is the butterfly ashi. This is where the outside leg is used as a butterfly hook under or inside the opponent’s thigh or knee, rather than stepping on the hip from outside.  

Figure 5 shows Lachlan Giles demonstrating a traditional footlock. His inside leg (yellow) is kept short, with his knee in between his opponent’s legs. This keeps his opponent from sitting up into him, moving towards top position or Giles’ back. His outside leg (red) is longer, hooking over the top of his opponent’s thigh and pressing into the hip.

Fig. 5

Figure 6 is a still pulled from Mr. Heel Hook’s youtube channel, demonstrating a butterfly ashi. Notice that his outside leg (red) is short, tucked into a butterfly hook underneath his opponent’s hamstring. His inside leg is long. In this instance he is using the back of his knee underneath his opponent’s knee to create that sort of shortened footlock Aoki did from a regular footlock leg position above.

Fig. 6

More commonly the inside foot is posted on the opponent’s hip to add power to the footlock, but it can also be left dangling outside the opponent’s body. Part of the appeal of butterfly ashi is that it doesn’t offer the opponent a lot of good counter attacks on your own feet.

Mikey Musumeci is a master of butterfly ashi having helped to popularize it in the gi, and no gi specialists like Mateusz Szczeciński have followed in his footsteps. One of the great strengths of butterfly ashi is that it facilitates rolling belly down much more easily than a traditional footlock position. But returning to the Aoki lock, the butterfly ashi allows Mikey to post both feet on the opponent (one inside the thigh and one on the hip), and push away to pop the opponent’s heel out from his armpit and onto his chest. Figure 7 shows this short transition: notice that the lock becomes far more legitimate as soon as Musumeci’s opponent’s heel slips in front of his body.

Fig. 7

K Guard

A third evolution of the leg locking “meta” that was showcased in this match was the K guard. Most famously used by Lachlan Giles in his ADCC 2019 Absolute division run. Below is a still of him in K guard, he has a ton of content available on the position—be it on Youtube, BJJ Fanatics or his own Submeta service—and is very much the world’s foremost expert on it.

Fig. 8

The traditional Danaher Death Squad focus was entirely on inside position: your goal is to get between the opponent’s legs so that they are exposed for leg attacks and you are not. K guard places the opponent between your legs and then you start to invert around him.

Mikey Musumeci has been using the K guard to enter legs since his first match after transitioning to no gi in 2021. Against Aoki he immediately pulled guard and, with Aoki between his legs, he went side to side trying to get a good underhook on one of Aoki’s legs. Figure 9 shows how he eventually got it.

Aoki frames on Mikey’s chest and neck with his right hand to prevent Mikey underhooking Aoki’s right leg (a). Mikey sits up onto his left elbow forcing Aoki’s arm down his chest towards the mat (b). Mikey dives back in underneath Aoki and, with Aoki’s frame out of position, gets to the leg (c). Mikey pulls himself in and points his left knee to the ground, and Aoki’s knee comes off the floor (d).

Fig. 9

With K guard achieved, Mikey uses his right leg to press Aoki away, exposing the underhooked leg (e). As Aoki falls to a hip (f), Mikey swings his right leg over (g).

Fig. 10

Aoki sitting to the mat hinders Musumeci spinning underneath him into 50/50 or to a backside 50/50. Figure 11 shows the changeover that Mikey makes to begin attacking the leg now that he cannot invert around it.

From underhooking Aoki’s left leg (a), Musumeci rolls forward onto his forehead, holding the leg with his right hand while he swings his left arm over (b) to catch the leg under his armpit (c). Notice that his legs are now in a butterfly ashi.

Fig. 11

The finishing sequence was something quite brilliant. I have included it in its entirety below.

Fig. 12

Musumeci began attacking the outside heel hook—difficult to finish from butterfly ashi but enough to get Aoki trying to retract his foot. As Musumeci turned back to face Aoki he inserted his inside leg as a butterfly hook behind the knee and used his his hooks to help pop the heel inside his chest as he sat up. Figure 13 shows the moment Musumeci slipped Aoki’s heel onto his chest and applied the ankle breaking pressure.

Fig. 13

The growing sophistication of the leg lock game often leads to the assertion that grappling is “disappearing up its own arse”, with the expectation that it will not hold up in MMA. But the weekend’s ONE card offered an equally impressive leg lock in an MMA context. Thanh Le, looked every bit a Ryan Hall student as he Viktor rolled on a leg from bottom position, and rolled through Ilya Freymanov’s legs to expose the backside 50/50 heel hook twice before getting the finish.