Talbott vs Lima

Payton Talbott’s performance against Felipe Lima was so impressive that fans performed their second U-turn on his potential in six months. Talbott’s striking and reactions were as impressive as ever, but against a strong grappler he found himself in almost no trouble throughout the match.

Lima did decently striking with Talbott in the early going, but lost confidence as the fight progressed. He was even heard remarking to his corner, who were keen for him to strike more, that Talbott’s power was bothering him. By the third round, Lima was relying almost entirely on a Hail Mary spinning backfist, which he telegraphed by cross checking Talbott’s lead hand before he span.

Fig. 1

Talbott had success with his usual striking looks. His peculiar style seems to hinge around his terrific ability to see and slip shots even when in bad position to do so. The signature tactic of Talbott’s style is to obviously overextend on a jab or right straight—leaning forward at the waist—and then somehow still pull up just short of the opponent and let their counter fall short.

Fig. 2

Anyone scouting Talbott in the future should be prioritizing counter combinations and double jabbing on the return because Lima had success coming back with one-twos and catching Talbott in the lean almost by accident.  

As Lima’s spinning backfist missed time and again, Talbott was kind enough to school Lima on the rudiments of spinning technique. Several times, as Talbott pressured Lima to the cage, he timed back kicks and wheel kicks on Lima as he circled.

Here Lima is circling the cage clockwise (a), and Talbott steps across to cut him off (b). Lima changes directions (c) and as he passes Talbott’s left shoulder (d), Talbott spins into the back kick (e).

Fig. 3

Talbott has apparently been working with the Ruotolo brothers and Frank Ocean for this camp, and his grappling looked much improved. One minor look that did not affect the outcome of the fight but is definitely getting stolen by this writer is limp arming out of the overhook and keeping the cross grip from closed guard. You will notice that by holding the cross grip on that wrist, Talbott puts himself in position to land a good strike with the arm he has just freed—though ultimately, he stood straight up.

Fig. 4

Felipe Lima salvaged some style points with his leg entries, a nice rolling one from the turtle and the old TK Scissors from the bottom of mount. Back in the wild west days of No Holds Barred, Tsuyoshi Kosaka was letting opponents high mount him in order to attempt this.

The sequence to nail this technique is forcing the opponent’s hands to the floor (b), with your hands in their armpits (c), then replacing your hands with your feet (d) and rolling your head out the back door (e).

Fig. 5 

Dariush vs Moicano

Beneil Dariush turned back the clock to best Renato Moicano, but he got off to an uncomfortable start after two years away from the cage. It seemed as though Moicano had made the read that Dariush’s answer to everything is to lean back to his left and then try to return with his left hand. This looks especially bizarre when Dariush leads with an overhand left, then sways back to his left to evade a return, and then comes back with another overhand. Figure 6 shows a great example of this.

Fig. 6

It looked as though Moicano was attempting to force Dariush into this defensive posture and catch him in the lean as he performed big floating steps / fake teeps to land on top of Dariush with the right straight.

Fig. 7

This pairs with a tactic from point karate called tobi-komi, where the fighter leaps in with the lead leg high to prevent an intercepting counter to the body. This might have been a good tactic to pursue further as Dariush’s left kicks to the body seemed to take a lot out of Moicano later in the fight.

Fig. 8

Further to that end of exploiting the lean, Moicano kept pressuring Dariush to the fence and trying to stand on top of him before throwing the long right straight. Moicano struck gold at the end of the first as he entered along the fence with a good jab, reset his stance underneath him, and lanced forward again with the right hand—leaving Dariush with nowhere to go. 

Fig. 9

Dariush rallied impressively at the start of round two as he took the centre of the cage and got to work with his own formidable jab. Longtime viewers will recall that this surprisingly speedy lead gave a prime Edson Barboza fits. Each time Moicano and Dariush came together in open stance, the southpaw Dariush would make one, two, three pats at the lead hand, then dip low, and slip his lead shoulder to the inside of Moicano’s as if he were passing someone in a tight hallway.

Fig. 10

Between Pereira vs Ankalaev and Topuria vs Holloway, we have discussed dropping the hands to escape the handfight quite a bit lately. The clever part of Dariush’s jab is that he sets the rhythm of touching lead hands, and then he changes levels so that lead hand drops below the handfight, but so does his head. He remains in position to punch, he makes himself a little harder to hit in the moment, and he closes the distance to sneak inside Moicano’s lead hand all at the same time.

Coming from a Jiu Jitsu background, Dariush’s rapid development as a striker owed to being an ultra-aggressive southpaw, but his jab stands alone as a subtler, cleaner weapon within his largely clumsy arsenal.

And it was likely the clumsy, powerful body kicks, low kicks, and overhands that took it out of Moicano. Well, that and the fact that he eventually tried to take Dariush down and found, like everyone else before him, that Dariush simply will not concede an inch on that front.

There were some entertaining scrambles in this one, but the trick that stood out to this writer was an instance of Beneil Dariush making the best of a bad situation. Dariush had almost taken Moicano’s back, when Moicano turned back into him and ended up running towards the back of the turtled Dariush. Figure 11 picks up the action.

Dariush reaches out to catch the inside of Moicano’s trailing leg (b)—breaking a day one rule of thumb in straight grappling because people will use it to bait a crucifix. Dariush pulls the leg in to drop Moicano on his side in a sort of crackdown (c). Dariush used the crackdown earlier when he was knocked down for the same reasons every old grappler does: it forces the opponent into an unathletic spot where he must play the position rather than play the bongos on your head.

Fig. 11

Moicano gets his hip off the mat, grabs Dariush’s far ankle, and begins trying to drag his way around to the back (d), but as his foot comes to the floor, Dariush buries his head inside the knee (e). This kills the backtake, any threat of the crucifix, and allows Dariush to release his right arm and swing it out to attempt a low double leg (f). The whole sequence had a feel of John Smith: the Oklahoma wrestling legend who popularized both the low single and the crackdown (though he called it “the dump”).

In this instance, Moicano sprawled out and Dariush worked his way up to standing, which might make the chain wrestling sequence seem less cool, but it dug Dariush out of a bad spot.

Pantoja vs Kai Kara France

In the co-main event, we were treated to Alexandre Pantoja at his smothering best. There is no denying that Pantoja’s wildness is a part of how he wins, but even on the feet—where he is considered reckless and unrefined—he has moments of brilliance. In the opening minute he charged Kai Kara-France and negated the threat of his counter punching by outright flustering and overawing him. He did the same thing several times throughout the fight. Yet when the fight lingered on the feet, he recognized Kai Kara France’s famous body jab and began trying to counter it with hard knees to the body. These obviously become knees to the head if Kara France is changing levels.

Fig. 12

The curious thing about Pantoja is that despite being an all action fighter, he is probably the best example of 2010s competition Jiu Jitsu in MMA. The crab ride and leg drag sequences that came off the berimbolo and had Youtube comment sections moaning about “real fights” and “street effective” Jiu Jitsu. But by having comfort climbing his opponent from the crab ride, and getting on top if they flatten out, Pantoja has unlocked an aspect of the game that others just cannot use.

For every impressive trip or takedown that Pantoja hits, there are two occasions where he achieves the back bodylock and simply sits down, pulling his opponent into his lap.

Fig. 13

Moreno, Erceg, Kara-France, Royval: he has done it to almost everyone. We examined it a little in Alexandre Pantoja: The Bar Brawling Back Taker, when he had only done it a couple of times in the UFC. Now it seems to be less a gimmick and more an entire direction of attack. The threat of him sitting down and pulling the opponent on top of him opens up more traditional trips, mat returns and broomsticks. In the final backtake of this fight, Pantoja lifted Kara France off the floor, just to fall underneath him and allow Kara France to float into his lap.

Fig. 14

Large portions of the fight were spent in a back body triangle, and this gave us a look at how modern grappling is trickling through into MMA. We discussed slipping the body triangle in our recent Film Room on the Inside Triangle from the back.

It was telling that the commentary were talking about “putting pressure on” the body triangle by Kara France rolling onto the side of the lock. This is a somewhat dated attitude because it relies on the man on the back loosening the body triangle out of discomfort. Modern escapes from the body triangle work on mechanically loosening the triangle’s structure and then turning into the opponent.

In Figure 15, Kara-France has moved himself onto the side of the lock. He then scissors his legs (b), in order to get his right knee underneath Pantoja’s free leg (c). In frame (c) he doesn’t quite get it, but a full minute later in frame (d), you can see that Pantoja’s free leg is now on top of Kara-France’s thigh and that the body triangle has loosened significantly as Kara France has come up to an elbow. This was when Pantoja bailed out and fought to top position on the arm triangle.

Fig. 15

After getting excited to rant about this on the podcast I saw the boi, William from Open Note Grappling tweeting about the same thing. His grappling threads following UFC cards serve as a beacon punching through the gloom of the Apex era.

Ethan Crelinsten and Kenta Iwamoto have put out excellent instructional material on escapes from worst case back scenarios, but Jay Rod’s escape against Tainan Dalpra is a perfect live example. You will notice that Jay Rod is on the opposite side to the lock, but the mechanics of loosening the triangle by shelving the free leg inside the thigh are the same.

Fig. 16

Pantoja has now unseated Demetrious Johnson for most wins, most finishes, and most submissions in the UFC’s flyweight division. Of his seven UFC finishes, six were rear naked chokes (well, five and a neck crank). That makes it even stranger that he performs the rear naked choke incorrectly.

I jest, because of course the man with the most flyweight chokes is not performing the choke wrong. But he uses a finish that is conventionally seen as outdated or at least flawed. When Pantoja locks up the rear naked choke, he slaps his free hand right on top of the opponent’s head. This is the old school demonstration version of the technique that quickly fell out of fashion when fighters realized that in the course of the free hand coming in front of the body and up to the top of the head, the opponent could grab it and relieve some pressure. The most famous recent example of this is Ken Shamrock vs Kimbo Slice.

Fig. 17

It is not just that the hand is accessible when it is on top of the opponent’s head, it is that it has to come in front of the opponent’s face to get back up there each time he pulls it down.

What the vast majority of experienced grapplers do instead is slide their free hand between their chest and the back of the opponent’s head to place it behind the opponent. Here is John Danaher demonstrating the transition in Mastering the System, still some of the best instructional material on grappling.

Fig. 18

So to see Pantoja repeatedly attempt to finish the rear naked choke with his hand on top of Kara France’s head was odd, but not as odd as the true finish. Figure 19 shows the final moments of the fight.

Pantoja has the rear naked choke locked with his hand on top of Kara France’s head (a). Kara France peels this down, relieving some of the squeeze (b). After a few rounds of this, Pantoja finishes the rear naked choke with his free hand gripping the back of his own head (c).

Fig. 19

This was so unusual that I went back through Pantoja’s rear naked choke finishes and lo and behold, he has always done it that way. Here is the finish from his previous fight, the first in a two-Kai streak.

Fig. 20

Having joked about doing things the “wrong” way, it is worth noting that every fighter has their own preferences. A few will try to finish with a palm to palm grip instead of a full figure foured rear naked choke grip specifically because of the opponent yanking on their hands. Revisiting Pantoja vs Royval I, Pantoja switches between a palm to palm grip and the hand on top of the head every time Royval reaches for his hand.

Fig. 21

It is not surprising for a great grappler to have a few different handfighting options and alternate paths for his favourite finish, but that won’t stop this writer abandoning everything else and trying to get the grab-my-own-head rear naked choke working for him for the next few weeks.