Apparently Cory Sandhagen needed no tune ups or special considerations. It seemed like a lot to take on, fighting Marlon Moraes immediately after a quick and decisive loss to Aljamain Sterling, but the payout proved well worth the buy in. Sandhagen dispatched Moraes with what should—on any normal weekend of fights—be a knockout of the year contender and he looked almost faultless doing it.

Moraes had some bad habits that Henry Cejudo stumbled upon and Jose Aldo highlighted, most notably a difficulty with pressure and a high pace, but with both of those men being big hitters for the weight there were some questions over whether Sandhagen could replicate that strategy. At no point did Moraes look worried that Sandhagen was going to starch him with a right straight and start overreacting as he did against Cejudo, but through great use of feints and picking his shots Sandhagen was able to drive up the pace anyway.

A regular tactic of Sandhagen’s that we discussed in A Filthy Casual’s Guide to Cory Sandhagen is jabbing to draw a return. Boxing coaches often invoke the image of touching a hot stove—get your hand back quick and you won’t get burned—and Sandhagen will often snap his jab just on the end of an opponent’s nose before pulling back out of range again. When Moraes returned with his swings, Sandhagen was often able pull out of range, get down behind his lead shoulder or throw a leverage guard over Moraes’ arm.

Fig. 1

Jabbing to draw a response was a favourite tactic of Roberto Duran and if you trace his career you will notice that it was something he only really began doing after leaving the lightweight division, going up in weight to fight bigger, younger men. Often Duran would flick the jab just out in front of his opponent and not smake contact—already moving to evade a return.

The Aldo fight showed that Moraes’ answer to pressure is to try to power punch out of it. He tries to put the fear of God in his man and hopes they back off a little. This could be seen perfectly when Moraes managed to miss a counter left hook and throw himself to the mat against Sandhagen. By flicking out the jab and making Moraes swing at air, Sandhagen could settle Moraes down a little. The entire performance was a balance between flicking and feinting with the intention of avoiding a return, and then stepping in for real when Moraes’ concentration slipped or when Moraes took his finger off the trigger.

Moraes seemed at least somewhat prepared for Sandhagen’s in-and-out antics, as he demonstrated a shifting left hook that we had seldom seen from him before. This was Mauricio ‘Shogun’ Rua’s favourite punch and it can be a great means to cover ground while swinging with power. In fact at one point Moraes even shifted through, held the left hook, shifted again, and then released the hook having returned to an orthodox stance after covering two whole strides. It was a nice thought but he found little success with it and abandoned it after a few large, wasted efforts.

It was by pacifying Moraes in this way that Sandhagen could begin to close for real and sneak in his left hook to the body, and score low kicks from out at range. Furthermore, when Sandhagen began to get a read on Moraes’ likely responses, he was able to come back inside with counter punches in spite of Moraes seeming to have the advantage in power hitting. There was a lovely right uppercut that Sandhagen snuck inside Moraes’ returns in the first round that visibly ruffled the Brazilian.

When Moraes is flustered his response is the same as his teammate, Edson Barboza: he backs up and tries to make some distance. This meant that Sandhagen could use his double jabs to get Moraes moving and then capitalize. Sandhagen would also use a flicking right straight to step through and turn it into a follow up jab—Dustin Poirier’s sneaky method of changing stances. Except instead or loading up a home run swing off his rear hand, Sandhagen used this to get to a southpaw position and throw his left round kick to the body on the open side.

The finish came as Sandhagen jabbed Moraes into giving ground and spun into a wheel kick. He had previously thrown the back kick to the body and, in combination with his other body work, this had Moraes reaching down for it. But the wheel kick landing was just a happy bonus: Sandhagen had already defused Moraes’ speed and power advantages and taken control of the fight. Had the wheel kick missed it would likely have just been three more rounds of body kicks as Moraes slowed down.

The Barboza Shift

No one could have predicted that Edson Barboza versus Makwan Amirkhani would provide so much food for thought. It seemed to have no right to: on the surface it was just an incredibly fast striker with poor ringcraft against a smothering grappler with poor conditioning. Yet the specifics of the match up and some odd experimentation on each side made for an incredibly compelling scrap.

For a start, Amirkhani’s southpaw stance actually offered more problems to Barboza than expected. Barboza’s best weapon is usually his switch kick into the open side or the inner thigh, and obviously those targets were gone against the southpaw Amirkhani. On paper, this meant that Barboza’s rear leg was going into the open side and would allow him to dig in longer power kicks, but it was very clear that Amirkhani was waiting on the round kick in order to catch on the forearm and then pursue a takedown attempt.

Instead Barboza was forced to rely on the longer right front kick to the body, which he was mostly successful in recovering. He was also able to use his hands to punish Amirkhani’s body, throwing a wide right to the gut on every clinch break or every Amirkhani attempt to close.

Amirkhani had moments of unexpected success in the boxing. Attempting to engage in the hand fight with Barboza—using his lead hand to paw and slap at Barboza’s—he found the Brazilian reluctant to play the game. The more Amirkhani reached to check or pull the lead hand, the more Barboza brought it back into his stance and locked it in place. This allowed Amirkhani to shoot good jabs down the centre line, and to drop his hand below where the handfight should be taking place and come up through the blind angle with an up-jab.

Fig. 2

We have discussed the utility of the upjab many times before. Austin Hubbard uses it to momentarily stand his opponents up as he enters—because they are almost always brilliant grapplers—before trying to high kick them. Amirkhani used the upright stance the upjab produced to enter for grappling. Think of the classic Chad Mendes level change to uppercut—the opponent beginning to sprawl brings his head forward of his hips and serves up the uppercut. But the general reaction to being shown the uppercut first is to stand upright, and this ensures an opponent’s hips are right underneath his head. Amirkhani would enter behind the upjab and as Barboza covered or tried to return, Amirkhani would drop the upjabbing hand into an underhook and acquire a clinch.

Amirkhani later used the upjab in a similar way to drop onto Barboza’s lead leg and come up on a single leg, running Barboza onto the fence with it. As entrances go it worked perfectly, Amirkhani’s problems came as Barboza fought his way out of the clinch or the single leg attempt.

Fig. 3

It was an interesting approach by Amirkhani, who opted to wait on Barboza and try to capitalize on the round kick. It might not have been the best decision to immediately give up the centre of the cage to a man with defensive ringcraft as limited as Barboza but for a good portion of the fight Amirkhani was doing decently. The game changer was a new shifting right hand that Barboza was scoring with unnerving accuracy. He must have thrown it nine or ten times in the bout, landed more than half, and dropped Amirkhani with it three times.

Fig. 4

This took the author back to days drilling lunge punches in traditional martial arts. When you shift with blows you tend to throw with the opposite hand to the foot that is stepping. That is just a natural feeling way to produce power on the punch. Stepping and punching off the same side feels unnatural. In traditional martial arts like Aikido, karate, and taekwondo the stepping punch is a placeholder that you then demonstrate your awesome five part answer to. What separates Barboza’s shift from a clumsy lunge punch is that he isn’t stepping and punching, he is overextending on the punch and the step is simply necessary to catch him.

Take a look at Figure 4. Every time Barboza wanted to throw the long right hand he would bring his right foot under him and get on the ball of his back foot—this was something he could disguise by hip feinting a kick. From there he would drive his weight off his back foot and throw his right hand. Look at how far forward Barboza’s shoulders and head are in frame (3). His hips are completely over his lead leg, but you will notice the incredible reach this gives him compared to keeping his hips in a natural position between his feet. The reason that Amirkhani was repeatedly caught out by this punch was that it was so much longer than a right straight should have been.

The shift itself? Just a necessity. In fact when we have discussed Joe Benavidez in the past we have often pointed out that he lunges forward with his head so far forward of his hips that he is forced to shift to catch his own weight. The same is true here of Barboza: he throws himself into the punch and then he has to step forward with his right foot to catch himself. However, where Benavidez continues to charge forward with his head down, Barboza took this extra half foot of reach, caught himself on his right foot in a southpaw stance, and immediately stepped back—always conscious of his defense even if it meant he was retreating from Amirkhani while Amirkhani was crumpling to the mat.

Fig. 5

Figure 5 shows a slightly different application of this shift as Barboza is circling to his left and brings his right foot all the way across underneath him before launching off it. This shifting right straight made a tremendous impression on the fight and the viewers and it will be interesting to see how other fighters can incorporate this in open guard match ups. It doesn’t conform to the basic principles of boxing and the fighter commits their weight to use it, but adding an extra six inches to the right straight could well be worth it, especially when fighting from the greater distance most commonly seen in an open guard match up in kickboxing or MMA.