Stephen Thompson couldn’t have looked much more wonderful than he did against Geoff Neal. Neal is about as dangerous a striker as the welterweight division has to offer, but if your first introduction to him was Saturday night’s match up you would have no idea. Thompson cut angles, turned Neal, beat him to the punch, skewered his body, and put on one of the most controlling twenty five minute performances in recent history.

In our Tactical Guide we discussed that Thompson presents the same problems to all his opponents and while he will change up his looks throughout the fight he fights best in his comfort zone and seldom leaves it by choice. So while the side kick and reverse punch to the body went completely unanswered and exploited an obvious habit in Neal, they were used more frequency than Thompson would in any other performance.

In that same Tactical Guide we discussed the need to attack Thompson’s movement. Masvidal, Pettis, Luque, all had success attacking Thompson’s legs. Thompson hangs his hands low and his head out there as bait, every fighter he faces can tell you that and still, whenever they get him near the fence, they swing for his head regardless. Neal was the extreme of this: completely fixated on head hunting he threw—by this writer’s rough reckoning—less than ten strikes below Thompson’s shoulders. Fight Metric was a little more generous but points out that every low kick or body kick Neal threw landed—he just flat out refused to throw any more. This cannot all be placed on Neal though, because each time his corner audio was played on the broadcast there was a lot of focus on feinting in to land the left straight, but zero mention of low kicks or attacking the body.

And this wasn’t a case of Neal not being able to get to the legs or body. Neal cornered Thompson numerous times throughout the bout. Fight Metric—again, perhaps generously—scored 85 of 179 strikes to the head, actually connecting at a higher percentage than Thompson. It was that every time he got himself in position to strike, he sold out for the one shot knockout. One exchange did not help the next. Nothing was done to aid him later in the fight. He fought Thompson with the idea that all he needed to do was catch him once—that there was something magical about his touch—and this has been provably wrong for everyone else Thompson has fought.

What follows is a typical example from round two. Neal has closed Thompson to the fence and Thompson has flattened his stance to give him lateral speed and mobility. Thompson starts circling to his right, towards Neil’s left hand, but he changes direction. Neal, to his credit, keeps up with Thompson and hooks at him with his right on the way out the other side, falling short and chasing him with another jab, but Thompson is already gone and the pressure has dissipated.

At all times in this sequence Neil was close enough to kick Thompson’s legs, which were on a track between the Neal and the fence. Where Thompson’s head can still move forward and back and change levels, his legs are predictable because they dictate where he can move.

Because Neal’s attempts to apply pressure largely hinged around covering up and trying to throw back, Thompson was able to play out some beautiful sequences in this one. Here Thompson took advantage of Neal’s cover up by hooking off the jab, stepping off to his right from the hook, and scoring a good jab up between Neal’s gloves.

Neal’s constant forward movement also made him an easy mark for Thompson’s dart. Shooting in straight with a reverse punch and sliding out to the side. As the rounds progressed Thompson picked up on Neal reaching in to parry these darts and started flicking in a high kick off the same side.

Here it is from another angle.

Perhaps the most impressive part of this performance was that Thompson did it on a slippery mat that had been giving fighters trouble all night, and in the smaller cage. Neal might have made terrible shot selection and fought with an overarching strategy that was simply bad,