Alexander Volkanovski vs Max Holloway III:

Slacky’s Post Fight Notes

Max Holloway picked up where he left off in his second fight against Alexander Volkanovski. He fought in a short, high stance and floated in behind a raised lead leg. This was to counter the ever present threat of the Volkanovski counter low kick. Their first meeting was largely decided by Volkanovski punting Holloway’s lead leg as Holloway extended his stance to jab in.

The floating step was a major annoyance for Volkanovski in the second meeting but in this fight he really looked to have the measure of it. The float step is a great means to get in range without getting counter low kicked and—as we touched on in Advanced Striking 2.0 – Alexander Volkanovski—Volk himself uses this technique to enter.

Fig. 1

One of Volkanovski’s means of dealing with the floating step was to give ground. He spent the vast majority of this fight drawing Holloway forward and counter striking. Figure 2 shows a nice example of Volkanovski retreating from the floating step and landing the counter low kick as Holloway lands anyway—defeating the purpose of the float step.

Fig. 2

In boxing, a taller fighter often has to do some work to get his shoulder level with the opponent’s head and eke the best length possible out of his jab. When one fighter towers over another he is often very susceptible to the overhand which, thrown with a dip or slip of the head, is both a counter and an evasion. The threat of Volkanovski’s counter kicks kept Holloway out of his longer boxing stance, and when he entered his head often loomed above Volkanovski, who would slip his own head in towards Holloway’s right pectoral while bombing him across the top with the right hand. Holloway was forced into this constant game of standing tall and trying to duck while entering on one leg.

Fig. 3

This same right hand hammered Holloway time and again on his entries and opened a large gash in round two. Volkanovski’s corner could be heard reiterating “draw him forward” from cageside.

Another constant in Volkanovski’s boxing, which paired with this cross counter / overhand, was his upjab. He used this to “close the door” and return to his half-facing guard position, but more importantly he used it to force Holloway’s head up and back whether Holloway had taken the right hand or slipped it. Sometimes it was a full bodied punch, other times Volkanovski simply shot his cuff as an afterthought but it was always there as a great way to disengage from an exchange.

Fig. 4

Volkanovski’s lead hand carried the day. His jab connected at a good rate on its own, but it was more important as an instigator: an initial needle to draw the counters that he hoped to make better connections on. Just as in the latter half of their second fight, Volkanovski had Holloway overcompensating by reaching for the jab and snuck longer, whipping left hooks around the side to blind side him. An extreme example of this same technique can be seen in last week’s Nchuku vs Ulsberg, and the less said about Sean Strickland falling for it hook, line and sinker against Alexander Pereira, the better.

Fig. 5

Through the trilogy of Volkanovski - Holloway bouts, and in his fight against Jose Aldo, Volkanovski used hand checking to momentarily block the path of his opponent’s jab. In its simplest form this sort of hand fighting lets you cover an opponent’s straight blow and then attack, or pull a part of his guard away and poke a punch through where that hand was. Once you get to Volkanovski, Aldo and Holloway’s level you are also trying to capitalize on opponents snatching at opportunities when you take your checking hand away. Figure 6 shows the beginning of a great exchange with a bit of everything we have mentioned so far.

Fig. 6

Volkanovski checks Holloway’s right hand with his left (a), before retracting it back to his left side as if to whip that long left hook (b). As Holloway reaches out for it, Volkanovski pokes at him with the jab up the inside (c). Figure 7 picks up the action.

Fig. 7

Holloway slips the jab and throws the right hand over the top (a), (b), but Volkanovski has V-stepped back to the left off his initial jab (c), leaving Holloway to fall short. Volkanovski immediately returns with a right hand that he stops short (d) in order to land the stiff jab up the centre quicker (e).

This might be the time to mention the difference between a feint and a fake and how Volkanovski uses both. A feint is the hint of a technique but keeps the feinting fighter mostly in position to follow up—think a shoulder feint or a head movement or a level change. A fake is the best part of the technique, perhaps thrown with no intention of landing or stopped short. Volkanovski throws punches and pulls them up short so often that I have decided to codify it in diagrams with a red arrow into a perpendicular line as in (d).

Abandoning the Float Step

Holloway hit on something in the fourth round that could have made his floating step a little more successful: he started throwing teeps. The floating step is sometimes called a “fake teep” because the two go so well together but you don’t see a lot of lead leg push kicking in MMA. Holloway wasn’t doing damage with it, but it did mean that Volkanovski couldn’t simply hold his ground and chuck the overhand when Holloway raised his knee. Unfortunately Holloway never got to the point where he was alternating the floating step and the teep, or boxing effectively after entering with either.

Fig. 8

In fact as soon as Holloway had shown a couple of teeps, Volkanovski tried to hop in at the same time and hit the osoto-gari throw that he demonstrated against Chan Sung Jung. Using this against a teep or floating step is a trick you will see the great Saenchai do from time to time. Volkanovski botched it though and Holloway briefly threatened to get a back bodylock before Volkanovki dug an underhook and turned back into him.

Fig. 9

As the rounds progressed it became clear that Holloway was going to need a finish to win—a scenario that he has never done well in. This led to him relying more on his few “big” techniques: see the abundance of back kicks after round three. He also tried to instigate longer exchanges and stay in them—jab, dip, counter, dip, counter type work. But pursuing these exchanges meant upping the pace and eschewing the floating step, and that in turn meant that Volkanovski could return to the original low kick that had caused Holloway so much trouble in the first fight. Sliding back as Holloway’s lead foot entered, Volkanovski hammering it before it was planted. Figure 10 shows a great example of this but Holloway used being knocked out of his stance to turn into a back kick anyway. This kind of recovery saves face even if it doesn’t score knockouts.

Fig. 10

I have often opined that Volkanovski embodies the golden ratio between feints and legitimate attacks, but last night he also struck the perfect balance between drawing out and winning longer exchanges, and cutting Holloway off. Volkanovski’s best blows came after jabbing, dipping and returning as Holloway countered, but he didn’t let Holloway drag on exchanges into a endurance based brawl, and regularly stepped in to smother Holloway with the clinch before his “turn.”

The commentators noted in the fifth round that Volkanovski had attempted no takedowns, but he had certainly benefited from the threat of them. From the over-under clinch Volkanovski locked his hands and crushed Holloway’s underhook so tightly to his body that he often couldn’t effectively use it. The inside trip that Volkanovski had hit in their second meeting was clearly a concern for Holloway, but Volkanovski pushed Holloway to the fence and used the breaks to land elbows, punches and even the Jon Jones spinning elbow just as he did against Mizuto Hirota and others in his early UFC run.  

Holloway’s work along the fence still looked surprisingly solid though. While getting the underhook or circling out with a collar tie are his favourite methods, he still didn’t spend much time mucking around. When Volkanovski was crushing his underhook he gave up his position and turned his back, just to break Volkanovski’s hands apart and turn back into him. Basic stuff but the watershed of fencework in modern MMA is not the ability to stay standing or get back up, but rather the ability to break away. Jose Aldo could not do that reliably against Volkanovski while Holloway was still surprisingly able to.

But the odd surprise aside, Max Holloway was completely outclassed last night. After ten closely fought rounds over two years, Alexander Volkanovski crowbarred a separation between himself and his closest rival in the first round of this one and demonstrated that featherweight is now undisputedly Volkanovski’s division. Demonstrating himself to be a perfect mix of power and point fighting, craft and grit— UFC 276 was a celebration of Volkanovski and perhaps a belated coronation.