How To Wall And Maul

The UFC managed to make a miracle. I am excited for a Sean Strickland main event. I’m not anxious for the return of the former middleweight champion. I’m anticipating the return of middleweight’s most violent man and the subject of today’s article.

Anthony “Fluffy” Hernandez.

Now let’s get into it.

Anthony “Fluffy” Hernandez has everything that makes you like MMA. Grappling that facilitates striking. Striking that sets up submissions. Aggression. Octagon control.

If boxing is the sweet since Fluffy’s fights are something like hiring a demolition team. Regardless of how you plan the day eventually they’re going to get in there, swing some hammers, and break shit.

No one would call Fluffy the most athletically gifted fighter. What he does have over most of his opponents is a pace that breaks people.

He averages a takedown every couple minutes he fights. He lands nearly twice as many strikes as he gets hit with. Fluffy fights his ass off and he probably has the best style of grappling for MMA.

If you’ve spent any time training striking you’ll have been told the importance of varying your targets. You hit high, then low, and then high again. Maybe sometimes you hit high a couple times to get your opponent to cover their face so you can hit their body. Then you flurry at your opponent’s body so he stops covering his face and you can drill him upstairs.

If you touch a lot of targets you’ll confuse your opponent about what you really want. Fluffy does this magically on the fence.

He presses his opponents against the cage, hits their body, and when they try to return fire he’s already taking them down.

But the beautiful thing about Fluffy is that he’ll employ this same tactic when the fight is already on the ground. He hits his opponent as they’re standing up. When they do finally return to their feet he keeps the exchange going long enough for them to forget Fluffy actually wants to take them down.

Fluffy does his best work after the fight finds its way to the floor. Here he shows the perfect tools to exploit modern MMA grappling.

Most MMA fighters don’t play guard. Instead of trying to attack arm bars, triangles, and classic Brazilian jiu-jitsu sweeps, the fighter on bottom will usually turn to turtle and start standing up.

I know this. You know this. Fluffy knows this and that’s when he does his most interesting work.

Fluffy doesn’t stop people from turtling. He moves with them to stay one step ahead and continue his onslaught from three main positions.

Now let’s see this in action starting with the finish that made Fluffy famous.

This unorthodox choke fits seamlessly into Fluffy’s game because he can abandon it quickly to go back to attacking turtle conventionally.

The seated arm triangle isn’t the only choke he takes from the position. Fluffy also threatens anaconda chokes when he traps his opponent’s head and arm from turtle.

Fluffy doesn’t hold on to every choke he finds. He uses them and front head locks to keep his opponents on the defensive and set up opportunities for more strikes.

Fluffy is not over reliant on punching either. If he has to keep his hands locked to hold positions he’ll run people into the fence and look for knees instead.

Ultimately Fluffy wants to ride cross body. This allows him to stay mobile for hand fighting, punches, and chokes.

But when Fluffy is completely passed the guard and his opponent turtles beneath him he has no problem putting both hooks in instead to attack rear naked chokes.

And all of this works because Fluffy taps in strikes with every inch he gets.

If you’ve watched any amount of combat sports you will have heard someone compliment fighters for throwing strikes without loading up on their shots. That’s exactly why Fluffy’s game works so well.

Fluffy isn’t trying to knock people out. He’s trying to make his opponents wilt.

Fluffy knows his opponents will fold after carrying his weight for a round or two. Then it’s up to them or their corner to ask Fluffy to stop.

If I was going to summarize Fluffy’s game with a single clip it would be the following.

Takedowns on the cage. Riding cross body and pulling wrists out. Striking and threatening submissions the whole time. This is what Fluffy does best.

Unfortunately for Fluffy he has a clear weakness that stops this onslaught before it can start.

Fluffy has been in the UFC for 7 years. He’s gone 9-2 in that time carrying a consistent weakness the whole time. Body shots.

Even in fights he wins, Fluffy is liable to get hurt eating an early body shot.

These two clips aren’t isolated incidents. Roman Kopylov stood southpaw and hurt Fluffy with a left body kick in their fight as well.

The problem with identifying this weakness is I just don’t think Fluffy’s opponent Sean Strickland has the pop to hurt Fluffy.

Stickland’s stance and style is centered around defense. His feet are relatively narrow and his posture upright. He can slide around the cage and slap at his opponent’s strikes rapidly so they can’t hit him cleanly. And that means it’s hard to score on him.

Becoming hard to score on doesn’t mean you yourself can score. Accepting you’re going to play defense against an offensive buzzsaw like Fluffy is asking to get run over.

To beat Fluffy you need to hurt him. Quickly. Writing this out reminds me of the lead up to Merab Dvalishvili’s rematch against Petr Yan.

Yan was not defensive. He got in Merab’s face, hit him early and often, and kept his lead hand active to make Merab more reactive. Plus he hurt Merab with body shots several times in that fight.

Do you think Strickland has the ability to do that consistently for 25 minutes? I don’t.

I think Strickland can make it ugly but Fluffy is going to keep it violent. And this is a sport where the most violent one often wins.

Fighting on the fence is probably the single feature that best defines MMA as a unique sport. I created a guide on how the best fence fighters make use of the barrier. This guide analyzes fighters like Fluffy, Khabib Nurmagomedov, and Randy Couture.

Since we did so much analysis of Fluffy’s game this week I decided to add one more fighter to the fence fighting guide. This man is not nearly as violent as Fluffy but he has some of the slickest trips and cage takedowns in MMA.