What To Prioritize When You Take The Back

What We Can Learn From Brendan Allen’s Success

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First Things First

Any time I see an athlete with a weird amount of concentrated success I have to take a closer look at what’s going. When I was checking UFC Paris’s card I noticed Brendan Allen is on seven fight winning streak. Five of those are rear naked chokes. That demands a thorough examination.

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Middleweight’s Sneaky Submission Star

Brendan Allen is flying under the radar. The 28 year old has quietly amassed an 11-2 record in the UFC competing in the middleweight and light heavyweight divisions. More impressive, he’s on a 7-0 run with five rear naked choke finishes.

Allen’s submission success put him at number 2 on the UFC’s active middleweight submission leaderboard. Today, I want to answer two questions.

  1. Why is Allen so good at finishing the rear naked choke?

  2. What can we learn from him?

Technical Takeaways

Generally speaking, your arms and legs keep you connected to your opponent in back mount. This leads many people to assume they are of equal importance. I am here to point you to Allen’s record to say, unequivocally, they are not.

If you’re going to focus on anything, prioritize your arms, head position, and upper body control. Let’s see why this is.

No Hooks, No Problem

When you look at Allen’s box score it’s clear he’s good at finishing his opponent when he gets their back. But when you watch his fights you see a weird amount of rear naked choke finishes without inserting both hooks. Let’s travel through his career chronologically to see exactly what I mean.

Watch Allen’s leg work. He never secures both hooks. Doesn’t matter. He maintained chest to back control the whole time. Allen did locks his ankles over Holland’s hips for a hip clamp. He used Holland’s turtling to find space to sneak in the rear naked choke.

Brendan Allen - Kevin Holland

The hip clamp demonstrated above is an awesome intermediary position and allows you to stay chest to back without worrying about the other hook. In Allen’s next fight, he chinned light heavyweight Sam Alvey to set up the ground action.

Allen leaps in with a right hook to the body and left hook upstairs. Alvey drops face down and Allen keeps pounding. Again he used the space made available from Alvey trying to turtle to sneak in the rear naked choke. No hooks, but no can defend; for Alvey at least.

Brendan Allen - Sam Alvey

In Allen’s next two fights the chokes weren’t as immediate. Instead he showed two necessary skills if you want to be a high level back attacker. The gift wrap triple attack and harassing the face.

Allen is reaching behind Jotko’s neck to grab Jotko’s wrist for what’s known as a gift wrap. This gives Allen a free hand to weave into Jotko’s leg and punch him. When Jotko turtles and tries to cover Allen is onto the choke. He has no hands to defend, no choice but to tap.

Brendan Allen - Krzysztof Jotko

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