The UFC's Greatest Guard

This week we’re talking about what actually makes a good guard in jiujitsu. To explain it, we’re going to look at the best guard I’ve ever seen in the UFC, Charles Oliveira.

Now let’s get into it.

In less than two weeks Charles Oliveira will fight for the UFC lightweight title again. This time, it’s against the undefeated former Featherweight Champion Ilia Topuria.

Although already a champion, Topuria is playing the role of newcomer. He’s 28 and he’s only fought once at lightweight in the UFC.

Oliveira is 35. 22 of his UFC fights have been at lightweight. He’s also fought an additional 12 times at featherweight. His 23 wins are second most in UFC history but his 20 finishes and 16 submissions are UFC records.

With a long and winding action packed record you might be wondering, how has Oliveira managed to stick around this long and continue finishing people? Over the course of a single fight and his whole career one word answers the question.

Guard.

Charles Oliveira has the best guard in MMA. That has helped him pick up both the most finishes and submissions in UFC history. But it’s also give him a unique position of safety that no other fighter in the sport has ever enjoyed.

Why is Oliveira’s guard so effective? It’s one of the only functional layered guards we’ve ever seen. Today we’re going to explain what that means and show you why Oliveira has the best guard in MMA.

Brazilian jiu-jitsu star Keenan Cornelius has an excellent video explaining guard. In it, he explains that to be a good guard player you need to create successive barriers. That means your opponent can’t just jump to your head to pin and submit you. These successive barriers come from your feet, shins, knees and thighs so you can protect your centerline and stay safe.

That’s exactly how Oliveira plays guard.

When Oliveira is disconnected from an opponent he kicks at them. This maintains distance, deals damage, and allows him to get back to his feet.

If opponents step in, Oliveira uses a variety of leg entanglements to attack leg locks, turn opponents away, and give himself space to get back to his feet.

When an opponent manages to undue these leg entanglements, Oliveira uses open guard to maintain distance, attack sweeps, or set up submissions; all while sneaking in more up kicks. And when someone is unfortunate enough to find themselves in Oliveira’s closed guard he attacks their upper body with triangles, arm bars, and other high guard attacks. This causes his opponents to stand up which gives Oliveira room to enter leg entanglements, start up kicking, and/or stand-up.

Here are three images that explain roughly what I’m talking about.

Oliveira’s guard is a damaging whirlwind of legs that turns a classically defensive position into an offensive one. And now we’re going to look at what I mean.

The first piece of Charles Oliveira’s guard you need to understand is how he uses it when he doesn’t have control of his opponent’s posture. Oliveira kicks at his opponents while grabbing their ankles. This means he’s in control of the distance, and damage, even when he’s on bottom.

One thing Oliveira does better than anyone I can think of is threaten his opponents with de la Riva guard.

De la Riva is characterized by grabbing your opponent’s ankle and threading your leg behind their knee. This is more of a gi move, but, in MMA, it allows for the bottom player to threaten up kicks.

Below is a good example of how Oliveira uses de la Riva hooks.

With this distance and angle Oliveira can not be hit but he has space to up kick or enter more complicated leg entanglements.

Now let’s look at how Oliveira used it.

Oliveira uses his legs to maintain distance and strike at his opponents when they’re disconnected so they can’t immediately pin, punch, and pass. Now let’s look at the next layer of Oliveira’s guard.

When people step into Oliveira’s guard they’re forced to walk a razor’s edge. If you give him any space he’ll either kick you away, or use his legs to ensare yours so he can look for leg locks.

The most important thing to understand about Oliveira’s leg locks is they’re not solely for submissions. Oliveira uses leg locking to turn his opponents so they can’t hit him effectively.

You might be saying, why not just pull away from Oliveira’s leg locks? Well you’ll either get kicked, like Lentz did in the sequences above, or Oliveira will use the space to return to his feet and start striking. Below we can see Oliveira combine his fluid guard with wrestling up to fight to a better position.

You can’t simply stand over Oliveira because he’ll kick at you until he can get back to his feet and smack you around. But if you step in recklessly you’ll eat those same up kicks, and you might get your leg ripped off.

Now let’s look at how Oliveira uses his legs once they’re closed in full and half guard.

You can’t talk about Oliveira without mentioning his highlight reel submissions. Just look at his first UFC fight.

And of course Oliveira has no issues jumping to a closed guard when he already his opponent’s head locked up.

Clearly you don’t want to lose the fight for posture against Oliveira. But even when he only has his half guard closed, Oliveira can make space to get back to safety.

Oliveira will even proactively go to half guard to get under his opponent’s hips and look for ways to attack.

Now let’s look at how Oliveira’s layers work together in concert. Here he is going from closed guard to open guard before getting back to his feet.

And here Oliveira uses submission threats to keep his opponent off of him so he can get back to his feet.

Oliveira’s guard is so good, he was even able to get Islam Makhachev off of him!

This is why Oliveira’s guard is so valuable. It’s defense that immediately facilitates damage. His opponents never fully feel safe so they rarely commit to offense. Even when Oliveira is getting bombed on his guard saves him.

This isn’t to say Oliveira’s guard is perfect. To the contrary he has been stopped on his back a couple of times.

To solve Oliveira’s guard you need to split it open. The most straightforward way to do that is to put his head on the fence.

A fundamental principle of jiujitsu is that your hips and shoulders move opposite one another. If your hips go down, your head goes up, and vice-versa.

So, if you can pin Oliveira’s head on the fence, you can reasonably control his hips indirectly and he cannot raise his legs to attack so freely.

Because of Oliveira’s dextrous legs, this is much easier said than done.

Another option would be to land in chest to chest half guard so Oliveira’s legs are immediately bypassed. Below, with his shoulders and hips flat, Oliveira has limited options available to escape.

Let’s be real. Dropping Oliveira and submitting him is not a realistic, replicable strategy for 99.9% of MMA fighters today.

But I think ending here is important because it gets at the point of the guard.

The point of the guard in jiujitsu, whether you’re sparring, competing, or fighting for your life, is to use your legs to maintain distance between you and your opponent so they can’t hurt you.

Don’t overthink it and try to memorize the next inverted-reverse-whatever-the-fuck. Just focus on keeping legs between you and your opponent.

To that point, if you want to disrupt your opponent’s guard and you can’t immediately control their legs, you need disrupt their head and their shoulders so you can indirectly control their hips and legs to neutralize the before it ever gets going. Because if you’re fighting someone that has a guard like Oliveira, you’re just not safe while their legs are active.