📝 The Takedown That's Defining MMA Grappling

This past weekend Merab Dvalishvili reminded everyone why he is one of the best cage wrestlers we’ve ever see in MMA. We’re going to look at what he used to dominate Sean O’Malley before analyzing Kayla Harrison’s takedowns on Julianna Peña.

One more thing. Sorry for not sending anything out last week. My home got hit with something like a tornado the day before I had to fly across the country for a wedding. Not a good weekend for writing.

Now let’s get into it.

In the first week of October 2024 Sean O’Malley underwent hip surgery to repair a torn labrum. You might have heard of the labrum before. Injuring the ones in your shoulders is pretty common.

The labrum isn’t a particularly glamorous piece of the human experience. It’s padding. They sit in each shoulder and hip socket, and their combined placement provides padding so the top of the femur and humorous, your thigh and upper arm, can move freely in their respective joints. The padding that the labrum provides is partially responsible for why arms and legs can move so freely.

So, with O’Malley’s free moving frame hampered last year from the labrum that was torn in his hip, he wasn’t half the fighter many believed he could be. He certainly couldn’t spring into the kicks that stole the attention of the MMA world. And definitely not against Merab Dvalishvili in the fight just before O’Malley’s surgery.

Georges St-Pierre underwent knee surgery in 2011. Then again on his other knee in 2014. After his first knee surgery, GSP was hit 189 across 4 fights. That’s the exact same amount of times he was hit across the 8 fights immediately before his first surgery. The combination of surgery and age made GSP essentially twice as susceptible to damage.

Regardless of how necessary a surgery can be, its completion does not make for quick and easy combat sports returns. Especially not when you rush it like O’Malley said he wanted to do prior to the fight that took place this past weekend. Rushing a return when you need to rebuild your body while reworking your game so you can beat the man that ran over you in the first fight will never be a recipe success.

So it happened again. Worse. Merab ran O’Malley up and around the UFC cage for just under 15 minutes before submitting him. Let’s look at how he did it, what we can learn from the way Merab fights, and where O’Malley was having success.

Before the first round was over, Merab showed us all why he’s one of the best cage wrestlers to ever do it. Pay attention to how well he uses his feet below.

Merab doesn’t really care if his opponents end up flat on their back. As long as they’re working, he’s closer to winning. Merab knows if he can keep you moving he can run you into a front head lock, trip you, or make you tired trying to avoid both of these and the knees he’s constantly throwing.

Anthony “Fluffy” Hernandez reminds me of Merab a lot. Both of their ground games are based around putting you through a cycle of trips, chokes, and sneaky ground and pound. Yeah they don’t finish people in the first five. But that doesn’t mean their opponent’s won’t be drowning before the fight is over.

In the third round Merab went back to his trips and found himself much much tighter to O’Malley.

From here, Merab was finally close enough to O’Malley’s neck to finish him.

The way Merab moves around his man and is regularly in position to hit the kosoto gake is unbelievable. He makes it look so easy and I have a hard time separating that takedown from his success. If you want to be an effective MMA grappler, you need to incorporate the kosoto gake on the fence.

Before we finish talking about this fight, let’s look at what O’Malley did well. It might be the key to beating Merab.

This exchange is actually very important for what could be someone’s path to victory against Merab.

Sean did a few things well here. He pulled Merab up off the double and got an under hook. Then, when Merab reached down to switch to a single, O’Malley kept grip lower on his leg so he could whip out of it.

Merab does his best work on the fence. That’s where he can can grind on people, add in trips, and beat up the body. He can also climb up to double legs and body locks, which are responsible for most of his successful takedowns.

If you can occupy Merab’s hands and move them lower and lower on single legs he gets much less effective. If he stays high on your thigh, above your knee, he’s going to dump you down to the mat or switch off to a double leg. And this is easier in the middle of the cage where Merab can’t press you back against the cage.

Writing this out makes me think Merab’s next opponent, Cory Sandhagen, has a realistic path to victory that isn’t dependent on a finish. Sandhagen has much better lateral movement than O’Malley. He also throws with a lot more value. There’s no reason to think Sandhagen can’t take a close decision off of his activity and the damage he deals.

Before we do any more Tuesday morning matchmaker, let’s look at how the co-main event went.

Let’s not bury the lead here. Julianna Peña was hardly in this fight.

Every time the two women locked up, Harrison was harassing Peña and bullying her around the cage. I mean, Pena’s most damaging offense was fouling Harrison twice with up kicks on the ground. But everything else around that was all Kayla.

It wasn’t the most action packed performance, but this fight was as dominant as you could ever hope for.

In the second round Harrison got another takedown that came much smoother.

From there, Harrison just smothered Peña until she gave up the submission.

After this fight Amanda Nunes got in front of Kayla Harrison for a face off and for the first time in years, there is a woman’s fight with organic hype around it.