FIRST THINGS FIRST
Welcome to Open Note Grappling.
Every Tuesday morning I send out a breakdown of the best combat sports action. In less than 10 minutes you'll learn how the top fighters win and anything else fighters, martial artists, and fight fans need to know.
Quillan Salkilld got a signature win this weekend. In the process he highlighted a few rules to be reminded of when you’re attacking submissions.
In the Premium Section we’re going to take a closer look at a fun Flyweight who is fighting to get into the UFC tonight.
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Now let’s get into it.
What's In Today's Letter?
Salkilld Survives, Submits Gamrot
26 year old Quillan Salkilld got his first main event assignment this weekend. He was paired with the elite veteran gatekeeper Mateusz Gamrot.
Gamrot is an ADCC veteran with an unreal work rate and some weirdly lucky decisions on his record. More than anything he’s frustrating for his opponents, and some viewers. He’ll just keep shooting for takedowns and scrambling regardless of what’s going on. And with Quillan being a young Australian who was largely unproven I wasn’t exactly sold on his ability to avoid another Gamrot decision.
Then Salkilld smashed the brick wrapped up in his left glove through Gamrot’s head and the veteran was forced to fight back from the brink of unconsciousness. He nearly ripped Quillan’s leg off in the process.
Salkilld has a rear body lock. Gamrot bends over to grab Salkilld’s leg and victor roll for a knee bar. Salkilld uses his free leg to push Gamrot away, slide his leg out, and raise his hips to turn his leg. Gamrot switches to cross ashi for a heel hook. Salkilld hides his heel and starts to get up. Gamrot abandons the leg lock so Salkilld takes top turtle.
Quillan Salkilld - Mateusz Gamrot
Look at Salkilld’s knee. No way it didn’t pop once or twice. The reason Salkilld was able to walk out of the cage was because Gamrot didn’t control his secondary leg.
The primary leg is the one that you’re trying to break in leg locking terms. The secondary leg is where most of your defense comes from. Experienced grapplers use the secondary to fight for new positions and get their hips higher like Salkilld is doing below.
Salkilld has pummeled his secondary leg in to push Gamrot’s leg away
Salkilld is pushing Gamrot’s thigh off of his primary leg
The combination of these two maneuvers disrupts the cross ashi position Gamrot is using.
Here is what it looks like when someone does control both the primary and secondary leg on a victor roll.
Gasanov is behind Tonon. Tonon reaches down to grab Gasanov’s leg and perform a Victor roll. Tonon lands on Gasanov’s secondary leg preventing many of his defensive maneuvers. Tonon closes his elbow and extends his hips to get the finish.
Garry Tonon - Shamil Gasanov
Back to Saturday’s main event.
Once Salkilld found safety for his legs he actually took the fight to where Gamrot is best. Salkilld shot and scrambled his way to a dominant position.
Salkilld has a figure four in a leg mount. Gamrot turns to turtle. Salkilld takes his back. Gamrot actually does a good job turning and pulling Salkilld’s hooks out of alignment. But Salkilld has Gamrot’s high shoulder and high bottom hook engaged. That means Gamrot can’t fully turn away. Then Salkilld pulls Gamrot onto his side.
Quillan Salkilld - Mateusz Gamrot
This is an important principle in modern grappling known as “diagonal control” and it tells us that if you’re on your opponent’s back and you control your opponent’s opposite side shoulder and hip they cannot turn out of the position. Here is Salkilld’s diagonal control preventing Gamrot from rotating to a finish.
From there Salkilld forced Gamrot to give up his defenses.
The body triangle is loosening on the bottom. That means Gamrot can turn belly down to turtle. Gamrot’s hands leave his face momentarily as he does. Salkilld threatens a choke. Gamrot keeps his chin tucked. Salkilld postures up, Gamrot’s hands go down as his head pops up to move, and then Salkilld secures the rear naked choke.
Quillan Salkilld - Mateusz Gamrot
This is something my gym has been playing around with for the past few weeks. If you force your opponent to go belly down their hands will leave their chin momentarily so their face doesn’t get squished, or their hands will get stuck underneath y’all on the mat which means they can’t hand fight.
Salkilld showed a level of psychopathic poise that you only really see with elite fighters. He literally watched Gamrot bend his knee the wrong way, twice, and went on to become just the second fighter to submit the ADCC veteran in MMA. The other guy being Charles Oliveira. If Oliveira isn’t for a title next you might as well give him Salkilld to see how good the prospect really is.
This performance couldn’t happen at a better time either. Alexander Volkanovski is getting ready to leave the sport and Jack Della Maddalena just dropped two fights in a row. It looks like Salkilld just secured his spot as an Australia’s next MMA star.
The Best Is Back This Weekend
Islam Makhachev is back this weekend. He’s already considered the best active fighter in the sport and if he wins he’ll pass Anderson Silva’s record of 16 wins in a row. Some think that will qualify him as the best fighter of all time. Standing in his way is Ian Garry.
Garry presents some unique problems. His length, footwork, and judo background make him an annoying problem for anyone that wants to dictate the pace and place of a fight. What Garry does not have is leg attack defense.
Garry has one knee up one knee down on the fence. This is stopping Shavkat from putting hooks in. Shavkat is kneeing Garry from behind. Garry is hinging over and hand fighting until he can bring his right arm inside. They separate. Garry spins for a back fist. Shavkat shoots. Garry reaches for a guillotine choke and ends up on his back.
Shavkat Rakhmonov - Ian Garry
You see what I mean? Garry was crafty and careful on the fence but the second Shavkat reached for his legs it looked like he forgot how to grapple and fell straight to the floor. Maybe I’m underthinking the fight but that’s where the rubber meets the road for me.
But Islam is one of my favorite fighters ever and because of that I unlocked an article about his game. If you want to understand Islam Makhachev’s depth of skills read this.
Originally this article ☝️ was for paying subscribers only. If you want to read more stuff like this and access my whole archive upgrade to a paid subscription here.
Now I need to call your attention to a cool prospect fighting on Dana White’s Contender Series this week.
Distance Domination With The IndoNinja
Bilal Hasan is a 25 year old Flyweight. He’s actually fighting in Dana White’s Contender Series on the day I’m sending this.
Hasan is quick and accurate like all flyweights. But unlike his fellow Flyweights he has a 88% finish rate.
Hasan is southpaw. He throws left kicks at Findley’s leg and head. He feints Findley back to the fence, switches stances, and throws a hard right hand. Findley fires back so Hasan backs up and throws a right kick to the body. Hasan feints a right kick, drops Findley with a right hand, and swarms for the finish.
Bilal Hasan - Shamel Findley
Hasan is listed at 5’7 with a 71 inch reach. That means he’s as tall as Tatsuro Taira with an extra inch of range. His whole game is designed to make the most of the length advantage he enjoys over his opponents.
If you want to see how he does it and read the rest of this section upgrade to a Paid Subscription. It’s only $5 per month, you get extra analysis every week, and you can cancel whenever you want.
More Leg Locks To Study
Watch this video to see how to use a victor roll to get to an inverted heel hook.
Here is a video on escaping cross ashi and taking the back.
And if you want to rewatch a classic about primary legs, secondary leg, and the importance of hip height, watch this.
THE MOST IMPORTANT NEWS (you might have missed)
The UFC has announced a lot of cards recently:
UFC 331 has been finalized and the card looks awesome. Joshua Van, Alexandre Pantoja, Arman Tsarukyan, and a lot more.
Petr Yan and Merab Dvalishvili will have their trilogy fight on October 24 at UFC 333 in Abu Dhabi, According to this Russian news account on Twitter at least.
UFC 332 was also announced for Salt Lake City but this card has no headliner listed.
Flyweight Submission stud Allan Nascimento passed away by heart attack. The UFC played this tribute video during the event this weekend.
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