📝 How To Suffocate Someone With No Strangles

Khamzat Chimaev made Dricus Du Plessis look like he had never wrestled a day in his lift. Today we’re going to talk about what both of them could have done.

Before we get into that I have one point of housekeeping.

I’ll be taking a vacation and completely off the grid for a couple weeks. If you don’t hear from me immediately after CJI 2, I’m alive.

Now let’s get into it.

Going into UFC 319 we knew one thing. Khamzat Chimaev was going to shoot low, climb to a rear body lock, and try to ride Dricus Du Plessis (DDP) into the dirt.

We thought DDP was going to scramble like a mad man, make Chimaev work, and do more damage as the fight went longer and longer. Thought being the key word there.

What we got was a Chimaev clinic. The Chechen wrestling phenom stuck to DDP like stink on shit. Now, many fans are saying the fight was about as good as that too. Shit. But we can learn a lot from what Chimaev did well. For starters, he added some new wrinkles to his overwhelming grappling attack, namely a top side crucifix.

DDP kept turning his head to obscure Chimaev’s striking angle. This small move negated much of Chimaev’s ability to do damage. But didn’t stop him from peppering DDP and suffocating him with top pressure.

When the second round started Chimaev went back to his usual spot. He got a rear body lock and rode DDP like a broke horse.

Below, pay attention to how Chimaev uses his legs to keep DDP on defense.

Chimaev rides the back like a freestyle wrestler not a Brazilian jiu-jitsu practitioner. Look at the images below to see what I mean.

The combination of these elements makes Du Plessis carry Chimaev’s weight. It’s exhausting and he can’t hardly move.

You can contrast Chimaev’s positioning to Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt Marcus “Buchecha” Almeida’s. His narrow and near feet takes the weight off of Buday, leaving him able to scramble to a better position.

Back to UFC 319. Later in the round Chimaev briefly threatened DDP’s neck again.

These two sequences above are actually a big deal. Chimaev recognized that when he gave up double under hooks or had a seat belt (one under hook and one arm over DDP’s shoulder) DDP’s shoulders could rotate and he could make space. That’s the opposite of what Chimaev wants.

Giving DDP space is like giving a chimpanzee a knife. You have no idea what’s going to happen. Are they going to cut something? Are they going to stab you? Are they going to accidentally cut themselves trying to stab you? Who knows? Who cares? Just don’t give that chimp a knife and we’ll all be better off.

In the fifth round Chimaev briefly lost control of DDP’s shoulders and the champion made good use of it.

This was a brilliantly timed reversal. To be frank, I’m surprised we didn’t see DDP fighting Chimaev’s hands for this arm position sooner. And after watching the fight I think there are some big things that both men can immediately introduce to their game.

Both fighters left a ton of unexplored territory in this fight. For starters, Dricus Du Plessis hardly did anything to open Khamzat Chimaev’s hands.

There’s countless ways to make space and hand fight when someone is behind you. The basic idea is you want to get two hands on one of your opponent’s arms so you can open their grip to make space for escapes. The weirdest thing to me is that DDP has literally ripped kimuras in fights before to open his opponent’s hands.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying Giles is half the wrestler Chimaev is. And I won’t pretend that DDP could have easily gotten a kimura on him. What I’m saying is, I’m shocked that DDP has proven he can hand fight and still showed almost no urgency to do so in this fight with Chimaev.

It looked like DDP was ready to fight Chimaev’s hands after he started threatening the rear naked choke. But that opening never really presented itself so DDP was stuck waiting, getting rode into the dirt.

On the other hand, it looks like Chimaev has a golden opportunity to add submission threats to his new crucifix attack.

With Chimaev’s win middleweight is wide open. He has four immediate contenders in front of him with Reineir De Ridder, Anthony “Fluffy” Hernandez', Nassourdine Imavov, and Caio Borralho. Most interesting about these four is that they all have good grappling to make this fight more intriguing.

De Ridder is a weird, lanky jiujitsu and judo player. Fluffy might be the best fence fighter in the sport, Imavov has a fast sprawl behind his faster hands, and Borralho is a hulking Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt. I’m interested in all of these match-ups and I hope we get one of them ASAP.

Middleweight has never been more weird or more fun.

I love a good guard pass. They can be punishing and painful, stylish and smooth, or assertive combinations of both.

Guard passing technique has been exploding in professional grappling but it’s still somewhat of a lost art in mixed martial arts, mainly because fighters hardly play guard any more. Instead, many try to just stand up as soon as their hips hit the floor. But I think that’s about to change.

Right now, no gi passing is focusing on maintaining passing positions. That means camping out on your opponent's limbs to exhaust them while they try to make space for stand-ups and sweeps. This will be uniquely valuable for MMA, because many of these camping positions allow the top player to settle into spots that allows them to punch their opponent while navigating through their guard. That means guard passing will probably come back into fashion in MMA.

I’ve started putting together a resource on how to pass the guard. It features specific movements to pass and examples of great guard passers across MMA and professional grappling. The first featured athlete is one of the most interesting fighters to ever fight in the UFC, Gunnar Nelson.