Crash Course In Southpaw Fighting

The UFC went back to Salt Lake City this past weekend. The night ended with a record 10 first round finishes. Sprinkled throughout the card was a full course on southpaw fighting and this article is going to condense that into one cohesive story.

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Now let’s get into it.

The two broadest concepts that guide combat sports are stance and distance.

The distance you maintain from your opponent determines what you can hit them with. Kicks can be scored further out than punches that can be scored further out than takedowns.

The stance you fight with guides how you will move and what angles you create as you do so. This is as true in grappling sports as it is in striking sports and it’s such an important idea that different arts have specific names for how stances match-up.

I know. Confusing.

UFC 332 gave us some important lessons on how to fight with an open stance match-up and I want to show how those ideas work in conjunction.

If you’ve watched any UFC broadcast with an open stance match-up you’ve heard a commentator or two talk about how important it is to get your lead foot outside of your opponent’s lead foot. That’s more or less why Roman Kopylov was able to knockout Ateba Gautier.

It’s true Kopylov moved to his right to line up his left hand. But I hope you see above that he didn’t need to get all the way outside of the lead foot to line up the left hand. More importantly, he scored a quick right hand first because of his positioning.

See, the other side of the the open stance match-up is both fighters’ lead hands are much closer to the opponent. That means jabs can come quicker, particularly when you keep your lead foot inside of your opponent’s lead foot.

Roberto Soldic is KSW’s former Middleweight and Welterweight champion. He amassed a 20-3 record with 18 finishes and one over future UFC Middleweight Champion Dricus du Plessis to become a hardcore fan favorite years ago. He even managed to go 4-0 in boxing.

Then the 27 year old Croatian kickboxer was signed to ONE Championship in 2022 and only fought three times four years. Now he’s out of ONE purgatory and everyone is excited to see what the Croatian kickboxer can do.

Soldic was struck to the floor twice in the first round before taking over the fight with Khaos Williams

Soldic used this simple combination to punish Williams for the rest of the round. He even scored this same sequence three times in a row!

I hope you see that only circling for outside foot position is a short sighted way to approach an open stance match-up. Plus it literally puts you closer to your opponent’s lead hand so they can hit you quicker.

Soldic’s and Kopylov’s fights can show you how to hit people that are standing right in front of you. But how can you exploit the benefits of an open stance match-up when your opponent is focused on circling?

Alexander Hernandez stopped a 41 year old Rafael dos Anjos in the second round of their fight on the prelims. But before that RDA was putting on a southpaw pressure fighting clinic in the first round. That was the more interesting part of this match-up so we’re going to look at that instead of Hernandez’s finish.

There are a few important takeaways here.

They have an open stance match-up. That means their lead hands are basically touching. RDA barely has to extend his lead hand to touch Hernandez and push him back.

When Hernandez sets his feet or circles to the open side (his right) he runs into RDA’s left kicks. And then he if Hernandez tries to run the other way he’ll run into RDA’s jab which is much closer than it would be in a conventional closed stance match-up.

RDA got closer and closer as the round wore on. When Hernandez would avoid RDA’s power side he’d run straight into RDA’s right hook.

By the final minute of the first round RDA was standing on top of Hernandez hooking to both sides.

This first round was wonderful. Part of the reason I wanted to weave it into this southpaw overview was so it, and RDA, doesn’t get lost behind Hernandez’s second round finish.

No shade on Hernandez. He caught RDA and he deserves his flowers. But if we only watch the knockout clips and viral finishes we lose the in-fight drama, inter-fight development, and technical quirks that make fighting so fucking cool.

Dana White famously said, “I sell holy shit moments for a living” earlier this year. That’s true and it’s the exact thinking that led him to start a league around people slapping each other in the face for a few thousand dollars.

The holy shit moment is the cherry on top of the sundae. The cold beer after a hard day in the heat. Without the heat, the hard day, and every layer of uncomfortable tension that requires relieving from, then that beer is just bloat. Big empty calories that make you slow, fat, and stupid if it’s all you take in.

Don’t be stupid, watch something other than the holy shit moments, and appreciate the little things these athletes do that make their game so special.

A couple of weeks ago Jacob Rodriguez hit was becoming an important part of the grappling meta. An inverted d’arce.

I’m going to put together some notes on this submission, how it compares to other arm in strangles and why it is necessary to know for the modern metas of grappling and MMA. I’ll be sending that out Friday.