Jabs Get The Job Done

Now that MMA’s political theater is done you can not say the fights were anything less than spectacular. The card had a 100% KO rate and some all time greats headlined. Today I want to talk about the two winning headliners’ simple striking formula.

In this week’s Premium Preview we’re looking at an interesting prospect fighting for Cage Warrior’s lightweight title. That means he’s knocking on the UFC’s door.

Now let’s get into it.

The Matador, Ilia Topuria, has been mauling men since he first came to the UFC. Not just anyone either. His three fight run of Alexander Volkanovski, Max Holloway, and Charles Oliveira might be the best three wins in a row ever. More impressive, he finished all three of them in less than 23 minutes total.

This fight was supposed to be similar.

Topuria was gifted a 37 year old Justin Gaethje coming off of one of his worst performances ever. Like most people, I thought Gaethje was getting served on a silver platter to the Lightweight Champion. In the end, I saw a veteran commit to using a simple and previously neglected tool to round out their offense.

Let’s go round by round to see what he did.

Round 1

Topuria spent much of the first marching to the center of the cage. Instead of his usual slips, he was hinging back at the hips. Gaethje met him with two main weapons. A jab, and shots to claim collar ties for pulling Topuria into uppercuts.

Gaethje has always had a good jab but he rarely uses it. Instead he opts for hooks, overhands, leg kicks, and other significant strikes.

Maybe Gathje was worried about Topuria’s power. Maybe he was trying to slow the fight down. Whatever the reason, Gaethje got behind his jab as soon as the fight got going.

Topuria was mainly focused on pushing Gaethje back to the cage and lining up his right hand.

In the final 30 seconds of the first round Topuria revealed his ace in the hole. Going through Gaethje’s stomach to take his soul.

There’s the basic dynamic of the fight.

Topuria wanted to wade in, line up his right hand, and dig hooks to the body in tight.

Gaethje wanted to jab Topuria from range and catch collar ties inside so he could pull Topuria into right uppercuts. This long jab inadvertently helped him maintain distance, lean away from Topuria, and stay safe(ish).

Round 2

Gaethje took the first round on every judge’s scorecard. Midway through the second Ilia started running down hill on the challenger.

Topuria spent 30 seconds in mount before he decided to try for a mounted triangle.

Did you happen to see the clock in those exchanges? Topuria burned about 2 minutes sitting on a Gaethje who could hardly breathe, let alone stand-up. You have to wonder how the fight would have looked if he had kept hitting Gaethje instead of pinning him.

Round 3

The third took a while to get going. Both men were fatigued past the point of fighting. They threw out slow single shots until Gaethje’s jab lined up a missile of a right hand.

Gaethje had regained the momentum. He was hurting Topuria and the champion could hardly see through the blood pouring over his eyes. Then we saw one of the worst ring doctor mishaps of all time in between the third and fourth round.

Ilia’s brother Aleksandre was assuring everyone Ilia could see. That alerted the doctor to come in the cage. When the brothers reassured them Ilia could see they started to resume the fight. Then the doctor started testing Ilia’s vision.

The doctor even tried to call the fight but he was overruled. That’s not supposed to be legal.

It took a solid two minutes for referee Marc Goddard to get the action going. Both men looked fresh enough and Ilia appeared to have shaken the cobwebs.

Round 4

Gaethje got back on offense to tire Topuria. Gaethje wrestled him early, his jab beat all of Topuria’s punches to their marks, and the uppercuts inside kept Ilia from staying in tight for too long. Then Gaethje decided to stay in the clinch and Topuria got an opportunity to take his lead back.

Topuria threw some elbows from mount to try to cut Gaethje. Gaethje wiggled his way back to bottom side before bridging and turning to get off bottom.

Topuria shot for another takedown again with 30 seconds left. Gaethje stopped it and repaid Topuria for the bodywork earlier.

Ilia didn’t make it back to the cage after this.

In the corner Aleksandre said “we’re going to finish the fight” before waving his hands. He forced Ilia to retire on the stool. Gaethje got up on the cage wall to backflip on the biggest moment of his career.

Gaethje unified the Lightweight Title at 37 years old and more than a +350 underdog during his second stint holding the interim belt. He also made over $800k in bonuses doing it.

The story of the fight that I saw was one of managing distance.

Gaethje did a great job jabbing long and staying behind his shoulders so when Topuria threw back he couldn’t find a clean target. And when Topuria was pressuring he tried to lean away from Gaethje’s punches instead of slipping them like usual. He took the power off of some of them but he wasn’t avoiding them. He was getting sliced up at the stuck on the end of strikes. Topuria even said he was basically blind after the second round.

The fight before this was also won largely with straight long punches.

Before Gaethje shocked the world, Alex Pereira tried to get a third weight class title. It was Pereira’s first fight at heavyweight and he was matched up against French kickboxer Cyril Gane.

Gane is long, quick, and physical. He posed new problems for the hard hitting Pereira, while also having some of the worst decision making in MMA.

See - falling back on leg locks in the fifth round of a heavyweight title fight.

Pereira stood orthodox when the fight started. Gane was southpaw. That means both men had an open lane for kicks off of their rear leg.

If you’ve watched any fight card before you’ve probably heard a commentator talking about the importance of foot position in the orthodox vs southpaw match-ups. The common advice is to step outside of the lead foot so your rear hand lines up with your opponent’s chin. That’s not even half of the story.

Stepping outside of your opponent’s lead foot might line up your rear hand with their chin, but it also lines up your chin with your opponent’s lead hand. That’s more or less what Gane was taking advantage of. He kept his lead foot right in front of Pereira’s and that gave him a straight shot at Pereira’s chin.

Notice how Gane kept his lead foot in front and just inside of Pereira’s? That’s what gave his lead hand an open lane at Pereira’s chin.

Before the round ended Gane picked up his work rate. He danced, landed some more slappy kicks, and stung Pereira with single punches. Then Pereira landed the best shot of the fight by stepping up into a lead right as the bell went off.

Thus the fight was set.

Gane was going to dance, fake some shots, and score points while Pereira would move to his left to line up his straight right or right high kick. That’s what his corner was calling for anyway.

After about 30 seconds of the second round Gane stole the fight.

It’s hard to find better timing than that.

You have to think this sets up a major rematch with Tom Aspinall soon. And I hope Pereira stays at heavyweight. That division desperately needs more people to pay attention to.

Josh Hokit called Pereira out after the White House card. Not a bad shout for either man.

The United Kingdom’s top promotion is back this weekend. I have my eyes on the headlining lightweight title challenger, Ieuan Davies. He’s 13-1 across all of his amateur and professional fights and he’s only been to a decision 4 times.

Davies is a Welsh scarecrow. A 6’1 lightweight. He’s as tall as Sean Strickland and fights two divisions down.

You read 6’1 lightweight and you think rangy kickboxer. Davies does have some long strikes but he’s mainly an opportunistic submission hunter. Whether he drops his opponents, scrambles to top, or finds himself on bottom he has submissions from everywhere.

You can watch Davies fight for the Cage Warriors Lightweight Title this weekend on UFC Fightpass.