UFC Fight Night 98 Breakdown: A Tale of Two Pressure Fighters
Join us as we break down the big fights and interesting moments from UFC Fight Night 98: dos Anjos vs Ferguson and Bellator 163.
UFC Fight Night 98 was headlined by a fight that seemed destined for fireworks. Rafael dos Anjos, the stalking, methodical pressure fighter and former champion, met Tony Ferguson, a wild man who doesn’t know the meaning of retreat. It was the irresistible force meeting the irresistible force. What we ended up getting was a bit different, although it still produced fireworks.
Dos Anjos chose to abandon his typical pressure fighting in favor of an outfighting gameplan. He came out of the gate immediately moving around on the outside, looking to pivot away, and switching stances. Instead of trying to push Ferguson back, dos Anjos looked to lead him into counters and move in and out.
Fighting against type is always a difficult task. It asks a fighter to eschew some of the tools that brought him to the dance in favor of skills that he may have spent only a single camp developing. Nonetheless, it is often a rational decision against a certain type of opponent, and attempting to flummox an opposing pressure fighter by refusing to meet in the middle makes sense in theory. In practice, dos Anjos did a damn fine job of it.
Some facets of his outside game looked unpolished – he was clearly uncomfortable moving backwards – and he ultimately came up short, but dos Anjos made it a gritty, competitive fight.
Dos Anjos had some success early with his movement. His defensive soundness and counters were able to defuse the volume and pace of Ferguson somewhat in the early going. Ferguson upped the tempo and started putting combinations together in the second round, which drew dos Anjos into a defensive shell and made him hesitant. Dos Anjos found a resurgence in the third round when he found that he could plant his feet and hit Ferguson as he was coming in, but he seemed to lose his nerve a bit after eating a big knee in the fourth.
Range was an issue for dos Anjos all fight. He’s used to working his way into the pocket against an opponent who doesn’t want to be there, but he was playing the matador against Ferguson, trying to stick and move. His entries from range looked unpolished and he often ended up overextending on his straight trying to reach Ferguson, with his stance squared up and his head past his lead foot.
Not only can you not generate adequate power with your rear foot in the air and your head past your lead foot, but it leaves you open to counters as well. Dos Anjos would either fall forward with his rear foot and square up, or take an extra second to pull back into his stance, leaving openings for Ferguson to follow him back with punches.
Dos Anjos’s game works on controlling the initiative. He’s more than happy to counterpunch, but he’s at his most effective when he’s putting pressure on his opponents and forcing them to make mistakes which he can exploit. Ferguson’s pace and his own hesitancy to move forward put him on the reactive. He spent a lot of time standing in front of Ferguson at a range Ferguson could land easily, but he would have to step through to effectively land.
Dos Anjos had success countering Ferguson’s aggression, but his counters looked notably worse in this fight because he wasn’t able to force errors and draw them out. Waiting on a man with as diverse an attack as Ferguson is a dangerous strategy. If you want a jab to counter, you need to do something to make him throw that jab, or he’s going to hit you with a spinning elbow and do a somersault.
Dos Anjos’ defense is built around a pressure game. He’s fantastic at catching punches on his forearms and shoulders in close range, taking short angles in the pocket, and giving just enough ground to come back in with a counter. His footwork as an outfighter leaves much to be desired, however. He often backed up in straight lines and took himself out of position moving backwards.
Because he wasn’t able to rely on his footwork to avoid punches, he was forced to rely on his excellent guard and solid head movement for defense. But that same guard that works a treat when he can press in on his man, catch a punch on his forearm, and return fire falls apart when he’s backing up, forced to cover up and try to defend combinations at the end of his opponent’s reach.
One of the issues inherent to a high guard is that your hands can only cover so much surface area. If you rely primarily on footwork to defend strikes, you’re in trouble when your opponent closes in on you. If you rely primarily on your hands, you’re in trouble when your opponent hits you where your hands aren’t.
Ferguson would work the body to move his hands down and go back to the head, shift forward with an off-beat straight when he thought he was out of range, and split his guard down the middle to bring his forearm in front of his face before looping around it (the same principle Alvarez used to knock dos Anjos out).
Ferguson got blasted with left hands while skipping in for an outside leg kick repeatedly, but he started using the inside leg kick to break dos Anjos’ stance, which allowed him to go back outside on occasion without eating a counter.
Ferguson skewered dos Anjos throughout the fight with the same front kicks that gave him so much trouble in the first Cerrone fight. Ferguson’s habit of shifting stances and walking forward aids in landing the front kicks, as every step forward effectively threatens or sets up a front kick.
When Ferguson steps his rear leg through, his opponents don’t know if he’s about to walk them down and continue landing punches, or slam the ball of his foot into their body. Kizaemon Saiga’s striking game is built around the same dual front kick threat.
Dos Anjos used a jolting jab to enter range often. He threw it with a lot of power and telegraph, not varying its rhythm or speed much. He had some success ramming Ferguson with it and using it to disguise combinations, but Ferguson picked up on its timing and started landing an uppercut inside of it as dos Anjos stepped in.
Dos Anjos gave Ferguson a lot of trouble with his rear kicks. He would slam them into Ferguson’s body as he backed up, either halting Ferguson’s forward movement or goading him into a sloppy rush that dos Anjos could counter.
Outside of the kicks, most of dos Anjos’ best moments came when he was able to close distance while keeping his feet underneath him and put together combinations.
For Tony Ferguson, this win means a likely title shot in the near future. He’s on a nine-fight winning streak dating back to 2013, with wins over some of the division’s best fighters in dos Anjos and Edson Barboza. It seems impossible to deny him a shot at the crown any longer.
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For dos Anjos, it’s back to the drawing board. 2016 has turned out to be a tough year for Dos Anjos, who at one point seemed like he would rule the lightweight division for the foreseeable future.
It’s worth pointing out that his change of camps might have hurt him. Rafael Cordeiro is well-known as the man who turned grapplers in dos Anjos and Fabricio Werdum into fearsome strikers and lead them to UFC gold. After a devastating loss to Eddie Alvarez and a move away from Cordeiro’s camp, dos Anjos seems to have lost some of the confidence that made him the best lightweight in the world at one point.
Davis’s Dominance
Phil Davis put on an impressive show at Bellator 163, routing Bellator Light Heavyweight Champion Liam McGeary for a dominant decision win.
Davis has always struggled to find openings for his takedowns, and this fight was no different. An outfighter by nature, Davis prefers to operate at long range and is uncomfortable when he’s close enough for his opponent to lay hands on him. As you might imagine, this isn’t conducive to hitting double legs, as he ends up shooting from too far away. McGeary was able to get underhooks in time to stop his shots early.
Davis managed to adapt and find entries into his takedowns. He’d grab the clinch off a striking exchange or plow through McGeary’s underhook and drive him into the fence. He also set up shots by “blind prompting,” jumping in with a hook and immediately shooting for the legs, hoping that McGeary would react to the hook and leave an opening. This is a level above shooting from outside, but the best takedown artists in MMA are able to draw a strike from their opponent and read the opening as it occurs.
Davis dominated on the ground, mounting McGeary at will and seamlessly flowing between americanas, arm triangles, and giftwraps. He would threaten an americana and catch an arm triangle or giftwrap as McGeary reached across to defend, or pin down an arm and punch until McGeary bucked himself into an arm triangle. He’d also trap an arm with his knee to open up the face for punches and isolate the other arm.
Davis prioritized control and avoided committing to the submissions. His contentment at riding out a decision and using the threat of submissions to land punches and force McGeary to work made the fight look like a lockflow drill with intermittent face-punching.
Some of the holes in McGeary’s ground game were revealed by Davis’ top control. McGeary is active off his back, but he prioritizes ineffective offense over positional control. Here he’s more concerned with finding an opening to land a strike than preventing Davis from passing his butterfly guard. He does the same thing in half guard, throwing up his leg and looking to land a punch while Davis passes his leg over into a leg drag, instead of using it to create distance and break Davis’ balance.
Since McGeary is a brown belt under John Danaher, it’s no surprise that he repeatedly attacked Davis’ legs. What was a surprise, however, is that he kept attempting poorly executed leglocks and found himself repeatedly crushed into the leg drag position.
In order to finish these leglocks or even make a decent attempt at one, he needs to get Davis’ weight off the leg being attacked. In the first sequence, McGeary leaves his left leg hanging and allows it to be controlled and stuffed. In the second, he fails to create a proper frame and ends up stuffing his own hips.
Let’s look at how Gordon Ryan, another one of Danaher’s students, attacks in a similar position. He starts off framing on the arm to prevent his opponent from closing distance. He brings his top leg onto his opponent’s hip to push off and create more distance. From there he replaces his right foot on the hip with his left foot as he turns into Ashi Garami.
This position is remarkably similar to the one McGeary ended up in above, and the foot on the hip made the difference between securing Ashi Garami and getting collapsed. After that, Ryan’s opponent attempts to spin out and Ryan inverts to keep the leg entanglement.
McGeary has a ways to go before he’s ready to deal with someone as good as Davis on the ground, but he’ll only improve training at Renzo’s with leg lock phenoms like Gordon Ryan, Garry Tonon, and Eddie Cummings.
Speaking of leglocks, Joe Soto hit a beautiful inside heel hook against Marco Beltran at UFC Fight Night 98. Soto shot for a high crotch and nearly wound up getting his back taken, but he rolled for a kneebar as Beltran was working to take his back.
From there, he backs his hips out to Inside Sankaku (also known as the saddle, honeyhole, or 4-11), a dominant leg entanglement with both of the attacker’s legs triangled or hooked under the defender’s outside leg. Soto grabs the inside heel hook and Beltran tries to break his grips, but can’t get close enough due to the leg entanglement and is forced to tap.
For anyone who didn’t get enough of their leglock fix this weekend, be sure to tune into EBI 9 later today at 9:00 p.m. EST on UFC Fight Pass.
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