Fighter Evolution
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“Father Time Is Undefeated”. “You can’t teach old dogs new tricks”. “This is a young man’s game”. These are all sayings that have grown to be in the common vernacular of combat sport speculation. Whether a fighter should “hang up the gloves” or not seems to be less of a science and more of a philosophy. There’s a lot of questions that arise when a fighter gets older. Are they still the same hungry dog? Can they still keep up with the division? However, I find these questions to be more about the fan versus the fighter. While making for great “Water-Cooler” talk, These questions don’t provide us with any answers. It’s all conjecture. However, some things remain a constant due to the physical limitations that we all have. As you age you will slow down. Your reaction times will get worse. Your natural athleticism will diminish. These are more facts of life than just combat sports. Because of this truth one can usually make the correct guess in that the old guard gets replaced by the new guard. Hence all the old ass sayings I prefaced this article with. That’s also why it’s so amazing to see fighters that have been around forever & are still “doing the damn thing”. I named this article “Fighter Evolution” & that’s for a good reason. I want to give a few examples of a fighter that exemplifies this and do my best to explain how the hell he does it. See evolution of the game is present in not just a specific fighter but the game as a whole. Also I do want to point out (For the people on Twitter) that Glover won’t be spotlighted in this article. He didn’t evolve to beat Jan, He did the same thing he always did in a division that has arguably evolved the least out of any other. What I want to highlight is true “against the grainess”. A fighter that is still competing at the top while being old as sin and schooling younger, faster, & more athletic fighters. To me, no one better exemplifies that than the King of Rio Jose Aldo. Now one more note before we dive in. I (like most fans who have been watching the sport for a while) adore Jose Aldo & I am extremely biased in thinking that the resurgence of his career after losing three in a row has been nothing short of Hollywood movie shit. I hope I can demonstrate the changes Jose made to stay competitive in a way that is easily understandable & I hope you can “Learn a thing or two about a thing or two”.
“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, Not the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change”
-Charles Darwin
Jose Aldo has long been considered to be one of the greatest combat sports athletes of all time. Having started fighting professionally circa 2004 he is a true veteran of the game. Dubbed with many aliases and monikers, I believe the most fitting is “Your favorite fighter’s favorite fighter”. He has earned this reputation by beating every opponent he faced for ten years. Being one of the better leg kickers the game has ever seen. Having an enormous fight iq (Topped only by his enormous ego inside the cage) & being the reason that most fighters fight the way they do. I could continue on forever and maybe I will one day in a proper career spotlight article. But that is then and this is now. Let’s dive into the topic at hand…
Jose Aldo for the better part of his career fought with a traditional muay thai stance. High guard, flat feet, & he accentuated that with great head movement. Jose’s main gameplan for the majority of his fights has been “pressure & force counter opportunities”. This for me was the same reason Anderson Silva had the rise that he did. In the formative years of mixed martial arts (To a certain extent still today) fighters focused mainly on grappling and striking was an afterthought. Being able to take an opponent down and drop ground and pound was the gameplan for the majority of the roster. Fighting with pressure often forces a wrestler to shoot. This is due to many reasons but the biggest one being that wrestlers spend their entire lives being taught to move forward and melt fighters with pressure. When that is happening to you…. you get desperate. Pair this with the fact that Jose has always had fantastic TDD defense, You’re forced to fight the fight that he wants. Let’s get a little more detailed & I will explain just how Jose forced the fight to remain standing in his early career. Conventional wisdom for defending a takedown is the sprawl. Dropping ones hips during an entry and attempting to frame on the back of the head and keep distance between your center of gravity and the opponent.
For great chain wrestlers, this is ideal as one can transition from say a double leg to a single leg negating the sprawl. What Jose has always preferred is the “Limp leg”/”Dead leg” defense. Instead of dropping ones hips you turn your hips away from the shot sacrificing a single leg (Simultaneously forcing the wrestler to commit to the single) dropping the knee and framing off and pulling your leg out.
If you can’t take him down and you’re forced to stand with a high-level thai boxer with exceptional leg kicks, You’re going to be kicked in the leg, body & punched in the head. A great great example of this to a tee would be the Uriah Faber fight. You would be hard pressed to see a better example of leg kicks in mma. Jose has also always been exceptional at countering the jab. In the early days of MMA, the contention and competition between boxing and mma was fierce. It was believed that grappling was superior and boxing had no place in a “real fight” (Insert photo of douchebag affliction t shirt). Obviously, over time the stigma died down when people realized using your hands effectively was important. The jab for all intensive purposes is the most important strike in all combat sports. It is the first line of both defense and offense. During his prime throwing a lazy jab would routinely earn you the title of “elite” by the morons that watched, commentated, coached & really just everyone involved (Im not kidding go back and watch old fights and listen to the commentary its insane). Jose having the skill level that he did built a career countering the jab. Now they’re many ways to counter the jab but I will save the bulk of that for an upcoming article centered entirely around the jab. Jose was and is excellent at dipping both inside and outside the jab. If you don’t know what that means, allow me to explain. Imagine two conventional fighters, Fighter X throws a jab. Fighter Y can slip inside which means towards fighter X’ body (Think Ross Pearson) or slip outside which means away from fighter X’s body. This is of extreme importance to understand at every level of combat. Back to Jose… When throwing a lazy jab Jose often slips inside and lands his trademark liver shot. Shout out Jeremy Stephens…. Or he can build off of that slip and land the dutch kickboxing classic hook to the body then rear leg kick. By this point you should begin to see why Jose was so dominant. He simply was much more skilled and had higher levels of understanding from years of muay thai training. However once again this article is about evolution and just like every creature on the earth MMA athletes are no different. The game caught up to Jose. Although one can point to the Conor fight I think what really showed Jose diminishing (for lack of a better word) was both holloway fights. In those Jose was for the first time up against a high volume boxing heavy pressure fighter that did not give you time to counter. If you can slip one jab great. But can you slip 1,2,3,4,5,6 punches in a row? The answer was of course an emphatic no in both contests. Max pressured Jose using his expert pressure, range dictation, & frankly playing on his ego. That seems to be the blueprint for beating Jose. Volume striking and ignoring counters. Of course easier said then done but this is when Jose has trouble. There has also been a lot of discussion around the absence of his leg kicks in recent years and that can honestly just be attributed to injury and age. This was a perfect storm to the Max fights because conventional wisdom states that if a heavy lead foot volume striker is your opponent you butcher the lead leg so they cannot use those weapons.(Think Volk Halloway 1) So this begs the question. How do you deal with that and remain competitive. You evolve…(Nice right?) Jose doubled down on his boxing. Instead of trying to hide his inability to throw leg kicks and counter, He has seemingly revitalized his speed by dropping a weight class (While increasing power fighting smaller men) and defending against low leg kicks. To emphasize these points I want to look at the recent Pedro Munhoz & Rob Font fights. In the Pedro fight Jose was faced with an opponent hell bent on landing calf kicks. This seems to be the “hot new technique” replacing the oblique stomp from a few years back. What’s amazing is both how long it took this technique to enter into the mainstream and how effective it has been. Everyone by now knows the danger associated with getting checked while throwing a calf kick. The problem is although the sport has evolved its still not at the level of mid card quality kickboxing. In mma people do not check leg kicks. It is so completely underutilized and a reason that Jose Aldo is still on top as he actually does. In the munhoz fight he introduced a pivot check that worked phenomenally. He pivoted on the balls of his feet and move his lead leg out and his rear leg in. Using both legs he is able to check the kick and regain balance in one motion. With Pedro unable to land the kick that he and so many MMA athletes seem to be building gameplans around Jose countered with slick boxing and won the fight. His boxing was also what allowed him to beat Rob Font. On paper Rob Font should have won that fight. With his exceptional jab and pressure heavy style, I was convinced this would be a loss for Jose. Although Rob executed his gameplan well Jose simply made more of the opportunities he had. He dropped multiple times doing what he has always done just better. He slipped inside Robs jab and landed rear hand crosses that landed powerfully. This shot is commonly referred to as the cross counter.
I think Jose having doubled down on his strengths is the reason he finds himself in title contention once more. Determining that he would use his power which as we discussed is usually what people point too as the last thing to go on a fighter & focusing heavy on boxing training has done well for Jose. I don’t know how much this old dog still has in him but I will say that I will be here watching and laughing as Jose single handedly destroys every piece of conventional wisdom that we have. Long live the King Of Rio.
Authors Note:
Thanks for reading. I hope I was able to convey “A thing or two about a thing or two” in regards to Jose Aldo and him combating father time. I appreciate your interest. Until next time.
Your’s Truly,
– Smoke
