DiamondElbows’ class on Defensive Wrestling in MMA, Part 2: Strict Takedown Defense, Part One; Separation from open space shots

Read Time:35 Minute, 38 Second

Disclaimer: a lot of these are gonna be straight up bad shots, but they still illustrate certain important principles that I’d like to cover here, so um, anyway, here we go.

Also GIPHY won’t let me upload long sequences so GFYCAT and GIPHY will be switched between

Welcome back y’all, this is DiamondElbows, here to take you through part two; separation from open space shots. If you missed part one, it’s here.

To the untrained eye this is the most obvious defensive grappling maneuver, yet this will probably be the longest article of this series because it’s down to the tiniest details. Like I said, this is the easiest to spot; your actual skill in wrestling exchanges. This is what transfers the best from all those olympians and all-americans and sambo champions; what to do when people grab your leg in the center of the mat. Nothing really “MMA” related yet, just good ‘ol fashioned wrastlin.

Of course; the individual responses to each attempt vary significantly, so I will divide this into four components;

One, the initial response.

Two, mitigating or competing in the longer wrestling exchanges.

Three, the clinch

Four, the cage

We will cover about one and a half for this article, by the way.

As a grappler with the striking abilities of a paralyzed toddler, this is the most familiar aspect of defensive wrestling for me, so hopefully those who are less educated on the specific nuances of it can get something out of this. Wrestlers will nod their heads and agree, but hopefully the few wrestlers less knowledgeable than me (DiamondElbows is a mediocre practitioner, FYI) can gain a more conceptual understanding of it rather than being limited to strictly practical application.

The obvious response to a takedown attempt is to sprawl. Fast.

“Good hips” is in reference to one’s ability to sprawl on a shot, and stifle the attacking wrestler’s momentum. What’s important here are two things.

One: how fast the reaction was

Cejudo throws a low kick, Cruz reacts with his signature reactive shot. However, Cejudo’s sprawl and defensive reaction is lighting fast, throwing his hips far, far away from Cruz’s hands and breaking his grip

Two: contact with the hips

If your sprawl was slow as hell, that’s obviously not a good sign. A good shot requires momentum and drive, so slow sprawls simply get bowled over.

Hunto lunges in with a left hook, taking him out of position, and he was too slow to react to Blaydes’ reactive double leg, sending him flying. He seemed to try to fight the underhooks, but too late, and the drive sends him falling down.

If you react fast enough from the outside, their hands are too far from your lightning-fast, far out hips in order to grab anything. You are probably going to face-plant if you’re the wrestler. On the other hand, if you’re slow, and the sprawl isn’t timed well, they’ve got to your hips, and probably have taken you down.

Mendes face-plants Guida; there’s more detail in this sequence that I’ll break down later, but for now, notice how fast Chad was here. It’s as simple as “sprawl fast” but it’s so important

The second is about destroying their contact with your hips. If you’re fighting a good wrestler, they’re going to be able to make contact eventually. But when they get a good shot in, how fast do your hips separate from their hands?

This is the second thing about a sprawl in MMA; a good shot is about penetration, or getting deep on the takedown, especially in MMA;

Burroughs got in deep on the hips here, and his drive was too much for a delayed defense to stand a chance against

In mat wrestling, competitors are forced into a small area and have the objective to engage at that range, in close. And in freestyle, being pushed out of it means a point for your opponent. In both folkstyle and freestyle, not meeting your opponent in the center results in stall warnings.

Yazdani uses his grip on Taylor’s collar tie to secure and underhook by fighting the wrist first, and then sinking it in; standing off at an angle from Taylor’s body, and trying for head position, threatens his signature knee-tap and long double leg, letting his drive and physicality shove Taylor out of bounds, and getting him a point.

There is no such obligation in MMA; as a result, because of how far the distance is, closing the distance and getting a good entry on a shot is the most important aspect of taking people down in MMA(article series may come out after); in more conventional terms, this is getting as close to them as possible in order to keep a good grip on them. If they can only touch your hips for a second or two and are thrown off completely, that is a good thing, and pretty impressive.

Ghasempour uses Snyder’s snapdown to get in on a shot, but Snyder halts it via sprawling. Ghasem comes back up for a single leg, but Snyder’s sprawl is far too fast; despite the contact with his hips, Snyder completely stifled his drive, so this isn’t a bad look, compared to extended contact with his hips.

Any good shot is going to make contact with you at some point, assuming you’re fighting a good wrestler. Actual contact is ok in terms of strict TDD; avoiding contact altogether is something that will be discussed in part four. If you can rip your hips free of said contact and prevent extended periods, however, that’s not a cause for worry.

A gassed, tired, and hurt Silva shot, and managed to make extended contact with Pereira’s hips. The sprawl came afterward, and was delayed and slow.

The end of the sequence is pretty ugly due to Chandler bouncing off of the cage, and the guillotine wasn’t the smartest move, but Bendo got a decent shot, and Chandler was very fast with how he reacted; the cage got in the way, but when he found himself back on top of Benson, he was quick to get his hips back and snatch up a front headlock.

Now, of course, it is possible to badly, badly time it.

Jan’s sprawls, then seems to like, stop, because it maybe worked TOO well? He doesn’t recover fast enough anyway, and the rest of it is just an exhausted 220 lb man falling around. (I love Jan, but he will be one of three clips here)

Or like, not do it at all, an example of which you’ll see later.

There are few and far examples of hip wizardry in MMA, because it’s such a rare thing to have. It takes insane reaction times and dexterity; people like Whittaker, Aldo, Jones, and, underrated shouts, St-Pierre, are rare.

GSP getting caught in one of these collisions and making it look foolish is extremely impressive, no matter who it is
Lunging into a right hand puts his weight far, far above his hips, and in a terrible spot to sprawl
Yet he’s so damn fast he’s able to whizzer and shrug trigg off pic.twitter.com/U4Z4KW9lx9
— 𝓕𝓮𝓼𝓽𝓲𝓿𝓮 𝓓𝓲𝓪𝓶𝓸𝓷𝓭𝓔𝓵𝓫𝓸𝔀𝓼 💎 (@DiamondElbows) December 13, 2022

I know it’s self promotion, but also, I care about my computer storage

A good sprawl not only brings one’s hips away, it puts all of one’s weight on an opponent’s grip, hopefully destroying it as I said, and destroys their posture while halting their drive; the principles of a good shot, but in reverse. Additionally, we have the next two basic techniques, as any wrestler knows; stuffing the head, and a whizzer.

Nice single, but a strong whizzer and a stuffed head, as well as a strong sprawl completely halt a guy known for his drive on shots. And even when he’s able to budge GSP, and get into some chaining, GSP is too dexterous and gets that leg far, far away. The drive is completely flattened by the whizzer and sends him face-planting.

Stuffing the head destroys their posture even more, forcing the wrestler to either drive with their head down, or get their head up, and then drive. People like, say, Koscheck, who could simply hulk through this, are one in a million. Most of the time, when done correctly, wrestlers face-plant on the ground. You can push down and away on the head to destroy their posture, like you saw with GSP and Koscheck there.

Or cross-face them hard and intercept their momentum, then throw back with force of your own, breaking it completely. A cross-face meets the momentum head-on, stuffing the head redirects it into the floor. As long as they achieve their goal, both are perfectly fine.

A lot of this is Arman’s poor double leg form, but you can see Gigaos cross-face him down. Also, it wouldn’t be a DiamondElbows anything without shitting on Tsarukyan

And if you don’t do it fast enough, or at all, you’re going down.

Notice how delayed Luque’s whizzer and cross-face are: he goes down

The other basic technique is the whizzer; this iron bar of an arm prevents the wrestler from getting any sort of angle, and puts immense pressure on their grip.

Chandler ducks under Eddie’s punch and shoots: Alvarez frames between him and Chandler’s hips, and hips down hard on his whizzer, sending Mike falling all over the floor. Turning away from Chandler means that Mike’s drive sends him flying forward, and hipping down hard sends chandler to the ground.

Notice the good whizzer mechanics: it’s sunken deep, with a tucked rather than flared elbow, and Eddie is putting his hips and weight into it. If the whizzer is poor and weak, there isn’t much of a barrier to get past. The elbow should be down, and one should be putting weight and strength into it, not letting the elbow get flared up, and, as you’ll hear me beat to death in this article, put pressure on their grip.

And if you lose it, the barrier is gone, and you’re going down.

Notice how Wonderboy lost his balance as Burns ran the pipe, and his whizzer fell out of its place. This let Burns finish the takedown when Wonderboy’s hips were on the mat; if Wonderboy still had the whizzer, instead of gripping Burns’ head, he could’ve hipped down hard and based back up.

Suarez jabs to a single, but notice how Cooper loses the whizzer when Tatiana beings chaining and lifting the leg up; no barrier, no defense, taken down. Also, Tatiana is the coolest WMMA fighter ever and there is no arguement.

This applies to any of the three most basic takedown entries; the double leg, the head inside single(or just single leg, just to make it more basic), and the head outside single(or the high crotch). Stuffing the head inward if the head is on the outside, whizzering hard, and getting one’s hips back. Even other avenues, such as what some call “putting on the pants” when a single leg is attempted.

Gaethje did this fast: Khabib jabs to catch his low kick, to a single leg, so Gaethje immediately whizzers, cross-faces, and kicks his leg to the floor to plant it after getting it on the outside of Khabib’s legs.

However, the principles are universal; break the posture and grip, get one’s hips away from the opponent. I can’t think of any other ones other than, say, this, which will be covered eventually

Cody locks up a front headlock with lightning speed, then uses Dom’s momentum against him to carry him over. Notice how he rolls off to the side, not directly onto his back, rolling Dom around.

Now, let’s say you didn’t rip his hands completely free with your sprawl, as is often the case. In this case, you must get to a certain position in order to completely destroy their momentum and drive. Notice how the defensive wrestler immediately squared up completely with the offensive one in every good sprawl shown so far.

Hey, I said we’d come back to this. Mendes doesn’t just sprawl, continuing to bring his hips down despite Guida trying to drive on his double leg, he squares up with Clay and continually breaks his posture in order to defeat Guida’s insistent drive

Once the drive of the shot was mitigated, the currently static wrestler is desperately holding onto a leg; if they’ve shot a double, they’re desperately holding onto a single leg now, and the job of the defensive wrestler is to completely lock them down there.

The cage didn’t let Jorge finish his sprawl, so I’ll cover the actual takedown itself in the cage TDD article, but overall, this was a solid sprawl(colby shooting from his knees helped.) See how he stuffs the head with the whizzer in what is called a three-quarter quarter nelson and gets his hips out, getting square with Colby and going back with him when Colby drives. In my opinion, he should’ve spun around and gotten on top of Colby.

After Mike shoots, Gaethje spends a lil time elbowing his head beacuse this is MMA, and notice his grip on Chandler’s left ankle with his left hand, with prevents Chandler from turning the corner(grip on the right ankle accomplishes the same goal) but because Chandler kept driving, Gaethje squares his hips and pushes off of Chandler’s thighs; this extends Chandler’s arms and destroys his drive, and puts immense pressure on his grip. Chandler is now stuck

Circling towards them, ensuring that their head is down, and making them completely extended, which destroys their ability to get up, and pushing off of the hips puts even more strain on them. If they drive hard, trying to get around your body and finish the shot, circling with them destroys their advantageous angle and stifles their momentum.

From here, one can go to a front headlock series

Burns shoots, Khamzat stuffs his head in and whizzers, then immediately goes D’arcee. It’s possible to just grab a normal front headlock and spin around btw, but this is more MMA-related than pure wrestling so I thought I’d use it.

Or a reversal

Ilia sprawls, and I think Mitchell was too hurt and gassed to recovery from his shot properly, because he postures up slowly. Ilia gets a hard overhook and underhook and pancakes him, sending Bryce flying on his back

Or even elbow the head, though I wouldn’t recommend this one, as the effort and focus into the elbow can get you taken down.

Burns’ focus on elbowing the head takes his focus away from defending the takedown, letting Khamzat finish it

This breaks their grip if your initial sprawl didn’t do it already; I would say that urgency and speed are key here; the second the grip is established, you need to fight it off instead of wasting useless time punching them in the face.

Ankaleav grabs a single leg, and instead of turning his chest outward and whizzering, Jan spends useless time punching him in the face; Ank’s legs were destroyed by this point, which probly explains why he was unable to finish it. As a result, Jan is able to get his leg free and go to a clinch, but against a better wrestler, he would’ve been screwed

I love Jan, but bro, why.

This, by the way, is the key difference of when to punch or elbow them. Do it after you’ve established your needed position, and only for a little bit and for a specific purpose: for instance, Gaethje elbowed Chandler’s exposed head to force him to tuck it in, which is what he wanted anyway, and Justin could generate power off of his elbows from that position. There was no reason for Jan to punch Magomed, and there was no power generated from one leg.

There are other methods, such as underhooks, but in my opinion this often only works against lower competition. See Darren Till’s career. A favorite mutual of mine, @schwick6 made a good post about the flaws of Till’s defensive grappling

Darren just never seems to get his hips back. He always allows people to get in on his hips and legs, and then digs underhooks/use a whizzer to pry them off.

Works well against smaller guys. but against big, strong wrestlers no. https://t.co/Og6IUmVtPl pic.twitter.com/pFWr8LZ8Pm
— schwick (@schwick6) December 13, 2022

Spoiler: it’s about his hips, and this is what I meant about not sprawling at all

This brings us to stage two: mitigating or competing in the longer wrestling exchanges.

Let me explain chain wrestling to you for a second; chain wrestling is when a wrestler, who has failed his initial shot, is forced to find ways around the defenses by getting to certain positions.

Not gonna break this down, just enjoy this scramble

This will be explained more in depth if I cover offensive wrestling, but think of it as a series of doors leading into several rooms, and each room has potentially more doors and even more routes to go through.

It wouldn’t be a DiamondElbows… anything wihtout some mention of Frankie Edgar

The key to door one requires one to get into position X, allowing them to potentially unlock finish Y, which, if that fails, puts them in position Z. A deep chain wrestler is one that has as many doors as possible, and ways of breaking the defending fighter’s position. This often manifests as diverse finishes, and long wrestling sequences where they don’t seem to give up, and continue trying to finish their takedowns.

Khabib jabs, shoots to a double. Conor does a good job establishing a base, so he switches to the single leg, shoves his head into Conor’s chest, locks his hands, and lifts. His head in Conor’s chest breaks McGregor’s posture, letting him ragdoll Conor.

Chain wrestling is defined as simply a series of finishes that are unlocked in the event that one finish fails. The lines are pretty clear between one successful finish:

Nobody is calling this chain wrestling, this is a successful initial shot and finish, but if you think about it, it’s an extremely short chain wrestling finish on principle; he shoots, meets an initial crossface, and continues driving/circling to finish it

And multiple attempts leading up to a finish.

Cormier shoots a reactive high C, Barnett tries to get an underhook with his left arm & seems to be trying to fight the grip w/ his right arm and brace himself on the fence, as well as planting his leg down, so DC pulls him back and brings his left leg behind Josh’s right leg, trip

So think of it like this: Chain wrestling refers to the multiple opened doors, to go back to my analogy. If Mendes or St-Pierre shoot, because of their fantastic entries, they’ve got a crowbar to help them with an irrevocable access code to the first door and the first door only; running their feet and cutting the angle/turning the corner. Khabib, on the other hand, has a large keychain with many keys to many doors.

So as a result, I will call some things in this article chain wrestling that may not be chain wrestling in the traditional sense, but to keep things simple, will be referred to as chain wrestling, because “denying the finish” sounds stupid as hell.

I’ve already covered open space double leg defense, and stopping that initial drive and face-planting the wrestler. The typical response, bringing one’s head up and turning the corner, can be defended by sprawling harder and stuffing the head harder.

Most of the time, as I already mentioned, they switch desperately to a single leg takedown. Not only is it way easier to grab ahold of one leg rather than two when you’re sprawled out completely, with lower width to grab, single legs require a slightly different defense to doubles, and pretty much every single committed chain wrestler in MMA prefers the single leg.

Jabs to a head inside single leg, tries for a cage double, but switches back to a single leg. When he lifts Al up, Al’s leg is hanging on the outside, but because of the way Khabib pulled him away from the cage, Al is still square with him, and he isn’t pushing Khabib’s head down, so Khabib has superior posture. Trip, Al goes down.

They’re more likely to result in a chain sequence; in fact, pretty much all chain sequences start from singles, from a failed double leg transition to Mateuz Gamrot.

So the chain wrestler has two options; go all the way forward, and posture up into an iranian, or try to get around them/establish a dominant angle.

The former is so uncommon in MMA that I don’t think it should be covered, but the latter is extremely common, and as I, among others, have bemoaned on twitter multiple times, MMA fighters really don’t know how to defend single legs. As I once joked, they just spin a lil and grab the shorts. From slow reactions

As we’ve joked many times, Poirier with actually functioning hips is the GOAT of MMA. His sprawl is slow, and while he clearly knows what to do to Chandler’s head, he does the MMA fighter thing of spinning a lil and grabbing the shorts. Chandler, who actually had a wrestling background, responds by crunching down and picking him up, and notice how Dustin is sorta just a sitting duck in the air; his sprawl doesn’t exist here

To poor understanding of positioning.

Lewis sorta tries to push on the head but his other leg is just a free trip for Cormier, and he’s not only square with Cormier, he’s all the way to the other side lmao. As you’ll see later, he should be all the way to Cormier’s right or right in front of him, instead of crossing over to the left

So if you want to learn how to defend a single leg, look at prime Jose Aldo.

Aldo doesn’t just have a fast sprawl, he pivots away from Lamas, denying him the angle he needs to crackdown/run the pip, and limp-legging out and separating prevents Lamas from getting the time he needs to elevate the leg/treetop it

Notice the fact that Aldo is enforcing his own angle when defending a shot with everything; his footwork, his hands, etc. The wrestler wants to get all the way around, or completely 180 in order to potentially lift the leg up, unlock a trip, etc. Aldo says no, you aren’t getting to that angle in the first place. He eventually lip legs or rips the leg free, resulting in a failed takedown.

If the wrestler has the angle he wants on you, whether it be from a fast initial shot:

Weidman gets a lightning-fast initial shot, and gets his preferred angle: square, crackdown. Kelvin is too slow to react, so his leg is just limping in the air, and his balance isn’t good enough to deny the finish, hence he’s sat down

Or a sequence where you were unable to deny the position he wanted:

Cejudo hits a nice reactive double leg on DJ, but when DJ’s square with him after the sprawl, Henry keeps his left grip strong and picks the leg up. DJ doesn’t whizzer or hip away, giving Henry the position he needs: Henry’s right arm comes over the top while his left arm elevates DJ’s leg, sending him down via a beautiful knee-tap.

You’ve failed at your task.

The takeaway here is to deny the wrestler the position they need to chain. You haven’t taken their keys away, you’ve funneled them into going into one door specifically, and then barred it up. You do not need to play their game of dealing with every possible finish, because you’re refusing to play that game in the first place. Is the chain wrestler significantly deeper than you the longer the fight goes? Possibly, but does it really matter? Not really, since they cannot unlock it.

The thing about chain wrestling is that the wrestler has a much higher hill to climb. Sound positioning and strong barriers to crossing certain positions can mitigate a gap in depth. If depth is “how far you can go,” then the defense I describe is “you can’t even get into your car to drive, and I’m going to make it a nightmare for the car to even start.”

So let’s get into specifics, shall we?

The keys to me are funneling people into the positions you want, fighting off their grips to make chaining a nightmare, and being a stone wall in your preferred positions to prevent you from breaking them.

Notice Conor’s left hand constantly preventing Eddie from locking his hands together, and how he continually goes back when Eddie tries to get his grip back. Also constantly fighting for head position, preventing Eddie from breaking his posture. Additionally, his right leg is extremely difficult to budge, staying planted or on the outside of Eddie’s left leg, denying Alvarez the grip he needs to chain.

In terms of fighting grips, it gives the chain wrestler another barrier; how do you chain if you cannot lock your hands? Ripping their hands free and separating them pauses the whole sequence.

But if they can lock their hands, well:

This is an all-around pretty sequence: Jones shoots, DC stuffs the head on the inside, whizzers, and sprawls, reshoots to a high C as Jon stands back up. Jones immediately pushes Cormier’s head on the inside, and pushes him away, bending his knee/bringing his leg back downward. Hops around to keep his balance, then uses the established space to come up into a clinch exchange.

Jones is the 2nd greatest defensive wrestler in MMA history btw; notice how he breaks Cormier’s posture by moving his head around, makes his leg a nightmare to budge by bending it downward, and has the length and balance as a backup in case Cormier manages to trip him: Cormier was never even able to attempt a decent trip to respond to, because he couldn’t get past the barriers. Jones basically locked all of the doors. He funnels Cormier into a clinch exchange, breaking the grip fully. And Cormier himself illustrates bread and butter takedown defense.

Borg drops to a single leg, so DJ turns away, pushes his butt down, shoves his head, and gets his left knee about the line of Borg’s hands, putting pressure on his grip. If Borg was higher up, he’d whizzer and hip in, possibly grabbing his own angle in what is known as a “shin whizzer.” When Borg tries to sit up and come around, he falls into the typical sprawled-on single leg.

It doesn’t matter how many finishes Borg has from this position, or the depth to his chain wrestling as I said, because he’s stuck here. DJ is denying him the ability to get past a certain stage, or unlock the door, hence, Borg’s chain wrestling diversity is rendered completely meaningless. For a more advanced video on this position, click here and here.

Strong whizzers and positioning put absolutely incredible amounts of pressure on a wrestler’s grips. The wrestler is forced to overcome this before they even start their sequence; it exacerbates an already difficult task. Strong whizzers, as well as gripfighting, also completely cut off future wrestling exchanges because they cannot physically grab you, so their wrestling skill and depth is completely meaningless.

Aljo handfights into a shot, to which Yan sprawls, whizzers, and stuffs the head. However, when Aljo loses his grip, Yan’s right arm turns into a hook, and he attempts to secure a russian tie, or a two-on-one, with his left hand.

This completely cuts off the wrestling exchange by denying the grip; Aljo can know all the trips and finishes he wants, or run his feet as much as he wishes, but all of that is shut out by a single strong grip in that very instant. It’s barricading the metaphorical door.

These principles are universal as well, and apply to the countless ways to chain wrestle, from Khabib’s trips, to guys like Maia who swept from halfguard into a single leg; an extremely exotic position.

Maia jabs to set up a single leg: the entry isn’t good, so the sprawl comes quick. However, since Jorge nearly spins around him, Maia just brings his arm up around 0:04. Jorge whizzers but Maia simply runs his legs in and uses his left leg to hook Jorge’s right leg, which pulls himself up into a clinch. Once there, Maias left leg elevated Jorge’s right leg up. From 0:02 to 0:03 you can see Maia shift from using his ankle to his knee, letting him plant his foot back down. The right arm grabs single and left arm grips tightly. Jorge tries to sprawl so Maia, bringing his left knee up, elevates the leg and runs the pipe; turns head out, shoulder on hip, etc. Jorge’s guillotine and split stall Maia and lets Masvidal get back up, and even another attempt at a crackdown fails since hepops right back up; so Maia attacks double, but since Jorge fights his left hand, Maia bails on the shot, pulls halfguard, and uses the subsequent leg hook he has to circle around. He switches his grip at 0:08, which let’s him finish the shot at 0:17, using his head in Jorge’s chest and left leg behind Jorge’s other leg, sending him down

In case you didn’t notice, this author loves Maia.

Fortunately, the halfguard sweep is a way around single leg defense, not a way of avoiding the single leg itself. Notice how Maia’s arm is still occupied by the whizzer; he’s trying to bring his body around it, not breaking it in the first place. Constantly going back towards your preferred positions and integrating it on the fly can mitigate even the most exotic of takedowns, which is what Jorge did, although his flared elbow whizzer at 3 ish seconds wasn’t good, and let Maia get deeper on the shot.

Maia straight up cannot get past Woodley’s whizzer and grip; his chain wrestling is irrelevant because he’s not even in contact with Tyron. So when Woodley turns out and away, it’s almost like he flung Maia off of him.

It’s also about what defense you funnel them into, for instance, like what Cruz does here.

Joey B hits a reactive shot, Cruz whizzers, cross-faces, and uses his right arm to pummel in. Being ultra-long really helped here, but once they were on the cage, he kept good positioning in the clinch(will be covered next article) and used the clinch frames to delay Joey’s single leg and limp is way out of there.

A shorter man got underneath the taller man on a clean shot, so the taller man, Cruz, used his defense to shift it towards a place that favored him, the clinch, where his length and leverage were a cheat code and offered massive hills for Benavidez to climb.

Additionally, as I think I’ve alluded to before, you need to be absolutely ironclad in your barriers to subsequent chain wrestling. If you aren’t, the wrestler can overcome it via technique, strength, or both.

My big thing here is the flared elbow on Cory’s whizzer; he isn’t hipping down on it to the point where Aljo’s arm hurts, and Aljo is straight up stronger here. Additionally, grabbing the wrist, throwing the underhook up, and pulling Sandhagen down allows Sterling to complete the back-take. Aljo was able to break past his barrier with shocking ease.

A good example of complete stonewalls are guys like Jose Aldo, or Georges St-Pierre.

Notice how good of an entry Koscheck managed to get, locking onto a single leg? GSP has already managed to stop the drive; I won’t go into why, since that’s cage TDD, but consider this the same principle in action. Josh then spends a solid 23 seconds failing to get anything done; this is a guy known for his insane drive on shots as I said. By stone wall, I mean that GSP is halting it without going past the first gear. Josh managed to eventually get him down, but it took an immense amount of effort to hulk his way past that barrier GSP offered. Given that Koscheck has like, the third or fourth best double leg in MMA history, this is. areally good look for GSP.

A failure of this would be if the wrestler can budge you. Not actually move around, but, to extend my previous metaphor, open the door.

Cormier stalks Alex, cuts him off with a low kick, and goes to his single leg. Gus does a good job whizzering and turning away, and his right hand tries to fight off the grip, but Cormier is able to pull his leg in and break the whizzer: Gustafsson tries to switch over to a kimura, but he’s lifted up and sent flying.

The key here is that Gus’ “barriers” weren’t strong enough to prevent Cormier from unlocking his door, or getting the position that he wanted. It’s alright if Cormier actually moved him and forced him to take a couple steps, but Cormier was able to break past the whizzer and grip, allowing him to unlock the next stage, the finish. As a result, Gus was taken down. Additionally, keeping your posture where you want it and breaking theirs is extremely important, otherwise their body is much stronger than yours, and they can get to their finishes easier.

This is sorta like how Khabib got Conor down: reactive high C to the entering knee, breaks Dom’s posture because his head is up. Cruz tries to push off of it and whizzer, but keeping his arms strong forces them against a barrier that is Henry’s massive head. Hence, Cruz’s spine folds over, and Cejudo, now an iron bar below Cruz, lifts and pushes, sending Cruz down.

I’ll be going on a brief tangent about single leg defense by the way, so bear with me.

A lot of finishes from singles are either angling in and going for a crackdown/running the pipe, such as the Weidman clip showed, sitting them on their asses

I just love this takedown, alright? But anyway, like I said previously, Weidman gets the angle he wants, squaring up and ragdolling Kelvin’s leg, hence “angling in”

Or angling all the way out to the side, the most extreme version being a tree-top, where the wrestler elevates his opponent’s leg and tries for a trip.

Sterling catches a kick, traps TJ’s angle close to his body with his elbow, and lifts the leg up high. This is one variant, with the wrestler’s shoulder facing his opponent’s opposite shoudler

Rakic ducks under Jan’s blitz, grabs a single leg, pulls it in, then grabs the ankle and lifts it all the way up with both hands, then trips him. Notice how Jan’s whizzer is flopping out of place, his leg is moveable, and his head isn’t digging into Rakic’s temple, putting no pressure on Rakic’s grip. This is the other, more common variant, with the chest facing the same direction as the opponent’s

As a result, you need to have an answer to both. Good balance and a strong whizzer, hipping in, prevents them from running the pipe, while preventing the all the way out finish is about grip fighting.

Fitch falls to the ground and tries for a single leg: he has a good grip, and elevates. GSP choses to fight the grip here, and Fitch tries to run the pipe around 2.5 seconds: however, he’s stuck against a complete stone wall due to the balance. So then he goes double: GSP shoves his face on the inside, and keeps his leg stiff and upward, which sends them on the cage. Here, GSP takes a break, because he knows that Fitch can’t get past this, but I like how he responded when Fitch immediately resumed the sequence at 19 seconds: switches to single again, tries to run the pipe, gets his head stuffed, and is left facing a strong grip on his left wrist and a hard whizzer, with no way of breaking GSP’s base. Notice the constant repetition; no matter how deep the sequence goes, GSP forces him back into the same spot. Finally, Fitch falls over from GSPs weight, is sprawled on, and taken down himself in a nice reshot.

GSP isn’t going all the way out, but he’s forcing Fitch’s head continually on the inside, destroying his drive and posture, and he’s prepared for the other response, switching to double. Additionally, his insane balance is letting him spin around and stay up, and he’s funneling Fitch towards his preferred areas, where he knows Fitch cannot finish.

However, the problem with being square on a single is not only that your limbs are hanging free for another finish, it also loses any pressure on their grip. GSP is shoving his head inside, and funneling towards what he wants. Damir is not doing that, compared to Penn here.

Despite being square with Fitch, Penn is pushing his foot to the mat, fighting the hands, and adjusting to Fitch’s repositioning. He’s finding various ways to push the head down and fight the hands; being square isn’t good in my opinion, but he’s making that leg extremely difficult to lift.

Arman ducks under Damir’s head hook and grabs a single leg: Damir knows to stuff the head and get his leg on the outside, but he doesn’t pivot outward to deny Arman the angle, so he’s basically giving Arman a stalled double leg. As a result, his leg is free for the taking and he falls.

One of these is preventing the wrestler from going into longer exchanges by, like I said, funneling them into a certain position. St-Pierre and Penn are two that I’d put below Jose Aldo for the reason of staying square with their opponents sometimes, which just means less pressure on the wrestler’s grip, but they are able to put pressure on their opponent’s grip in other ways; when the opponent is square, they push the head down and inside, putting pressure on them despite the optimal response being to angle away. Damir failed to do that there, hence why he should’ve hipped away and outward, since he doesn’t have the built-in response of a Penn or GSP.

And notice the unbudgeable legs on singles? They kept them in the exact position they wanted the entire time, and made it impossible to even tree-top it in the first place. If that happens, you could always pull a Dodson.

What I want people to notice here, outside of his insane balance, is how Dodson keeps his leg on the outside of DJ’s leg around 3.5 seconds.

If you’re in that position, splitting away and keeping your opposite foot away to avoid a trip, and keeping your posture and balance while working to get your leg back is the right response, but avoiding it in the first place is even better. I’d always rate a defensive wrestler who can just say “no” to the tree-top higher than one who has to cheat their way out of it.

You could also kick out of a tree-top by the way, which brings me to the final stage, and where I think St-Pierre struggled, separation. Once you’ve stone-walled the wrestler, making it so that they don’t even have a hold of you anymore is the perfect final response to takedown attempts, for obvious reasons.

In my opinion, the best method for separation is limp legging; once again, Jose Aldo

It makes the leg a loose, easy thing to drag out, and does not require the explosive power of say, “Putting on the pants.” Scroll up, and notice how GSP, or even McGregor, all for their legs on the outside of their opponent’s legs. Like I said, this puts pressure on the grip, but Fitch and Eddie were able to stay in the sequences a little bit longer because putting on the pants doesn’t separate as fast as limp-legging. GSP and Conor did great otherwise, but separation, or giving the wrestler as little time as possible to work, is the final key that elevates guys like Aldo and Jones above others.

I would consider it more efficient, and more applicable to MMA. It also ties right into denying the wrestler their preferred angle; turning all the way away, like DJ’s shin whizzer, while their hands are occupied holding your leg, blocked by a whizzer or being fought off, means that they cannot just grab your turned away back, and in a sense, you are “square” with the, just in the opposite way.

Notices how Dodson turns away from DJ, trying to push off and limp-leg. He fails because he kinda just slides it out and doesn’t try to rip it out, but he balance-cheats his way out of the rest of the sequence

For more balance-cheating, check this out

Weidman/Romero thread:
Weidman uses his feinted jabs to set up his snatch single
Yoel is too quick and uses double underhooks to stifle his momentum
Spinning with him drives Weidman to the floor pic.twitter.com/ByQy3psqhJ
— 𝓕𝓮𝓼𝓽𝓲𝓿𝓮 𝓓𝓲𝓪𝓶𝓸𝓷𝓭𝓔𝓵𝓫𝓸𝔀𝓼 💎 (@DiamondElbows) July 30, 2022

Obviously, failing to separate results in the chain sequence only being extended. And if you can’t balance cheat your way through, you can get stuck in it.

Lawler sprawls, but is unable to break Hendrick’s grip on the cage and is taken down briefly; he is able to separate as they get back up and clinch, but he still got stuck in this sequence.

The thing is, however, that’s what some people want.

That, my dear reader, will be covered next time