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In my first article on the MMA metagame, I discussed how broad strategic and tactical discipline often overrides traditional depth of skill. With many fighters, nominal areas of advantage can be muted, shut off, or simply avoided with the right strategic approach in mind, provided they also possess the tactical efficacy to pull it off. In this piece, I will be discussing defense in MMA, one of the most fundamentally crucial, yet curiously underdeveloped facets in the sport and how defense in MMA differs in philosophy from boxing, largely to its own detriment.

Introduction

MMA is built on initiative. It is largely representative of how nascent the sport truly is, that many fights can be broken down into such simple terms as who is coming forward or who sets the pace. If you listen to fighters being interviewed before an upcoming bout, you typically hear them say something along the lines of “I don’t prepare for specific opponents. I just want to go out and enforce my game.”

That is all well and good, but it also highlights how much success in MMA is facilitated by controlling engagements. Not only this, but it comes at the cost of defensive development, since defense is fundamentally its own reward, it can be viewed as passive compared to offense. As a result, the notion of defense in MMA is secondary and is consistently neglected in a fighter’s training.

I will be analyzing what a great defensive system looks like in MMA, how the emphasis for offensive initiative differs from boxing, and why defense is so often binary in the sport, as opposed to properly integrated.

Components of a Defensive System

My friend and colleague Ryan Wagner once described striking defense in MMA as threefold: head, hands, and feet:

Head/Trunk: Movement of the head can be either proactive or reactive. Consummate pocket boxers such as Jimmie Rivera and Petr Yan understand the value of preemptively weaving behind straight punches or weaving into hooks to set them up. It displaces one's head and trunk, meaning that any counters thrown at the target they just presented will likely miss. On the other hand, defensive standouts like Robbie Lawler and Jose Aldo possess great reactive head movement. They make their bones by seeing incoming punches, maneuvering around them slightly, and then countering. Both men fold over their hips, and combine folding over their lead and rear hips to move defensively, as well as opening up opportunities for their own strikes. (Ex: Aldo’s pull counter to the jab.) Lawler and Aldo are unique in the sense that they are both eminently capable of seeing multiple punches coming, and their head movement doesn’t compromise positioning. As such, they are able to move their head in layers, always keeping another route open for their head to move as exchanges get deeper.

Hands/Arms: Hands (the entire arm, really) are ostensibly less viable for blocking in comparison to boxing, for the simple reason that the surface area of the gloves is smaller. A basic shell won’t get you very far in MMA.



However, hand or arm guards possess tremendous value if fighters understand how to properly utilize them. Handsy fighters such as Conor McGregor prefer to actively measure distance, hold, paw, and drag their opponent’s hands to filter their offense and obstruct their ability to jab and feint. Lawler and Jorge Masvidal are standouts here, as well, demonstrating an excellent ability to blend parries, hand traps, and blocks. Israel Adesanya is great at posting with his hands, and tucking his chin behind his lead shoulder and Yoel Romero has utilized several different forms of forearm guard including “the lock,” coined by boxing great Archie Moore. Hand placement/guards are important, but defense doesn’t end with where you place your hands.

Feet: Foot positioning is the third, and arguably most crucial element of defense. Not only are subtle angles, lateral movement, and pivots vital for a fighter’s footwork to maintain solid positioning, but the stance itself is a fundamental component of MMA. An even-bladed stance such as Aldo’s makes kicking extremely difficult against him, since his weight is rarely uneven and his lead leg (the subtle steps he takes to position himself with his lead leg, more accurately) is light enough that he can check kicks.



We’ve lauded the footwork of Aldo, Adesanya, and Vartanyan before, and while all three have very different goals with their footwork and positioning, it is notable how well it insulates them in terms of distance, angles, and ringcraft. All three men understand the importance of positioning in relation to their opponent, and their own positioning in relation to the cage around them. In simpler terms, footwork relates to pivoting, circling, offensive and defensive angles, and distance management, and positioning is the foundation that all of these components are built upon.

With the exception of a takedown threat sometimes influencing footwork, nothing I just listed in the previous three paragraphs is particularly unique to MMA. Nak Muays utilize more variants of guard with more proficiency. Dutch kickboxers, along with Nak Muays, are far better at integrating hand traps and parries, and no one in MMA has footwork comparable to that of Pernell Whitaker or Vasyl Lomachenko. It is true that these three elements of defense are often better represented elsewhere, but in MMA, there are more threats of which to keep track. When a technically sound fighter in a specifically defined area is thrown into a fight they are unfamiliar with, they typically begin to break down.

However, it is also worth noting how few fighters in MMA exercise all three of these components. I listed fighters above who are good examples of each component, but an even smaller handful of fighters have built a defensive system encompassing them all.

What do I mean when I say “defensive system?” Plenty of MMA fighters have been coached into possessing one or two of the previous three components to varying degrees of depth. A comprehensive defensive system is a fully integrated structure of defensive tools that work in concert and aren’t abandoned in favor of offense. To explain what a defensive system looks like, it might first be helpful to examine some lackluster defensive systems fighters in MMA before breaking down a successful one.

Pundits like Luke Thomas blew their wads when they saw Kelvin Gastelum moving his head against Israel Adesanya, but conveniently ignored how inconsistent Kelvin was at employing it. Despite making more of an effort to evade punches to the head, he generally just bobbed his head from side-to-side and was never in position to take advantage of his opponent throwing. He wasn’t folding at the hip to draw and duck under Izzy’s punches before smacking the body, and he wasn’t able to comfortably work himself into range with his feet under him consistently to really engage the pocket. In short, Gastelum was all offense or all defense without any meaningful integration between the two, and it got him killed by the end of the fight. It was encouraging to see Gastelum attempting to broaden his defensive toolbox, but it was still a fairly shallow effort.

Shane Burgos is a particular favorite of this writer with his voracious pressure, body punching, and comfort in heated exchanges, but his defense (while active) is nascent. Burgos is capable of moving his head offline proactively and reactively, but his footwork is plodding, his hand placement is often lackadaisical, and his head movement still falls apart in layers. He has defensive options, but they don’t deepen if an exchange does, which catches him out.

One of the best examples I can give for a fighter possessing a layered defensive system is Robbie Lawler, particularly around his 2013-2014 resurgence. Whereas Aldo was comfortable slowing the pace of a fight, Lawler preferred to walk down his opponents, figure out what they were planning to do, and then obliterate them. At his core, he was a fighter who demands a lot of engagements within a fight. Naturally, he was in the line of fire far more than Aldo preferred to be, but Lawler also had a defensive system in place where he could afford to stand in the line of fire.

Lawler used hand parries as well as any fighter I’ve ever seen in MMA, dragging jabs out of the way, pawing and pushing incoming punches away, and using his arms to block and catch punches before returning fire. He could roll, slip, pull, and duck under multiple punches at a time, always keeping another pathway open for his head to move. Finally, his footwork was much better than I’ve ever seen it get credit for, constantly wedging his foot on the inside of his opponent’s centerline. Against orthodox opponents, Lawler was a comfortable inside-angle counterpuncher off the backfoot (often confusing his opponents) and against southpaws, he was still capable of taking subtle angles in the pocket to outposition them. He wasn’t simply plodding into the pocket either. Robbie would fold over his lead hip, utilizing upper body movement with his torso and shoulders to enter range, all while keeping his feet under him.

The key is that all of these components worked together. He would slip while parrying an incoming punch. He would proactively duck his head after throwing a lead hook. His hunched shoulders would hide his chin, while he reached for an opponent’s lead hand. When Lawler committed to a step-in, he would either be initiating a serious combination of punches or retract immediately. There were drawbacks (particularly in his susceptibility to being kicked), but it was a system that had layers to it and it was tailored perfectly for Lawler as a fighter. For all of the praise Robbie Lawler has received in his career, his actual craft as a fighter goes unnoticed far too often for my liking.

Not only did each component in Lawler’s defense work well in concert, it blended with offense seamlessly. His defense didn’t evaporate when he committed to leading, and his defense didn’t eliminate his ability to put out meaningful offense. Lawler wants to exchange with people, because he knows he can win exchanges and most MMA fighters simply haven’t developed their ability to box the same way. Rory MacDonald and Johny Hendricks were desperate to keep Lawler on the outside, where both men found success kicking at his body and legs, but the skill and comfort disparity when Lawler forced them into the pocket was evident. Despite being excellent in exchanges, Robbie’s approach allowed him to control the engagements. (Notably, the fighters who refused to fight at Lawler’s pace, such as RDA and Covington, often outpaced him quite badly.)

Robbie Lawler also competed in MMA with a unique part of boxing philosophy baked into his style. In a sport almost entirely focused around initiative, Lawler had the patience to give away early rounds to build attack patterns on his opponents before truly beginning his assault. Against Johny Hendricks, Lawler took the first two rounds (10 minutes of a 25 minute fight) almost completely off, purely to get a feel for his opponent’s timing, speed, rhythm, and favored combinations. This is a classic boxing strategy, (one often replicated by Floyd Mayweather, for instance) but in MMA, this seems utterly foreign. For most fighters and coaches, this would be a waste of two crucial rounds. For Lawler, this was a way to find the cracks in his opponent’s approach before exploiting them. There are only a handful of fighters who could safely give two rounds of a fight away, and even fewer who could make use of that information to build a tactical approach mid-fight.

By no means was Robbie Lawler a perfect fighter, but he was an incredibly deep technician whose defense remains a standout across the entire sport. He understood the tactical and strategic importance that active defense played in his success, and wove his offense into his defense instead of simply sacrificing one for the other.

Differing Emphasis

MMA isn’t homogenized the same way boxing is. If you walk into a decent boxing gym anywhere in the country and ask to be taught how to fight, you will likely be taught how to throw a jab, how to pivot, and how to move your head. These are fundamental components in any boxer’s toolbox, regardless of their depth and application of each one. In MMA, more time must be devoted to clinching, wrestling, grappling from top, grappling from bottom, and striking. There is simply less time to emphasize the individual components, and more emphasis on the breadth of areas a fight may take place. To some extent, I understand why. However, because of this, it can also lead to some fairly severe gaps in a fighter’s game.

Boxers typically have longer careers than MMA fighters, sometimes by absurd degrees. Between amateur and professional bouts, plenty of boxers rack up hundreds of matches during the course of their careers. In MMA, you’re lucky if you can make it more than 10 years without suffering a steep decline. While the relentless matchmaking of MMA is certainly relevant in this discussion, the sport of boxing is also taught and trained in such a way that encourages fighter preservation. Boxers aren’t taught to simply enforce their games as fast and as hard as they can. They learn to command fights on their own terms, limiting exchanges without exerting too much. So much time in the ring means that fighters are more likely to exercise their skillsets and try out various defensive maneuvers, tactical options, and strategies without risking losing momentum.

The same is not true for MMA fighters. There is a much higher probability of a fight falling out of your hands, which means controlling the initiative is fundamental. If a boxer loses one exchange, they know there will be dozens more just like it before the final bell rings to turn it around. There is useful information to be gleaned from a losing exchange in boxing. When an MMA fighter loses an exchange, they frequently become anxious that the opportunity for more winning exchanges is dwindling.

I don’t know if the difference can be boiled down to a single reason, so here is a short list of factors that might contribute to this dichotomy between the two sports:

Fight length: Boxing matches can vary from 4 x 3 (rounds x minutes), to 6, 8, 10, and 12 rounds. This is both a lot more and a lot less time in specific bouts, so boxers gain a greater opportunity to exercise different strategies and tactics. In MMA, fighters are either 3 x 5 or 5 x 5, with longer rounds but shorter fights overall. There is less time to burn if a decision is to be won, yet more time within a round for momentum to change, and thus more incentive to get to work right off the bat.

Phases: Boxing is only once discipline within a great many in MMA. It is crucial that the average MMA fighter is satisfactory on the outside, inside, clinch, transitions, and mat. Even as fighters narrow the focus of their games over time, training still needs to be accounted for in every phase. Otherwise, skills atrophy and fighters might develop severe weaknesses in specific areas. At the very least, a boxer susceptible to a southpaw jabber should recognize the threat in front of them and find some familiarity within it. When Dustin Poirier fought Khabib Nurmagomedov, he looked as if he’d never encountered a wrestler in his career before.

Matchmaking: In boxing, softballs and tuneup fights are abundant, sometimes to a fighter’s own detriment. Boxers can bounce back safely, earn some valuable time in the ring, and grow in confidence. In MMA, matchmaking is grueling. There is less time to actively learn during a fight, and this is exacerbated in major organizations. Rarely do UFC fighters develop dramatically during their time in the big leagues. Instead, it is a place for finished products to fight finished products. (The ones who do develop dramatically often wind up being truly special fighters, like Max Holloway and Israel Adesanya.)

Coaching: As previously stated, defense is valued heavily in boxing from the beginning, so boxers learn to integrate defense into what they do from early in their training. While not every high-level boxer has the same level of basic defensive acumen, it is still a much higher bar than the coaching in MMA sets. In hilariously counterproductive moments, MMA fighters can even be coached defense that actively sabotages their own game. (Ex: Cain Velasquez moving his head only after he’s already been punched in the face, throwing himself way out of position in the process and exhausting himself to absolutely no benefit whatsoever.)

Misunderstanding of Defense: Having good defense doesn’t inherently mean “not being hit.” A boxer with the initiative of Oleksandr Usyk is going to be in the line of fire quite a bit, so him getting hit isn’t indicative of poor defense. (On the contrary, it is the exact opposite for Usyk.) Conversely, fighters in MMA are a lot more eager to just not get hit, and will exercise legitimately bad habits, even if it results in them ostensibly taking less damage. (Ex: Jon Jones making a concerted effort to fight defensively, despite leaning way out of position, having no systematic head movement whatsoever, and shuffling backward, occasionally in an outright run with his back turned to his opponent.)

Incentive: Flatly, boxers are paid more than MMA fighters and they are encouraged to preserve themselves. They aren’t being paid $20,000 to show and $20,000 to win, so the pressure is simply on their ability to walk away with their hand raised. In the UFC, bonuses are given to fighters who put forth valiant (sometimes senseless) performances in exciting fights. Boxers are incentivized to win their fights. MMA fighters are also incentivized to win, but rewarded for losing with grit and thrill. Why play defensive when you can brawl for an extra $50,000?

All of these individual points could be articles in and of themselves (and there are likely even more that I’m missing here), but when you line them up, the thesis becomes clear. Succeeding in MMA requires a vastly different approach than boxing, and the metagame reflects the preference of offense in comparison to defense. This is probably also why MMA fighters have much shorter careers than boxers, by and large.

If possessing true defensive depth is something of a rarity in MMA, then the next best thing would be fighters who possess a fair amount of defensive craft. Fighters like Jorge Masvidal, Calvin Kattar, and Joseph Benavidez are not traditionally the deepest defensively, but they are aware and disciplined within their defensive options. If Masvidal sees an opponent looking for a specific strike (such as a left hook, closing off an exchange), he will do his best to evade it with consistency. If Benavidez starts feeling an opponent’s timing and rhythm, he can use what he has to disrupt it. These guys aren’t likely to get hit by the same punch twice, and they all have good eyes to make tactical inferences within exchanges. That counts for a lot. As I discussed in my first article on the MMA metagame, being crafty and aware can sometimes close the skill gap.

Initiative & Output

As I stated in the introduction, the meta of MMA is about doing more than your opponent. Enforcing your game is the priority, because MMA facilitates a lot of different games that can be played. Even at the highest levels of the sport, it is still fairly rare to see fighters actively attempt to limit the arsenal or output of their opponent. In general, they usually simply try to do more than their opponents, and fights tend to progress into wars of attrition.

Dustin Poirier vs. Max Holloway II is, for my money, the best fight of the last five years in MMA, but despite how much I love it, it is also worth noting how much the fight is hinged on output. Both Poirier and Holloway are tremendously skilled fighters in their own right, but the notion of limiting exchanges and disarming the opponent were lost causes in this fight. Neither Poirier nor Holloway could stop themselves from taking every available opportunity to layer in hellacious volleys of punches, and the opponent on the receiving end usually just had to endure it or try their best to avoid getting hit.

When Jon Jones and Daniel Cormier faced off in their historic rematch at UFC 214, Cormier vastly outperformed his previous effort against Jones, with less interest in clinching and wrestling, instead just relying on walking Jones down and throwing combinations in the pocket. It was a valiant effort from the former champion, but it is telling that Cormier didn’t look any more prepared to deal with Jones’ own offense. The entire philosophy of his approach was focused around outworking the younger, tougher, more diverse opponent. Aside from countering a few linear kicks, Cormier was forced to leverage his pace, durability, and waning athleticism against Jones and it failed.

Conversely, Jose Aldo built the greatest title reign in UFC history off of a defensively minded and structured game. He didn’t care if opponents could throw more punches and kicks per round than him, because he was nowhere to be found if they began attacking. Aldo understood the importance of denying the takedown in MMA, so he trained himself to be impenetrable as a defensive wrestler. If an opponent’s gameplan was to take him down, they had already lost. If an opponent became intimidated or scared off, Aldo would happily slow the pace of a fight down and comfortably win the rounds without any sort of resistance. If opponents did attempt to needle through Aldo’s impeccable defense, they would typically find themselves in a layered exchange with a merciless puncher, getting hit very, very hard in the face or body. The genius of Jose Aldo was his ability to own the initiative in a fight without having to expend very much output.

It wasn’t that Aldo sacrificed his own offense for the sake of being defensive; just the opposite. Jose Aldo’s defense was designed to emphasize his own offense, while mitigating his opponent’s. Aldo could afford to limit exchanges, because his style was so precise that he knew he would win them. If a five-round decision could be won with nothing but a jab and a pivot, Aldo made it happen, but when the featherweight needed to go deeper into his toolbox, he always could. During his reign, it took truly exceptional fighters to push him into higher gears, such as Chad Mendes. My friend and colleague Lukasz Fenrych once said that it is unlikely we ever see an MMA fighter with as much command of the sport as someone like Roberto Durán has over boxing, but Jose Aldo is still the closest one.

I’m not saying every fighter should attempt to be Jose Aldo, but more fighters should internalize what made Aldo special and configure how a defensively structured game can emphasize offense, as opposed to mitigate it. This can work both ways. At its worst, we get fighters like Tyron Woodley, who certainly prioritizes defense, generally at the expense of any sort of offensive output or even variety. Woodley’s technical toolbox is shallow, and the technical evolution of his style of the years has led to less and less initiative to the point of near inertia.

A common excuse for Woodley is that he’s branded as a counterpuncher, and therefore is less culpable to initiate, but this is false. Not only are counterpunchers far more active in enforcing their games and commanding engagements (see; Conor McGregor, Alexandr Shabliy), but Woodley is only capable of counterpunching when opponents overextend against him with large, committed punches. Otherwise, Woodley is entirely reliant on his speed to crush the often-wide distance between him and his opponent with either an overhand right or a takedown. When he’s not attempting one of these two things, he glues himself to the cage, parries and shuffles away from any exchange an opponent attempts, and circles out. There are the only two significant threats that Woodley offers, and it is an indictment of his training and discipline to see how badly these two tools have failed him on certain occasions. Whether an opponent stays at the absolute peak of their range and just fences Woodley with feints and volume (Rory MacDonald) or walks him down and bludgeons him along the fence (Kamaru Usman and Jake Shields), Woodley’s losses are often blowouts. To this day, Woodley has given me no reason to pick him over an opponent with initiative.

I’m using Tyron Woodley as an example to demonstrate how an over-reliance of defense at the expense of offense is an overcorrection. Woodley represents a fighter committed to a defensive approach without any of the offensive depth to make it work consistently. In a vacuum, it can be argued that Woodley has good defense, but how much is that defense worth if it drastically limits his offensive options and falls apart when engagements can no longer be controlled? When fighters are able to push Aldo into deeper exchanges, Aldo will go as deep as he needs to into his own toolbox to respond. The same is not true for Tyron Woodley.

Chris Weidman might be the diametric opposite of Tyron Woodley. Weidman was once a preternaturally gifted pressure fighter with exceptional cage-cutting footwork and a natural understanding of how to control the distance in front of him. He was an extremely powerful offensive wrestling and top position threat, he had a decent striking toolbox to work with, and he was a strong, durable athlete. When Weidman had the initiative, he was a tremendous offensive threat in almost every phase. The problem for Weidman was his complete lack of any defensive depth anywhere. If an opponent was able to push him back, Chris often just became a walking target for opponents to tee off on, and he would generally just shell until opponents stopped hitting him. The more Weidman’s athleticism began to fade, the more his weakness off the backfoot and defensive absence became primary culprits. After a losing round, Weidman’s corner advice would often boil down to “push forward,” and eventually, this simply couldn’t fix the larger problem underneath.

Both Tyron Woodley and Chris Weidman have had considerable success in their careers, and both men have been on the receiving end of some brutal losses. What I’m saying is there must be a balance between the two.

Last Thing A Fighter Develops

Friend of The Fight Site (and great follow on Twitter) HaXxorIzed brought up an astute point about Max Holloway and his defensive development: