Rani Yahya is only thirty five years old but he seems to have been around forever. Consider this: Leo Vieira is now a fatherly coaching figure in the grappling world. Eddie Bravo and Royler Gracie are both old men. Yahya was their peer and competed in their division when Vieira took the 66kg crown at ADCC 2003. With fighters it is often mileage that matters more than age, so consider that Yahya just fought his seventeenth fight with the UFC and had seven WEC bouts under his belt when the UFC absorbed that company in 2011.

On Saturday night, Yahya met a younger, larger and less worn down fighter in Enrique Barzola and after a strong start, Yahya fell off and only managed a hard fought draw. But in that three act drama, Yahya showed many of the looks that make him unique, some significant new developments, and a number of factors that make his jiu jitsu work for MMA where so many accomplished grapplers have fallen down.

Something which Yahya has done for a long time is use a high crotch or head outside single to take opponents down. This is not completely abhorrent and there have been a number of good high crotch users in MMA, but it is still far from the norm. If a fighter picks up a traditional single leg, the opponent’s defences are largely just undoing the attacking fighter’s controls and getting back to zero. When attacking the single with the head on the outside, a fighter tends to open himself up more to direct counter attacks—the switch, butt drags to the back, the crucifix and most importantly the guillotine choke which, obviously, does not exist as a threat in other forms of wrestling.

Studying the fighters who have routinely applied the head outside single in MMA, they tend to make adaptations to complicate the opponent’s counter attacks. Daniel Cormier, for instance, does a great job of keeping his opponents off balance and will chain attacks from there. You will also notice that the amount of movement Cormier generates once he has picked up the leg also makes it possible for him to attack foot sweeps from the position more than anyone else you will see in MMA.

Jake Shields has also had great success with the head outside single but isn’t able to throw opponents around by it in the same way that Daniel Cormier does. One consideration that Shields seems to make is to keep his ear pressed to the side of the opponent’s thigh. It can look a little odd next to more textbook wrestling examples, but it often prevents the opponent from shooting their wrist through under the throat, parallel to the ground. It makes life a lot more difficult if you have to pull a fighter up your leg before you can attack a guillotine.

Shields and Yahya both use the crackdown to get the opponent on the mat from the head outside single and then they are left in this awkward position where the opponent is threatening their back.