Introducing Jack Slack's Inaugural Year End Awards

We have just enjoyed the last UFC card of the year, and its last fight (a sixty second, one kick knockout, no less) and it's a time to reflect. The job of writing year end awards is a tough one, because you know you're going to miss someone off or upset a group of people. For this reason, rather than the Fightland Awards for Excellence in Combat Sports, these are the Jack Slack Awards for Fights That He Watched This Year. But we'll call them the Slackys.

Game Plan of the Year – Jon Jones versus Glover Teixeira

When Glover Teixeira challenged for the light heavyweight title in April of this year, I was pessimistic of Teixeira's chances. All Teixeira has really shown in his bouts is a cracking right hand and some top level timing. I expected Jones to hang out at range with his low kicks and to tie up whenever Teixeira got close enough to hit him.

Instead, Jones got in Teixeira's face. Flattening Teixeira's stance along the fence (something we'll be taking a look at in the rapidly approaching first episode of my How to Enjoy a Fight web series), Jones kept his head underneath Teixeira's to stand the Brazilian upright, and used brutal elbows and bodywork. Jones' was well inside of Teixeira's swings, and his shorter, harder elbow strikes brutalized the face of the challenger.

Jones even took the chance to attempt to tear up Teixeira's power hand with an overhook Americana like old time dirty so-and-so, Sandy Saddler. The performance wasn't what I expected, but it was even better than I could have hoped. Jones took away Teixeira's right hand at close range, and won the fight where many erroneously thought Teixeira would have the edge. An infighting clinic worthy of Duran or Armstrong.

Honourable mention: Matt Brown versus Erick Silva. Brown couldn't afford to give Silva room to kick, and early on he made the mistake of hesitating on the outside. After taking a soul-snatching kick to the ribs, Brown recovered and poured the pressure on. Never giving Silva room to kick or even to think, Brown battered the young talent and sent him back to mismatches on Brazilian cards.

Henderson versus Khabilov is also worth a mention. There is no advantage so great as being the only man in the cage to have gone five rounds. Henderson kept Khabilov moving throughout the early rounds, and had him standing still and breathing hard by the end. A lovely left straight set up an easy rear naked choke.

Event of the Year – Glory: Last Man Standing

Glory: Last Man Standing was, in many respects, a disaster. The premature jump to pay-per-view hurt Glory World Series' pockets as reportedly only six thousand people bought the card. That being said, those people got to watch the best card of the year and the best kickboxing card since the death of K-1.

In an eight man, one-night tournament, Filip Verlinden tested the long absent Melvin Manhoef's chin, Joe Schilling avenged his two losses to Simon Marcus with a devastating knockout, and Wayne Barret knocked out Bogdan Stoica in mid air as if he was Fedor. It was Artem Levin who really impressed though. His evasive head movement, pin point counter punches, and follow up clinched knee strikes, and a crazy spinning backfist carried him to the tournament title.

If you weren't one of those six thousand people, you missed out. Make sure to catch the next Glory show, we can't afford to lose a company with the ability to put on cards like this.

Set Up of the Year

I've looked back through my work this year, and all of the fights that I've covered, but I don't know if there's been a better set up than the one that Fabricio Werdum used to take the UFC interim heavyweight title just a few weeks ago.

Being clouted with heavy shots from Mark Hunt, dragging the fight into the later rounds was seeming less and less plausible. Werdum had to get something done then and there. Shooting on Hunt, Werdum found himself on the underside of a heavy sprawl. As the two got back to their feet, Werdum made as if to shoot again. Hunt's hands and head dropped, and he was met with a knee strike straight to the dome instead.

Hunt tumbled to the mat and Werdum jumped in to finish the job with strikes. Werdum has never been the most dominant fighter—looking hittable in even his most one sided performances—but he might just be the craftiest finisher in heavyweight history.

Technical Turn-Around of the Year

T.J. Dillashaw.

There's no two ways about it, T.J. Dillashaw looks like a whole new man. Previous to his fight with Renan Barao, he had looked rudimentary on the feet at best. Pouring over his fight with Mike Easton and looking for stuff to write about in the lead up to his stepping in at the last minute against Barao, I wasn't shown much except his excellent wrestling.

When Dillashaw got in the cage with Barao, however, he put on a clinic. In with strikes and out on an angle, showing Barao a feint and nailing the champion after he'd whiffed a counter punch. Dillashaw stopped Barao in the fifth round in one of the most lop-sided performances of the year, but it was also one of the most beautiful.

Dillashaw found himself on the other end of an opponent switch up just a few months later. Where Barao had been thrown into confusion by his last minute replacement, Dillashaw simply went to work and finished Joe Soto with a high kick after four and a half entertaining, technical rounds.

This certainly isn't the same man who was wobbled while throwing himself off balance on the feet against John Dodson.

The “...But Why?” Award for Low Fight IQ

The award for worst game plan is hard to nail down, but it's an important one. It's hard to learn from success. Failure is the greatest instructor of all.

Ali Bagautinov came into a fight with Demetrious Johnson and routinely walked himself back onto the fence, attempting to throw one counter punch at a time against one of the most deceptive fighters in MMA. Even worse, Bagautinov came in with seemingly no plan, never had Johnson in danger, and then failed the drug test.

Nate Diaz, meanwhile, still hasn't realized that hanging his lead foot way out in front of him in his stance, with his toes turned in, makes it very hard to check kicks and causes him to fall over every time he takes one. With Benson Henderson and Josh Thomson already having shown him this in 2013, Rafael Dos Anjos hammered it home once again just a couple of weeks ago.

Alistair Overeem is also worth mentioning here. Against Ben Rothwell, Overeem attempted to swing right hands in against Rothwell, and run away. Rather than using his excellent clinch game, takedowns and ground and pound to rough up one of the most infamous gassers in the heavyweight division, Overeem looked like the timid fighter who attempted to punch and run against Sergei Kharitonov. Overeem looked much wiser in his demolition of Stefan Struve the other week, so we can hope that he's finally coming to his senses.

And let's not even talk about The Ghost of B.J. Penn. It's best to just forget that one and remember Penn for the incredible performances he had as a lightweight.

Breakout Technique of the Year – The Electric Chair Sweep

Eddie Bravo's Mastering the Rubber Guard has been one of the best selling martial arts manuals in the world for years. That being said, few actually play the guard games he lays out in the book—the overhook butterfly guard, the lockdown half guard, the rubber guard. With his win over Royler Gracie being the highlight of this competitive career, many considered Bravo something of a fluke and wrote off his innovations.

In his rematch with Royler Gracie earlier this year at Metamoris III, Bravo dominated the Brazilian legend, largely from the bottom of half guard as he repeatedly used the electric chair sweep to full effect. His passing of Gracie's leg over his head into what Bravo calls the stoner sweep, and the rolling 'vaporizer' attempt that came off of it all simply highlighted how complete Bravo's game has become from his lockdown half guard.

That match did a lot for the image of the electric chair sweep, but much more has been done for it by Garry Tonon. Tonon has been having the year of his grappling career. He's the hottest property on the no-gi scene, proving to be the star of Metamoris and Eddie Bravo Invitational events this year. Tonon performs interesting kimura baits from the underside of this sweep (check with my friend BJJ Scout for more on that), and used the electric chair sweep in the final minute of his bout with Zak Maxwell before securing a brutal heel hook.

It's appeared sporadically in grappling competitions over the years, and the Gracie brothers certainly don't like it, but the electric chair is a sweep with tremendous potential and shock value.

Honorable mentions:

The rear naked choke, turned into a neck crank. The classic Aoki grip neck crank has suddenly made its way into the UFC with several stoppages due to the technique in the last few months alone. Frankie Edgar's submission of Cub Swanson being the most memorable.

The sankaku-tobi (triangle leap) or 'the dart'. T.J. Dillashaw had Renan Barao playing catch up all night with it. Eddie Alvarez had been using it successfully before that, but it's certainly getting more attention now.

Kicks with the ball of the foot to the body are slowly catching on. We've been singing their praises for years because they just work so damn well, but fighters are slow to adopt them.

Winding Down

Amid all the worrying and the moaning, it has been a good year in mixed martial arts. Yes, Pay-Per-View is down, and there have been some less than stellar events and a lot of injuries. But equally, I can't think of a single card where there wasn't a fight to enjoy or a lesson to learn. We've had some absolute corkers in the cage, and some of the most technical barnburners I've ever seen—such as Machida-Weidman and Lawler-Hendricks I and II. The quality of fighter and—dare I say, athlete—competing in mixed martial arts is simply improving my leaps and bounds each year.

With the New Year bearing down on us, 2015 promises tumult. Sponsors being forced out in favor of blanket sponsorship by Reebok, and just as many UFC cards as 2014 with only a verbal promise from the UFC champions that they won't get injured, hell, Bellator's corny pro-wrestling antics even seem to have made them a force to be reckoned with.

But my job is to enjoy fights and share the joy, and beauty, and science of them with you, not to speculate on buy rates and overheads. And in 2014, I feel like I've had the best job in the world.

Stay tuned for Killing the King: Jon Jones.

Pick up Jack Slack's ebooks at his blog Fights Gone By. Jack can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.

Check out these related stories:

Fightland’s Best Photos of 2014

Fightland's Best MMA Moments of 2014