Image via Marcelo Garcia Jiu Jitsu

Spend any amount of time in the combat sports community and you will hear the phrase “fighter x only wins because of his reach.” When I hear it it's like someone has poured lemon juice over a thousand tiny cuts in my ears. It is an absolutely idiotic stance to take, which shows a complete lack of understanding of the skills involved in utilizing reach. Point to a Jon Jones or a Semmy Schilt, and I'll show you a dozen Stefan Struves or Jan Nortes.

That being said, size really does matter. It's not nice to think about, but the top middleweight in the world would likely be crushed by sub-top ten heavyweights provided they didn't fight in a completely foolish manner. A big man who knows how to use his weight is a nightmare. Just look at Josh Barnett's smothering performances in Metamoris against smaller men. However, those have been impressive because he knows how to make use of every pound—which in itself is technical brilliance. Yet whether you're fighting Josh Barnett or some guy with a few pounds on you, it sucks to be the smaller man.

Just as fighting tall requires a completely different set of techniques and tactics to fighting someone your own size, fighting as the smaller man is an entirely different proposition to fighting a man of equal weight. In fact, some of the best 'giant killers' in the world have struggled more with fighters who can match their speed and movement than with the bigger men.

The purpose of this article, like the Strikers You Should Be Watching series, is to give you some fights to binge watch and maybe some new role models to study.

Marcelo Garcia

What to watch for: Arm Drag, X-Guard, Aggressive Seated Guard, Guillotines, Back Control

Marcelo Garcia burst onto the international grappling scene in 2003, dominating the 77kg weightclass at the 2003 ADCC submission grappling event. From 2004 to 2011, Garcia won numerous world championships in the gi and without it, in many ways revolutionizing the guard game in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.

Garcia's first few big tournament wins came due to his arm drag and his guard game, but gradually he came to add more and more tricks to his arsenal. Garcia is accomplished against men of his weight, but it is his performances against heavier men such as Andre Galvao, Roberto Abreu, Xande Ribeiro, Thales Leites, Babalu and others which make Marcelo Garcia so unique. His style and skill truly seem to offset his weight disadvantage in many of his bouts.

Take, for instance, his bout against the man mountain, Gabriel Gonzaga. “Napao” spent most of the bout on top, looking to pass Garcia's seated guard. Every time Gonzaga began committing to a pass he found himself at risk of getting arm dragged.

Notice how Garcia brings Gonzaga down. He could have strained all day trying to shift the big man, instead he jumped his weight straight onto the back of Gonzaga's knees.

The arm drag is so simple, it had existed in wrestling for hundreds of years, but for a while, applying it from the seated guard was a very novel approach. Garcia famously couldn't do anything to the great wrestler, Mike Van Arsdale on the feet. As soon as Garcia sat down, Van Arsdale gave up the arm drag like he never would have on the feet.

Of course, the real secret was that Garcia would attack with butterfly sweeps, attempts to lift to the x-guard, and sitting up into single leg takedowns—when his opponent defended there was a great chance that he could hit that oh-so-simple arm drag. All the men we're looking at today have different approaches, but one of the constants you will see across all disciplines is setting traps and timing the opponent in a moment of weakness rather than butting heads with strength.

From choking out Vitor Ribeiro with no hooks in, to being illegally slammed by the 250lbs Ricco Rodriguez and immediately heel hooking him in response, I could wax lyrical over Garcia for many more pages, but we've got other men to cover so I'll cut it here. Garcia's evolution has continued through the years though, and everything he comes up with is just as to-the-point and effective in it's simplicity as the arm drag which built his early career.

Catching Kron Gracie off guard with the infamous “idiot sweep.”

Henry Armstrong

What to watch for: Crowding, Infighting, Foul Play

Henry Armstrong is consistently rated as one of the greatest boxers of all time, and for good reason. Armstrong held titles in three divisions simultaneously when that actually meant something. There was one title per division, and there were only eight total. At one point in time, Henry Armstrong was nearly half of the world's champions.

In 1937, Armstrong won the featherweight title from Petey Sarron. In May of 1938, he gave up almost twenty pounds as he went up two weight classes to take on the crafty boxing wizard, Barney Ross for the welterweight title. Three months later, Henry Armstrong went to lightweight, the weightclass he had skipped over, and won that title from Lou Ambers. All of these were great fighters, but Armstrong was just too much for them.



Notice the sneaker right or 'blackout punch' at the end of this clip.

It was the pace and the range which were the killer for Armstrong. He preferred to fight from a range where his head was resting on his opponent. He'd push opponents backwards, take them out of their stance, and dig short, continuous blows under the elbows and into the solar plexus. He'd also sneaker in his “blackout punch”. This would involve raising the opponent's head with his left shoulder and chopping across with his right hook.

Champ Thomas, the fantastic braggart, carnival boxer and author, wrote that he was “surprised at the number of dirty tricks he had developed as part of his style of fighting. He did as much damage with his head and elbows as he did with his fists... I wondered why the ring officials didn't stop Armstrong's bouts and award the decisions to his opponents.” And this from a book specifically written on, and advocating, fighting dirty!



A nice little butt from Armstrong underneath the opponent's head. Experienced fighters know to butt from underneath. You want to hit face, not forehead.

Armstrong even went as high as middleweight in what was billed as a title fight versus Ceferino Garcia. Many felt Armstrong had done enough to win the decision, but these were simpler days. The referee, George Blake, declared the fight a draw and quickly left the ring, never to referee another bout. Suspicious to say the least.

Kazushi Sakuraba

What to watch for: Low Single, Kimura

As a mixed martial arts fan, you probably know this guy. He's one of the all time greats. He made Royce Gracie quit under Gracie's own rules, he reduced Vitor Belfort to flopping guard for fear of being back kicked, and he remains the only Japanese fighter to win UFC gold—though it was a tournament title.

When asked about his record before entering the UFC for the Ultimate Japan tournament, Sakuraba replied that he had won some fights and lost some fights. That pretty much sums up Sakuraba's attitude. He'd fight anyone, sometimes he'd win astoundingly, and sometimes he'd get beaten up. His refusal to cut weight—most think he could have made welterweight if he followed the standard procedure for a modern MMA fighter—ultimately led to him taking a great many beatings he shouldn't have had to. But Sakuraba's wily style saw a lot of fighters.

In the early days of PRIDE FC, Sakuraba came out of almost nowhere, with a 1-1 and 1 no contest record, to beat some of the most respected and established fighters of the day.

While Sakuraba was a grappler, judged in what we now deem to be the most important areas he was really nothing special. He struggled to pass guard—hence his many bouts standing over opponents, kicking their legs—and his own guard was pretty ineffectual.

Where Sakuraba was effective was in what his coach, Billy Robinson, would call 'defense position'. In BJJ, the turtle—but up on the hands. Sakuraba absolutely excelled from here. As his opponent grabbed a hold of his waist to try to keep him down, he would get the kimura grip / double wrist lock and look into the opponent. And most of the times he got the grip, it worked remarkably well.

It wasn't even a desperation thing, most of Sakuraba's best success came off of the double wrist lock position, almost always as he was being taken down or working up from the turtle. If one arm got free, he'd switch and go for the other. It was like Sakuraba's turtle was a bear trap, waiting for opponents to put their arms in.

Famously he tore Renzo Gracie's arm out of the socket this way. He also rolled the heavyweight, and far more accomplished wrestler, Kevin Randleman straight into an armbar.

Even at age forty, injured beyond all reason, and long after he should have retired from the sport, Sakuraba convinced Ralek Gracie to grab the body lock exactly the same way, and stood to attempt a sumi-gaeshi throw with the double wrist lock and his right foot as a hook. And it worked!

The only problem was that Ralek was able to block the armbar. But the focus on the double wrist lock / kimura has really come back into vogue in BJJ competition. Nowadays you will find grapplers turning opponents over with the kimura and instead of look to swing the leg over the head, looking to put in the far hook and transition to the back.



Sakuraba looking to swing the leg over the head as Randleman turns into him.



Andre Galvao uses the kimura grip to push his opponent away and throws in the far hook as his opponent turns into him.

The great Andre Galvao has often used the kimura grip, from top or bottom, to roll and come up on the back.

Sakuraba also had tremendous success taking down much, much larger opponents. Much of this was due to his excellent low single. Low singles are something you don't see much in MMA because if you miss them, you're on your knees looking like a fool. And in truth, getting caught on his knees after failed shots really took its toll on Sakuraba against Wanderlei Silva and Ricardo Arona. But at his best for Sakuraba, as with all of these giant killers, it was a matter of timing.

In addition to catching low kicks and then following into the takedown, Sakuraba excelled at using his own biting kicks to set up takedowns.



Vernon White picks his lead leg up to check, Sakuraba shoots on his rear leg.

How about this?

Saku swings out a couple of punches against Igor Vovchanchyn, then backs himself into a corner. As Vovchanchyn steps in, Sakuraba times the shot for Vovchanchyn's rear leg. Yes, Igor Vovchanchyn, the most feared heavyweight in the world at the time. Oh, by the way, this was after Sakuraba forced Royce Gracie to quit in a ninety minute bout (the longest in MMA history) earlier in the same night.

Sakuraba's continued fights against much bigger opponents rapidly took their toll on him, not to mention his time in professional wrestling before that. He was already held together with medical tape by his twelfth fight or so, and MMA is not the place to be consistently giving up thirty to fifty pounds of weight.

The lesson to take away is that when two men have the same skills and the same technical ability, the bigger one will mop up. It is the development of unusual techniques, the exploitation of timing, the setting of traps, and superior game planning which allows those rare and beautiful occasions of giant killing in combat sports. Stay tuned to Fightland and soon we'll study some more.

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