On Friday night, Marlon Moraes announced himself as the next logical contender for T.J. Dillashaw’s belt as he routed Jimmie Rivera in under a minute. Rivera’s ten year, 20-fight winning streak went out the window with one kick.

One of the reasons that the fight world was so excited to see Marlon Moraes in the Octagon was that he was demolishing anyone World Series of Fighting could find to fight him as their bantamweight champion. It is a story that has repeated itself a dozen times in the last decade or so: a fighter who appears to be genuinely world class, fighting well below his level in a smaller promotion, with it being only a matter of time before he finds his way to the UFC. These fighters are always divisive and even their biggest believers understand that the level of competition becomes significantly more difficult inside the UFC. For every Eddie Alvarez or Luke Rockhold, who go on to win the UFC title, there is a Gilbert Melendez or a Will Brooks who just never gets going. In fact, even Alvarez and Rockhold lost in their UFC debuts. You would think fans would have softened on the idea of the first UFC bout being make-or-break, yet it still has that nature for many.

But despite fighting a whole heap of guys you won’t have heard of and seemingly padding out his record in WSOF, Moraes jumped in at the deep end in the UFC and he hasn’t relented even for a moment. Raphael Assuncao, John Dodson, Aljamain Sterling and Jimmie Rivera—Moraes met them all in the space of 365 days. Dodson is a perennial mid-top-ten man, Sterling is considered a young up-and-comer, and Assuncao and Rivera are the bantamweight nightmare. They are both very good, but rarely finish fights, have small fan followings and—most damningly—they don’t have ready made drama with Team Alpha Male or Dominick Cruz. Those lads will never get title shots. Yet it was Assuncao who welcomed Moraes to the UFC and who put a damper on his opening fanfare, handing Moraes a split decision loss.

Perhaps the most interesting thing to note about Moraes’s two most recent performances is that the knockouts just sort of happened. Aljamain Sterling’s head was where Moraes didn’t expect it to be during a body kick and the knee knocked him out—Moraes declared that he was as surprised by as anyone else in his post fight interview.

Against Rivera, Moraes came out jabbing, feinting, inside low kicking, and tossed a quick step up high kick just to see what would happen. The result was that it clacked off Rivera’s head and folded him like a deck chair, but it didn’t seem to be Moraes’s all-consuming intention or gameplan, it was just something he did while looking for openings. And that sums up Marlon Moraes in a nutshell, he is a very savvy, adaptable striker who continues to look for openings and build off looks throughout a bout, whether the knockout comes or not. As Sugar Ray Robinson pointed out in his memoir, when you stop looking for the knockout and just focus on landing as often and cleanly as possible, the knockout often just comes on its own.

Flustering the Counter Striker

While Moraes’s fights against Assuncao and Dodson were less clean cut affairs, they were better showcases for his dynamic striking chops. Some have drawn comparisons between Moraes and his friend and team mate, Edson Barboza. The key differences are that Moraes can box, is never far from his stance, and doesn’t run backwards onto the fence without prompting. By having other weapons and lacking those enormous flaws in ringcraft, Moraes actually has more success timing the counter switch kick which so often goes wrong for Barboza. Counter kicking is one of the least natural tactics in fighting but learning to draw punches and time kicks under them can be a game changer. Flush body kicks are hard to land against disciplined fighters, but you can’t punch with your elbows flush to your sides.

The Assuncao fight was one which took on distinct phases. In the first round, Moraes flustered Assuncao’s awkward, low-pace counter striking by throwing out dozens of feints and jabs, scrambling the signal with static. By throwing off Assuncao’s timing and sneaking through a few good strikes, Moraes placed pressure on Assuncao to score some points and get back in the fight. Assuncao began coming to Moraes and Moraes was waiting for him with counters of his own.

Unfortunately, Assuncao calmed down a bit and with ten seconds left in the first round landed a crisp inside parry to counter right hand off a Moraes jab. The punch momentarily took Moraes’s legs away and despite all of his solid work up to that point, stole the round for Assuncao on two judges’ scorecards.

While Assuncao won the decision, Moraes’s work was among the best you will see against the awkward Brazilian counter striker. Through three competitive rounds, Moraes showed an understanding of counter striking that is still so lacking in MMA. Not only was he feinting to get Assuncao swinging at air and second guessing himself, he was drawing counters and exploiting them. The following jab-and-duck into the left hook is a perfect example. Not only drawing a counter in order to counter it, but hooking off the jab as well? If more fighters start to show this kind of understanding of the sweet science, Bob Arum might have to accept that MMA isn’t just a place for white skinheads who can’t box.

Punishing the Southpaw Straight

You need only compare the Assuncao fight to Moraes’s next performance against John Dodson to see his versatile and adaptive mind in action. You couldn’t ask for more different strikers than Assuncao and Dodson. Assuncao asks you to come to him, occasionally stabbing in straight punches and push kicks. Dodson throws southpaw high kicks and sprints in, running to the outside of his opponent’s lead foot and doubling up on the left straight. In the opening round, Moraes pushed Dodson to the fence and the American rebounded off the cage with a left hand which dropped Moraes on his rump.

Within a few minutes Moraes had adapted to Dodson’s usual look and his speed, and was finding counters everywhere. Moraes's left hook—without a doubt his money punch—began to snap in over Dodson’s shoulder as he squared up to throw the southpaw left straight.

When that didn’t find the mark, because Dodson had returned to or remained in a bladed position, the right hook quickly followed and cracked Dodson through the open side.

When Dodson came off the fence exactly the same way in the second round, Moraes crossed his left with the right hand and turned Dodson’s head around.

Moraes even tried to get in body shots with his right hand on the open side—as Jorge Linares recently used to good effect against the great Vasyl Lomachenko. And of course, Moraes would close the door on these body shots with the left hook.

We haven't discussed "closing the door" in detail here in a while, but it remains an important principle of fighting and particularly the boxing aspect. Most fighters are set up best to defend themselves when they are "half-facing," their lead shoulder being projected so that they may duck for cover behind it when under fire. A fighter is most vulnerable to right hand counters during and immediately after he has thrown his own right hand, because he must square up and present a target to do so.

In fact, while the angles change slightly for most of the game out at range when one fighter is southpaw, everything opens up just the same the moment they square up, inside of punching range. Dodson eating that counter left hook above is a great example of that. Because squaring up is necessary to accomplish hard hitting offense, but simultaneously offers the opponent far more opportunities, most boxing coaches like their fighters to end combinations with a hook or jab back out to range because both lead handed punching actions put the fighter back behind his lead shoulder and punish the opponent if he pursues. There are other ways to mitigate the danger of squaring up for the right hand (weaving out, clinching, pushing away, ducking in on the hips, reverse shoulder rolling or folding behind the elbow, and on and on) but closing the door is the neatest and most pro-active.

This is where Moraes’s left hook really excels. It is a short range weapon, and he isn’t particularly gangly for the weightclass either, but it plays off his longer weapons. His right kicks square his hips just as the right straight does, albeit reaching a bit further. Opponents try to chase Moraes off these kicks and find themselves eating left hooks as they close the range. The right round kick and left hook seem a lovely pairing in that the hips and shoulders turn one way, and then back the other as the leg is retracted, but one of the neater parts of Moraes’s application is his timing of the left hook.

He doesn’t always whirl straight back into it off the kick, sometimes he’ll set his feet for a split second before timing the left hook for best effect. Moares’s left hook is a killer because of accuracy and anticipation more than because of his power.

That is not to paint the Dodson fight as a one sided blow out: it was a competitive scrap marred by two significant Moraes fouls, a groin kick which had Dodson retching and an eye poke moments later. That fight does, however, show a part of Moraes that you won’t see in the two recent, rapid knockouts. It demonstrates how he adapts through the rounds. Watching Moraes learn and get into the mind of an opponent is really quite something. Similar to his teammate Frankie Edgar in his best performances, Moraes has a remarkable ability to spot his opponent’s habits and predict how they will react the next time he prompts them.

The Dodson and Assuncao fights were full of moments like this, for instance in the above clip Moraes has just missed a wheel kick on the circling Dodson, so he pushes his luck and goes for it a second time in quick succession. This is the kind of madness that you will see Alexander Shlemenko employ to bamboozle opponents. The heel cracks Dodson behind the guard and Moraes capitalizes on a good connection by… feinting. That same stutter step that Moraes showed Rivera has Dodson jumping into the air and swinging wild, expecting a fifth-round Robbie Lawler charge. Dodson finds nothing and eats a quick left hook as his feet are coming down.