Alexander Gustafsson takes on Glover Teixeira at UFC Stockholm in a matchup that has the potential to highlight some of the flaws in his game that have plagued him in recent years.

Composure is everything in fighting. In a sport in which two fighters are struggling against one another to recall thousands of training hours and implement responses to specific triggers, the ability to stay calm in the face of pressure is invaluable.

A loss of composure can quickly bring about a loss of consciousness.

When we think of those fighters who excel most at remaining composed, long-distance out fighters come to mind. The Floyd Mayweather’s, Muhammed Ali’s, and Anderson Silvas of the fight game. These men thrive on remaining calm and in control of their temperament, often using their poise to taunt and goad opponents into fits of aggression.

On the other side of the coin, pressure fighters like Anthony Johnson and George Foreman look to crack that composure with aggression and induce panic in its place.

This duality is what makes the struggle between an out fighter and a pressure fighter so enthralling.

One seeks to maintain a sort of order throughout the fight – to limit exchanges and build walls with distance, while the other aims to storm the gates and tear those walls apart.

The goal of the pressure fighter is to induce panic, to take away the time and space which the out fighter relies on to react, and force him to make poor decisions. These fights often play out as a contest of order vs chaos, and each side is continually developing tactics and strategies to further their place in the arms race.

Alexander Gustafsson is a fighter that prefers to strike from a place of order. He is most comfortable with a healthy distance between himself and his opponent, and most of his repertoire is designed around attacking from long range.

Although he prefers to strike at a long distance, he lacks an effective set of tools to enforce that distance and keep the fight where he wants it. This has resulted in Gustafsson continually being put into a place of panic when aggressive opponents refuse to accept his distance and eat away at his space.

We’ll examine the tendencies in his footwork and movement that make it so easy for opponents to throw him off his game, and the consequences of that resulting panic.

Fighting Tall

Fighting tall is often conflated with fighting long. While standing up tall can provide certain advantages to a kicker on the outside or to the taller man in the clinch, the benefits of standing up tall in the pocket are vastly outweighed by the drawbacks.

The most obvious advantage to assuming a slight bend in the knees is leverage. Imagine a contest of rikishi (sumo wrestlers) trying to push each other out of the dohyō, where every variable but stance is equal. Would you place your money on the one standing up straight as an arrow, or the one squatting low?

Standing up tall makes it easy for shorter opponents to get underneath you and push you back from a place of superior leverage while bending the knees mitigates that threat. Bending the knees also puts you in a strong, balanced stance in which your legs work to absorb some of the impact of strikes while standing up tall leaves your head taking most of the impact with nothing to cushion it.

“But wait,” you might say, “doesn’t fighting tall maximise your reach?” Well, not exactly. Punches are at their longest when they extend straight out from the shoulder. Any slight adjustment above or below shoulder-level causes a punch to lose reach.

Another disadvantage of standing tall in the pocket is that it obscures the vision of the taller man.

This can be especially dangerous for taller men, as punching down not only sacrifices reach, but it also removes the shoulder from the chin, exposing it to the overhand counters that an astute shorter opponent will likely be looking for. It’s in the interest of the taller man to bend his knees so that his shoulders are level with the line of his opponent’s face.

Another disadvantage of standing tall in the pocket is that it obscures the vision of the taller man. His entire body is visible to his shorter opponent, but the opponent’s lower body is hidden underneath head and shoulders. Without an immediate line of sight to his lower body, it is more difficult to determine his next move, making his attack less predictable.

Gustafsson has often fallen into the habit of standing up straight on retreat.

Błachowicz storms forward and Gustafsson pulls his weight over his back foot while stepping back into southpaw. With his weight on his heels and his stance tall, Gustafsson is unable to shift his weight and pivot out and has no choice but to barrel backwards as Jan shifts forward and continues charging. Gustafsson’s stance is compromised throughout this sequence and he gets tagged repeatedly on retreat, avoiding a devastating blow more by chance than design.

A common tactic when fighting a taller striker is to feint inside on them and convince them to pull their head back, before attacking while their weight is on their heels. Błachowicz didn’t need to implement such a crafty tactic, instead charging forward with a sloppy rush was sufficient to induce panic within Gustafsson.

Normally a rush like this would put the attacking fighter in great danger of a counter (as demonstrated by Albert Tumenov’s recent fight in ACB), but Gustafsson disarms himself as a counterpunching threat while moving backwards.

Stance

A fighter’s stance is his home base in a fight. While it doesn’t make him immune to punishment, it does afford a measure of built-in defense and protection against strikes that get through. A strong stance should leave a fighter room to quickly shift weight onto either foot, to push off and move in any direction, and to block or slip strikes. Any venture outside of a strong stance within range of the opponent’s strikes bears the risk of eating one while off-balance.

Even among fighters that expertly flow between stances, care is taken to limit the amount of time spent outside of a balanced stance and various tactics are used to conceal the moment of transition.

Dominick Cruz and Kyogi Horiguchi will hide their stance changes in motion, stepping back or to the side while switching stances and attacking from a new angle before their opponent has had a chance to pick up on the switch. Vasyl Lomachenko and TJ Dillashaw will throw out static to distract their opponents and bait them into covering up before shifting outside their field of vision.

But perhaps the most important aspect of a stance is that it provides an active threat. Closing distance on a fighter who is coiled and ready to strike is a daunting task. Even more so if you’ve already eaten some of those strikes while trying to close distance. This aspect is the primary reason that Gustafsson’s opponents have been able to overwhelm him without worrying about a counter coming back at them.

Look at Gustafsson’s stance in this sequence. He is constantly standing up tall, bringing his feet together, and even crossing them. With every hop-step he takes backwards, his feet collide or cross over one another. He spends far more time out of position than he does in a balanced, threatening stance.

With his feet together, Cormier has no reason to respect the threat of a counter. Gustafsson is unable to generate power from this position, and Cormier feels comfortable walking toward him.

Cormier is even taking himself out of position, walking forward and squaring himself up constantly, exposing himself to a counter with every step he takes, but Gustafsson is never in position to capitalise.

Let’s look at an excellent example of fighting off the backfoot to see what it looks like at its best.

The first thing to note about this is that Conor McGregor maintains a strong stance throughout. He’s always in a position to counter when Brimage is close enough to hit him. At one point, he hops back and circles at distance with his feet parallel, but immediately assumes a staggered stance when Brimage steps into range.

McGregor’s hop-steps take him from a strong stance into a strong stance in his adjusted position, with minimal time in between them. His ability to maintain his stance allows him to constantly adjust his position, hop-stepping to an outside angle and pivoting to an inside angle to ensure that he has a positional advantage in exchanges.

Also important is McGregor lowering his level. As soon as Brimage steps into range, he bends his knees to put his shoulders on a line with Brimage’s face. When Brimage tries to exploit his height by dipping down and exaggerating the height gap, McGregor starts countering with uppercuts to take advantage of Brimage’s posture.

Circling Out

When an out fighter finds himself being pressed back, the natural reaction is often to back up further and circle out in an attempt to get back into the center of the fighting area. This makes sense, as a fighter who prefers to strike at distance would rather maintain that distance while trying to manoeuvre into a stronger position within the cage than seeing the distance collapsed. However, merely circling out is not sufficient against a sound pressure fighter.

The problem with circling along the perimeter of the cage to get back into the center is that you need to travel a much longer distance to escape than your opponent does to keep up with you.

Changing directions and feinting steps can help, but equally the pressure fighter can advance while moving laterally and move toward where his circling opponent is approaching in order to cut off space. Stepping into his opponent and closing distance greatly reduces the space an out fighter needs to cover in order to get back into the center, counter-intuitive as it may seem.

The terribly drawn diagram above demonstrates the importance of closing distance in escaping the fence. The red line represents the path Gustafsson tends to follow along the fence. The blue line represents the path his opponent needs to take in order to keep up with his motion so that they end in the same positions relative to one another and Gustafsson doesn’t get the chance to follow the last part of the red line out to center.

Note that his opponent’s line is much shorter than his own, meaning that he is forced to cover more distance for no positional advantage if his opponent plays his cards right. This can be turned into a further disadvantage for Gustafsson if his opponent advances and eats up space while moving laterally, trapping him against the fence.

Now, look at the green line. A simple step in to close the distance opens up the possibility of circling around his opponent rather than circling around the cage. The opponent can’t cut off the motion just by moving laterally, as it is a tight pivot or shift done in one motion rather than a sweeping trajectory.

Let’s take a look at how the red line looks in action:

Gustafsson attempts to circle out in a wide arc along the fence, taking his feet out of position, standing up too tall, and even turning his back as he does so. Cormier, having much less distance to cover, is easily able to keep him lined up and stay in position to land. Gustafsson only ends up escaping the cage because Cormier over-commits and elects to chase instead of cutting off the cage.

Now a look at the green line playing out:

Jose Aldo waits for Frankie Edgar to attack and close the distance on him, before slipping the straight and stepping forward while pivoting out. Instead of circling halfway around the cage, Aldo barely moves at all and ends up switching positions with Edgar.

Of course, stepping into an aggressive fighter who’s in the process of pushing you back is a dangerous ask, so it’s useful to have tactics for covering your entry. Aldo removed the danger of stepping into Edgar by timing and slipping his cross, but it’s also possible to use the threat of your own strikes to create openings.

Demetrious Johnson steps in with a straight, forcing Wilson Reis to move his head to avoid it. Johnson uses that split-second reaction to his advantage, pushing off and manoeuvring back into the center of the Octagon as Reis slips.

Gustafsson isn’t Jose Aldo, and he’s unlikely to possess the skill (and body type) to reliably time his opponent’s strike with a slip in that way.

However, he has an excellent probing lead hand that he’ll use to flick out jabs and lead hooks to draw reactions out of his opponent. It’s easy to imagine him putting opponents on the defensive by prodding at them long enough to step in and pivot out of danger.

Another thing Gustafsson has going for him in this department is his aptitude in the clinch. While he tends to fall apart in extended clinch exchanges, he’s incredibly dangerous when he’s able to enter the clinch on his own terms. Gustafsson possesses a devastating double dollar tie and is excellent at landing knees from that position.

Gustafsson measures distance with his lead hand before missing with a lead uppercut. As Jimi Manuwa attempts to counter with a lead hook, he closes distance and takes the hook on his forearm, using the opening to wrap a double collar tie. From there he lands a devastating knee and finishes the fight with uppercuts and hammer fists on the ground.

Given Gustafsson’s skill from the double collar tie, it would be lovely to see him do more to integrate clinch entries into his outfighting. Stepping forward into the clinch when pressed would not only put him in a position to do damage, but it would also give him the opportunity to break after landing a couple strikes and circle back into the center around his opponent, rather than having to traverse the perimeter of the cage.

Gustafsson faces Glover Teixeira in Stockholm, Sweden on May 28th. Glover is an aggressive pressure fighter with solid cage-cutting footwork who possesses many of the tools that have given Gustafsson so much trouble in recent fights. This match poses the question of whether or not Gustafsson will be able to keep his composure in the face of adversity and maintain order amidst the chaos that Glover will no doubt create.

A win here would mean a victory over a tough stylistic matchup and potentially point to improvements in Gustafsson’s game.