Robert Drysdale, BJJ and ADCC world champion, is one of the most highly-decorated grapplers to ever make the transition to MMA. He's 4-0 with his most recent win an armbar submission over Isaac Villanueva at Legacy Fighting 12.

The bout aired on AXS TV (formerly HDNet) on Friday and thanks to the eminently reasonable policies of that enlightened network, Zombie Prophet was able to gif up the submission for us and our in-house BJJ expert Patrick Tenney aka Above This Fire breaks down the moves after the jump...

Take it away Patrick...

Drysdale attempts to take the back of his opponent standing and drag him back and on top of the already in place hook (over the in place hook first as the top hook can be more easily put in place after the fight hits the mat). This position allows Drysdale to control his opponents upper body on either side of the "seatbelt" grip by then using his top leg to apply pressure to his opponents open hip with either his foot or the body triangle (by not allowing that open hip to slide down, the opponent cannot go across the bottom hook and turn in, nor can he put his shoulders flat on the mat); the synergist to this is Drysdales head placement which is close to the mat and against his opponents head, this again is to stop the slide out/roll out escape when the underhook part of the seatbelt grip is closest to the mat.

Drysdale hunts the RNC first and then eventually switches to the armbar as soon as he can get both of his arms on the bottom side of the position (on his opponents left arm/shoulder); Drysdale pushes out with his own left leg to rotate his body into position so he can more easily bring his right leg over the head and then extend his leg to force his opponent back on the mat while maintaining control of the arm.

On to grip-breaking: Drysdale initiates a figure-four style grip as soon as the position levels out, from here you can see him lean his body towards his opponents head (this puts the opponents arms in a mechanically weaker position as they are forced to come away from the body). Once the arms are away from the body you can see Drysdale readjust his grip, maintaining the hook with his own left arm and then attacking the hands with his right arm, pushing the opponents grip away and then palm up (and towards the head) to cause the grip to release (synergist here is the right leg of Drysdale hooking on the inside of the opponents farside arm and extending out to add further pressure on the grip). Obviously once the grip is released and the arm is extended the opponent is in immediate danger and must typically initiate last minute measures to escape, against a grappler of Drysdales caliber though the odds of escape aren't great as Drysdale demonstrates perfect fundamentals by squeezing his knees together and dragging his own heels towards himself while keeping his feet connected to the mat, after that the hips come up and the submission is finished.

This isn't flashy grappling but instead is a very obvious demonstration of solid basics and "step-by-step" grappling, Drysdale moves all the pieces of the chessboard in the correct order to then achieve checkmate.