On this episode of Fight Study, Sam talks about UFC 298. Fight Study is essential listening for thoughtful martial arts fans.
UFC 298 has come and gone, and I was holding off on doing an episode to have someone to do the episode with. I couldn't get a hold of Coach Jason, so I was planning to have another Jason, data scientist Jason from MMAI, and that was locked and loaded, but then he lost his voice. So what can you do? The thing about covering UFC events is there's always another event, so you have to release an episode the week after, and if not, you move on.
And I was thinking, normally, I have someone else here, and unlike other podcast hosts who take up all the air time, I make it about the other person and their analysis of the fights. I try to give them questions that can best highlight their knowledge.
But for this one, I thought it would be a good change of pace for people to hear my analysis which I think is pretty unique in all of MMA because it will always be from the LMA or Liberation Martial Arts perspective. I don't mean the political economy of the event because we've already covered that so much, and it's always a topic we bring up, so there's nothing new to add there. So, what I specifically mean is the LMA approach to watching a fight. Which is all about context.
So, let's start with the featherweight title fight between Champion Alexander Volkanovski and Ilia Topuria, where Topuria beat Volkanovski by 2nd round knockout.
Now, lots of people were picking Topuria to beat Volkanovski. The odds were a pick'em. I know people online probably had their own stylistic reasons for picking Volk, but I think for the oddsmakers, the odds were about even because Volk got knocked out in late October of last year and then immediately went into this fight back in his old weight division. People making picks mostly decide based on what they see on tape and not the externalities. Oddsmakers care about when the last fight was fought, the weight, the outcome, and the damage because all of that influences the upcoming fight.
A prizefight isn't fought in a vacuum where you can exclude every other variable besides style. Just as nothing exists in a vacuum, nothing exists outside of context. What I teach in LMA aren't techniques but contexts and how to perceive contexts. Once you perceive the context, you can navigate it on your own because you have to. The speed of sport is faster than the speed of my words.
You also have to factor in that Volk lost to Islam Makhachev twice and that he also lost for the first time ever in the UFC, and it happened in the biggest event he's ever headlined, in his home country. That weighs on a person.
In sports, there's something called the yips, and it's basically a performance hiccup. Due to nerves or trauma or both, you choke or make an unforced error. Or, in the case of combat sports, you flinch and hesitate. Yips vary in severity, and it can go away, but it's a thing.
There's also the fact that Volk has been going from fight camp to fight camp, fighting back to back with no break sometimes.
You have to think about Volk being knocked out in the last fight. He also took a lot of damage in his fight against Yair RodrÃguez.
Volk is also 35 in one of the deepest divisions in the UFC, so youth matters more than it does at 170 and above.
Accumulated damage is a factor. Age is a factor. Weight is a factor. And when you think about damage, you also have to factor in all the time he's spent wrestling, playing rugby, Thai-boxing, and MMA on top of that.
Damage affects power. Speed and power go away, especially in MMA. Look at Andrei Arlovski. You can even look at Robert Whittaker, who also fought.
Then, you also have to think about what we don't know about Volkanovski. Who has he fought in his division who could actually wrestle? You'd have to go all the way back to Chad Mendes, which was a challenging fight he had almost lost. He fought Makhachev twice and lost twice.
So, how good is Volk if he can't take his opponent down? How good is his striking when there isn't the takedown threat?
How good is his chin? He's never been a fighter with an iron chin. He just has fast recovery. That's what saved him against Mendes. Did you know Chad Mendes dropped Volk with hooks in the exact same way Topuria did also in the second round? Mendes was also someone Volk couldn't take down. But context matters. Mendes was the shopworn fighter headed for retirement. Volk immediately recovered after he got dropped, and Mendes was slow to jump on him. Problems Topuria didn't have. Recovery doesn't improve with age; it declines.
All these things matter. Now, think about this fight. Was Volk flinchy? Very. Did he have the same power? No. If your shots don't have power, what fuels the feints?
Topuria came in with his reputation for power, so Volk was hyper-aware of that. He's not gonna flinch if he doesn't already respect Topuria's power. He's also going to flinch if he doesn't trust his recovery.
Topuria crouching also fed into this. When you crouch, you're more rooted to the ground. So, in layman's terms, you can punch harder. Every time Topuria crouched, Volk reacted. Rather than punches landed, it was the constant crouching that put the most pressure on Volk and had him backing up. I questioned how good Volk's striking is without the takedown threat. Well, how much better is Topuria's striking when he threatens the takedown? How much worse is Volk's defense?
The crouch was also why Volk had a hard time seeing his low kicks. You normally stand upright to kick, like Volk was.
I mentioned before the fight that Topuria was going to look to drop his weight into his hook and hurt Volk, and Volk was going to try and kick his leg every time he dropped his weight, and that's how much of the fight went.
Some people think Volk ran into the cage and got knocked out. That didn't happen. He fell into the cage because he got dropped.
Knowing he was close to the cage might have also affected Volk's footwork. I don't know. None of us can know. But if the cage wasn't initially a factor, it is once you're trying to recover with the cage against your back.
What I did see is that Volk was circling the cage and switching stances. What is a stance switch? Taking a big step forward or a big step back.
Topuria was getting close with his power shots, but Volk was just out of range. Volk stance switched. What did I say that was? A big step forward or backward. Which way did Volk go? Forward. Right into the range of Topuria's power punches.
Going back yips, what causes it? Our fight or flight response. Volk stepped forward to fight and got caught.
I've always thought a wrestler with a chin and power would be a bad style for Volk. So Topuria was always a bad style match-up, in my opinion. But you also have so many other factors involved in a fight. You don't need fighting to be 4-D chess because there are so many variables going into a fight anyway.
Despite all that, Volk fought well and, in my opinion, won round 1. Topuria ate a few Volk power shots and walked through them. Volk got knocked back by every power shot. Topuria also stuck to Volk like glue better than any other previous fighter. So there were gonna be moments where they would trade shots. And if enough of those moments happen, Topuria would win. And that's what happened.
Now let's talk about Robert Whittaker vs Paulo Costa, which Whittaker won by decision. Then he proclaimed he was back. That always feels like a jinx to me because it's a tacit admission. It means you're no longer growing from where you were, and now you're just trying not to decline.
Whittaker seems to get rocked in every fight. He also doesn't have the same power anymore. He won this fight and it was fun, but he's not showing he's better than what he was. In fact, he seemed to have won still in the shadow of his former self.
He had all those injuries and health issues that almost had him retire, and was he ever the same after that? I say no. He also has gotten more limited over time. He's mostly a jab and a high kick. He does it very well, enough to beat Costa, but Costa has clearly been getting worse and has been just coasting for a while. Thankfully, this is middleweight, where, despite the UFC gaslighting, it's one of their three worst divisions, so you can be one-dimensional and do well here.
If you're wondering why Whittaker got caught with that wheel kick, first think about how anyone gets caught with a wheel kick. It's such a big motion. Well, because it's still rarely thrown. You also think you're safely out of range when you're often not. That's what happened to Whittaker. He saw the spin and thought he was safe, but he wasn't. If Costa was better at the kick, it might have been lights out for Whittaker.
Another factor in power is confidence. You're not going to throw with max power if you're worried about your chin. You always take something off so you can get out of the way. I wonder about this for both Whittaker and Volk.
Ian Garry Machado and Geoff Neal had a fight that reminded me a bit of Volk vs. Topuria. Except Neal didn't stick to Garry like glue when he circled, so he ended up clinching him so he could keep him in place. It was still a close fight, but it's a good contrast from the main event—how two different fighters handled a circling fighter.
A championship quality is the ability to circle. Circling is hard not because you can't mechanically learn the footwork. For a pro fighter, that's not hard. But here's the difference between theory and practice. For you to do that in a prizefight, you have to be able to perceive both your opponent and your environment. If you have tunnel vision and all you can see is your opponent, you're going to have a hard time moving in relationship to your environment. Context. You have to fully perceive your context to circle and cut off your opponent.
Lastly, let's talk about Merab Dvalishvili vs. Henry Cejudo. I was surprised when the oddsmakers made Dvalishvili the favorite when, on paper, Cejudo is better than Dvalishvili in every way. Cejudo, on paper, is the better striker and wrestler. But then I saw how Cejudo fired Coach Eric on the Countdown filming, which was months before the fight. Then, he brought Coach Eric back weeks before the fight. That says a lot because it means at least two things. The camp wasn't going well, and neither was the weight cut. I think it also means Cejudo had a hard time with motivation.
You also have to factor in how Cejudo has had a lifetime of weight cuts, training camps, competing at the highest level, and already has a lot of accolades. Can he put his body and mind through another fight camp? He's also small for his weight division of 135, but he can't go down to 125 anymore.
Cejudo looked small but still good in round 1. But by round two, he looked gassed and dejected. His left forearm also looked broken, and he's currently medically suspended because of his arm.
With all that going against you, you're not going to beat Dvalishvili. He's going to suck up all the space between you and make you carry his weight.
Cejudo also hasn't had the same power since coming back from retirement. On top of that, his arm was injured. Cejudo is also 37 in the deepest UFC division. At that age, he's going to get injured more and more before or during a fight. The way I think about LMA is that it should also be a somatic healing modality because we all age and we all come into this with trauma already, both physical and emotional.
The oddsmakers didn't give Cejudo much of a shot, and now it's clear why.
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Fight Study 155: UFC 298 (Plus Transcript)