Bulletwood: The Quiet Excellence of Francisco Trinaldo
Photo by Buda Mendes/Zuffa LLC/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images
Introduction - by Sriram Muralidaran
The UFC has a tradition of being violently ambivalent towards a specific mold of fighter, in the sense that they very rarely get timely steps up; in fact, many of the great fighters that they face are intended solely to force them back down the rankings, because they’re a perfectly inconvenient blend of danger and blandness. This is, of course, the uncharismatic Brazilian counterpuncher.
Two of the best never to fight for a belt (Raphael Assuncao and Jussier Formiga) both fit this archetype, and both were most recently frustrated in extremely similar fashion; in fights that should’ve been for interim belts but weren’t, after defending their spot at the top against high-risk opponents multiple times, against opponents who had already proven to be immensely difficult for them to beat. In general, not only do those fighters not get their due from the promotion, they also don’t get their due from the public; even someone like Jose Aldo struggled with getting the respect he deserved until Conor McGregor showed up to the scene, and he’s up with the greatest of all time.
That said, Francisco Trinaldo’s tale is somehow even more ridiculous than the average; where the UFC at least pretended to be a meritocracy in giving the aforementioned fighters steps up before realizing that they don’t want them at the very top, “Massaranduba” simply never got a fair shake. He struggled to get a fight in the rankings, which (given his resume at the time) was genuinely comical, as his low-paced style and his age left the UFC hoping he’d just wash out sooner than later. To date, he hasn’t; he’s taken his losses to future top competition, but he’s remained a spoiler otherwise. Off a loss (not really) to Alexander Hernandez and at 41 years old in a young division, Trinaldo’s hopes at building the momentum to go at the belt are getting slimmer by the day; however, he still deserves much more respect than he’s gotten for being one of the most skilled and dangerous kickboxers that lightweight has to offer.
Striking - by Sriram Muralidaran
Trinaldo isn’t immune to the typical counterpuncher’s curse, which is just being forced into inertia by someone reluctant to engage; in fact, his last bout was marked by his opponent getting scared off by early counters and trying to do nothing but move and kick (with all the distancing acumen of Michelle Waterson). That said, against opponents who try to actually get some work done against him, Trinaldo has proven to be a menace, and he’s consistently a joy to watch when he can find his mark.
A good place to start might be the aforementioned showing against Hernandez; it has precious few real moments to look at, but it shows why so many fighters are forced into Massaranduba’s more deliberate fight to begin with.
Hernandez is not especially varied or keen to set up his entries, and it shows; he looks to step in behind a raised knee before doing anything to make it credible in the first clip, eating a hard left hand counter for it. He looks to enter to the body in the second clip, but still hasn’t done anything to convince Trinaldo not to just launch counters every time he moves.
Hernandez’s kicks have no more success, even when they got close. Note Trinaldo’s counter combinations; he can land clean single shots as he did in the second clip, but the first clip shows him starting the combination to the body to go up to the head with a right hook, and the third shows him countering with a 2-1.
Of course, the Hernandez bout was far from Trinaldo’s most impressive; Hernandez simply refused to commit to anything after eating the first few counters, and got a questionable decision with nothing but movement. Paradoxically, Trinaldo’s best performances are against his better opponents; while he has losses on his record to fighters like Piotr Hallman and Michael Chiesa, two upcoming talents who went on to become fringe-elite had real trouble going toe-to-toe with Trinaldo. In fact, Massaranduba is the last man to hand the top-7 Paul Felder a lightweight loss, and to date is the only man to ever finish him.
In contrast to what was seen against Hernandez, Trinaldo looked very good at creating opportunities to counter against Felder, not just with his pressure game but also by drawing out specific shots. Where Trinaldo’s brand of counterpunching inherently works best with someone reckless and open to counters (one of whom will be shown later), Felder’s a lot more deliberate of a threat; as a huge lightweight with excellent knees and elbows, Felder generally prefers to work on the counter himself, as he can punish a shorter opponent trying to close him down with intercepting strikes. Given the initiative, though, Trinaldo ripped Felder apart.
This clip shows a lot of what Trinaldo does best. Felder looks to intercept Trinaldo’s pressure with a knee and steps into a southpaw jab, but the knee falls short; Trinaldo tries to cross-counter the jab, Felder takes the sting off it with a deep lean, and Trinaldo tries to catch him on the exit with a right hook. Trinaldo feints into a clean overhand left, and then gets the better of a fairly layered exchange; drawing out the left hook by feinting his right, using a throwaway overhand to draw the lead hook again, and slipping inside it to counter the counter. A bit of body work follows; Trinaldo counters a backed-up Felder’s attempt at an intercepting knee with a left to the body, then throws a bodykick and enters the clinch to smother Felder’s answer.
Trinaldo feints an entry and draws Felder’s rear-straight, slips outside as he parries it, and catches a fully-extended Felder with a right hook.
Traditionally expected of more nimble outfighters, Trinaldo shows what’s often referred to as a dart; as he circles off the fence and Felder follows him, Trinaldo plants and leads with his rear hand before angling into the open side to throw off Felder’s counter. In the second clip, he gets tied in a clinch before he could slip out the side, but the blow reopened a cut that ended the fight anyway.
The other young gun Trinaldo ran into was “MTP”, Kevin Lee, who ended Trinaldo’s winstreak on his way to an interim title bout against Tony Ferguson. Lee has since run into some problems among the elite (as well as against Al Iaquinta), but Trinaldo was one of his tougher outs on the way up; where Lee dealt with a striker as explosive and as potent as Edson Barboza quite easily, Trinaldo was a hard day’s work for him.
Lee’s freakish reach leaves straight-punching a good option for him, but he isn’t a particularly capable boxer at this point, and Trinaldo finds ways to punish them moments into their fight. Not a traditional cross-counter since it’s open-stance, but Trinaldo is able to slip inside Lee’s rear-straight to club him over the top multiple times, and pulls from Lee’s jab to land one of his own.
Trinaldo’s an underrated body-hitter, and the Lee fight showed a good read from him; Trinaldo slips inside Lee’s straight to land an uppercut to his chest, severely hurting him, and looks to intercept his level change with the same shot a bit later.
More Trinaldo body-hitting, this time with his knee. Trinaldo is very smart with this shot; he can use it as an intercepting counter, similar to Donald Cerrone’s (which is how he tried to stop the advance of Hernandez in the first clip and finished Evan Dunham in the third clip), or he can use it to punish a level change as he did to stand Pearson up in the second clip.
The impression that should’ve been given of Trinaldo so far is of a rounded and surprisingly versatile fighter; he can snipe from the backfoot or crowd his opponent to fluster them and draw out attacks, and he works best on the counter but can force exchanges with his intelligence on the lead. The only question left is generally the question that most ask of southpaw boxers: what if they face another southpaw? For every Rafael dos Anjos who’s equally capable against an opponent in either stance, there’s a Kelvin Gastelum who struggles badly without his rear hand having a clear path. Fortunately, Trinaldo is a lot closer to RDA, as the fight against Jim Miller showed.
Miller has enjoyed a bit of a renaissance as of late, between both recovering from his Lyme Disease and a step back in competition after a 4-fight skid. That skid included future interim-champion Dustin Poirier (who he almost beat) and former lightweight king Anthony Pettis, as well as the future top-8 Dan Hooker; the last man in that star-studded lineup was Massaranduba. However, none of those men shut Miller out and broke his spirit the way Trinaldo did.
Trinaldo came out pressuring Miller hard but was still defensively aware, pulling from Miller’s first right hook to come back with a 2-3. The second right hook narrowly missed Trinaldo’s head and landed on his shoulder, knocking him slightly off-balance but showing his defense right from the start. The third exchange was brilliant; Trinaldo feints to draw a counter from Miller, ducking underneath the rear-straight to land a dig to the body and build into a 3-2 as Miller exited.
Trinaldo’s usual counterpunching was on display mostly in the early part of this fight, and it was spectacular. Miller couldn’t jab in or even frame on Trinaldo for free, and when he resorted to shifting combinations to try to catch Trinaldo unaware, it only got worse. As always, Trinaldo countering in combination made him a lot more potent if Miller was out of position, and his timing is impeccable even as he throws nearly everything full-power. As the fight went on, though, Trinaldo found an easier way to make his counterpunching work...
...and that was the jab. This was easily the most active jabbing performance of Trinaldo’s career, both to draw counters and just to keep Miller uncomfortable. The second clip’s counter-jab (slipping outside Miller’s jab) and followup straight is extremely slick, and so is the final clip (which goes a bit into the clinching section below); Trinaldo annoys Miller with the jab and Miller tries to counter, Trinaldo ducks underneath as he turns the jab into a collar tie, and that tie lines up a big clean elbow.
More bodywork, set up by the jab (using it to draw Miller’s hands up and firing his rear hand underneath them).
Miller was so frustrated by the jab that he switched stances, looking to give himself back the open-stance weapons he’s used to. Unfortunately, as he entered looking for outside foot-position (likely throwing the lead hook to set up the straight), Trinaldo just pivoted into him to line up his own straight, and Miller switched back.
Miller couldn’t take the initiative as Trinaldo punished him in exchanges, and he had no answers to the jab that Trinaldo hadn’t sniffed and snuffed out; combined with Trinaldo also winning on the ground, Miller simply got away with nothing. A notoriously gritty fighter and as proven in wars as they get, Miller admitted to having nothing for Trinaldo as a disastrous round 2 ended. Considering that round 3 could’ve been a 10-8, he was correct.
To cap off this section showcasing inordinate craft, here’s the exact opposite of the Hernandez fight we started with: Massaranduba beating Yancy Medeiros pillar-to-post for a whole minute.
The Clinch, Wrestling and Grappling - by Ed Gallo
Trinaldo’s development as a fighter has always been about the depth of his striking, rather than filling in the gaps of his entire game. Even from his UFC debut, Trinaldo proved himself a physical, effective defensive wrestler and offensive grappler.
Against a strong, albeit rudimentary grappler in Delson Heleno in his UFC debut, “Massaranduba” showed off a rare combination of deliberate, consistent wrestling tactics mixed with shocking physicality.
With his hips back and one hand committed to stifling the reaching hands of Heleno, Trinaldo employed a frame, a forearm pressed hard into the neck or jaw, to keep enough distance to launch stiff knees up the middle. The motion required to throw knees while still defending shot attempts caused Trinaldo to backpedal constantly, meaning he would be on the fence sooner or later.
Even so, Trinaldo committed even harder to the frame, pushing Heleno’s head back as he tried to press forward. Using a whizzer to limit the underhook of Heleno on the other side, Trinaldo kept his opponent trapped in front of him, allowing him space to lace the body with knees from what is typically considered a disadvantageous position.
For Heleno to escape the frame, he’d have to move back to take the pressure off and reattack his grips or shoot in. An apparently brilliant clinch fighter, Trinaldo was prepared to fight off the cage and escape the second that space was there. It’s rare to see a fighter with that kind of depth in an overlooked skill area of MMA, especially in their debut.
Throughout the fight Trinaldo displayed his ability to strike into collar ties and manipulate his opponent’s feet and posture while striking. Even better, he adjusted his tie-up as the range flowed, going from wrists and posts to collars to frames and whizzers as the situation developed. Given Heleno’s desperate forward motion, Trinaldo mostly looked to utilize whizzers and frames, making Heleno’s already energy-intensive takedown attempts unimaginably exhausting. Trinaldo finished a gassed Heleno with ground and pound hammers in the first round.
Trinaldo showed fantastic hips, great wrestling footwork - circling to retain an angle and crossface or square up and bury the head as the situation demanded. Trinaldo proved to be extremely tough to deal with in prolonged wrestling exchanges.
Most MMA fighters who reach a certain level develop their wrestling to be strong in the first layer, learning how to sprawl and catch underhooks, but they struggle in chains or other specific positions. Trinaldo had the opposite problem early on, his stance and tendency to load up and throw power left him vulnerable to explosive reactive doubles, the kind he saw against the absolute unit Gleison Tibau.
A fighter who looks like Trinaldo is expected to be dead in the water on their back, and when he’s tired, that may be the case. But a fresh Trinaldo is an outstanding scrambler and grappler in those early stages when taken down. He can elevate with butterfly hooks and catch underhooks to sit up and at least get to all fours, working up to his feet against the cage.
As the fight progressed, it became increasingly clear that a strong reactive double in particular is Trinaldo’s weakness, not all reactive shots altogether. Shooting to one leg, Tibau found himself stifled by a swift underhooks, from which Trinaldo shucked him off back to kickboxing range.
Another neat aspect of Trinaldo’s game revealed in this fight was his tendency to punch his way into the double collar tie, where he hangs on the head and pressures his opponent to the fence while timing knees.
This was also our first look at Trinaldo as an offensive grappler, he showed beautiful fluidity in taking the back of a rocked Tibau. When Tibau began to recover to mount or half guard, Trinaldo immediately looked to catch the head and arm position in transition, using his head and powerful neck to trap the arm of Tibau. This, and opponents fishing for hopeless guillotines, would be what lead to Trinaldo’s back-to-back arm triangle wins in 2013.
Against more athletically favorable matchups in CJ Keith and Mike Rio, Trinaldo got the chance to be the grappling aggressor and show off his own wrestling approach.
Trinaldo looked average at best working singles or doubles against the cage, but the transitions from those attacks bring him to his opponent’s back, and that’s where he’s a nightmare. We learned that Trinaldo is unbelievably powerful from rear-standing. He locks hands and crushes his opponent’s waist, stepping slightly off to the side and popping his hips for outrageous mat returns. No matter what the angle or direction they’re facing, Trinaldo has enough control in these positions to pivot and plant his opponent on their back, providing a comfortable side control.
Trinaldo has demonstrated a variety of finishes from those rear-standing lifts, he can hit a back arch, he can square up and collapse with a bodylock, he can lift and slam straight down.
Defensively, Trinaldo’s best wrestling look here comes from his strike selection. Off his jab, Trinaldo is consistently digging hooks to the body, providing him with instant underhooks should his opponent look to close distance or level change. At times his feet are still out of position and more stout opponents like Tibau are able to blast through his arms, but typically it’s a great look.
While he lost his fight with Piotr Hallman by submission, Trinaldo’s transitional ground game looked solid. I especially enjoyed his use of leg entanglements to create motion to sweep or escape.
Most of the clinch offense and defensive wrestling habits we’ve already discussed came up against Ronson and Chiesa in 2014, but it’s still fun to watch.
Most notable here is Trinaldo’s tendency to allow himself to be backed into the cage off the double collar tie, something that was exploited by Leandro Silva.
Silva was a surprisingly craft and physical wrestler, showing great entry and motion off his doubles and working well on the cage. Trinaldo had to adjust his pressure, swinging beyond his reach less and less often, and switching to tying up the wrists and collar, striking hard then getting back to the wrists. These are tactics used brilliantly by elite clinch fighters like Jorge Masvidal and Petr Yan.
I don’t love Trinaldo’s tendency to pull guard on guillotines, but his offensive potential from guard makes it far more acceptable. Against Silva, we saw Trinaldo chaining his guillotine into an omoplata, threatening armbars and triangles from there. It was an impressive sequence of attacks from someone with Trinaldo’s body type and athletic style. It’s worth noting that Silva’s defense looked stellar as well, he’s someone that flew under the radar for me, admittedly.
As the notoriety and skill level of Trinaldo’s opposition increased, his striking developed further, as illustrated in Sriram’s beautiful work, and it only further lent itself to his clinch and wrestling games.
Trinaldo’s striking off the clinch after pressuring to the cage was on full display vs. Ross Pearson. Posting on the head, shoulders, forearms and wrists, Trinaldo continuously pressed Pearson back and smothered him while unleashing a ridiculous barrage of knees and punches. The best part about this approach is that Trinaldo can settle into the collar ties at any point, while fully maintaining control of the exchange.
Against the cage, Trinaldo appears to be legitimately elite, switching between takedown attempts, clinch attacks, striking off shallow ties, all with comfortable fluidity and power. Even when Pearson tried to employ the double collar tie with his back to the cage, Trinaldo pressed his hips in and worked the body, turning the position into his own offense. In his hilarious brawl with Yancy Medeiros, Trinaldo’s frame made a return, and his ability to shuck off the ties of Medeiros and batter the taller man lead to damaging exchanges.
Let’s see how Trinaldo operated against a great clinch fighter in Paul Felder, and a great wrestler in Kevin Lee.
What stands out for me is Trinaldo’s ability to change the dynamic of an exchange. He and Felder are working for control in collar ties to land knees, Trinaldo switches to an underhook and starts to threaten takedown attempts, he then switches back to offensive striking clinch positions once he finds an opening in that new exchange. Even out in open space, Trinaldo surprised Felder by level changing and doubling rather than using his space to knee.
An incredibly impressive look from Trinaldo, which we’ve seen many times, is his ability to put his opponent’s back on the cage in the clinch. Typically we see it once he’s already on the cage, he controls one side of his opponent’s body then pulls hard on the collar to their weaker side, forcing them to turn. Against Felder, Trinaldo simply found a lever on the inside of Felder’s bicep and pushed to step Felder back.
Trinaldo didn’t show anything particularly novel against Kevin Lee, but the main principle demonstrated was the importance of striking setups for a wrestler. Lee feared committed striking entries against Trinaldo, a powerful counter artist, so his entries came from afar, where Trinaldo had little trouble finding his underhooks, a position where Trinaldo can really show off his physicality.
As great as the Jim Miller fight was as a display of Trinaldo’s striking, his grappling was equally as impressive against the long time black belt. After being knocked to his back off a caught kick, Trinaldo immediately inverted and debased Miller with a leg entanglement, allowing him to sweep and work from guard, where he likes to stack and slice with elbows off inside bicep control.
Trinaldo punished Miller on top, using wrist rides and traps to create positions of vulnerability for Miller. Those habits of controlling wrists and finding space to strike clearly translate between domains for Trinaldo.
That’s essentially the book on Francisco Trinaldo. He excels as a grappler in the clinch, in wrestling exchanges, and on the ground, with a variety of offensive and defensive tactics that make him a compelling matchup against literally anyone at lightweight who dares enter those positions.
While he didn’t show anything new in particular in his last few fights, I still made the clips, which contain all our favorite Trinaldo looks, so enjoy!
Even against an enormous lightweight in James Vick, Trinaldo was able to manipulate from the clinch and get his positions working.
I love the way Trinaldo forces Dunham to the side with the double collar tie, then grabs the underhook on the exposed side.
The way Trinaldo literally dragged Hernandez across the ground from double overs, my god.
Concluding Thoughts - by Ed Gallo
Francisco Trinaldo is allegedly 41 years old, his time as a UFC-caliber fighter could end overnight. While we hope Trinaldo never truly shows his age and continues to put on technical, physical displays of beautiful mixed martial arts ability, at the very least we can appreciate what he’s provided for us so far.
Heading into UFC Sao Paulo, show your appreciation for “Massaranduba”.
Another underappreciated, wonderful fighter on this card is Charles “Do Bronx” Oliveira, profiled here by BJJ black belt Tommy Elliot! A must-read.