Eddie Alvarez vs. Justin Gaethje: For the Violence Crown
Photo courtesy of @SnackMuay
This is the first of five pieces, celebrating our 200 patron goal, where we cover what we consider the five best bouts in the history of the UFC.
Michael Johnson collapsed to the canvas across the cage fence, his face a splattered portrait of blood after nearly ten minutes opposite of the former World Series of Fighting lightweight champion, Justin Gaethje. In as wild a debut as he could have had, Gaethje had found himself on the verge of unconsciousness on two - some might argue three - occasions, only to keep pressuring Johnson into the fence, punishing his attempts to escape with debilitating leg kicks, and punished the level changes with hellacious uppercuts until the former contender was broken and beaten.
“Where is my equal!” roared the former wrestler with an innocent brashness that only the world’s greatest violencemonger could fashion for himself. Justin Gaethje had built an aggressive game predicated upon relentlessly pushing his opponents and methodically breaking them down. He would bait his man into a movement or reaction, then punish them with a counter or a thudding kick to their shin. He built an underrated, deceptively tricky high guard to catch shots and quickly pitch counters. Enforced by sheer, raw horsepower, engaging Gaethje seemed like a recipe for disaster for most. However, his cagecutting was as consistent as you could find - at some point, he was going to corner you or keep the damage up. Of his then eighteen wins, only one man had seen the distance. He could be hurt and hit - more difficult than most would think - but they all tended to end the same. Justin Gaethje was an offensive juggernaut and, at least in his eyes, an unstoppable force of nature. Who could stop such a monster?
Enter Eddie Alvarez, who might have been, circa 2017, as accomplished a lightweight as MMA had ever seen. Although Alvarez’s resume may not measure up to the likes of the dominant Khabib Nurmagomedov at this point, Alvarez, in many ways, remains the most experienced and savvy fighter the lightweight division has ever seen. He certifiably was not the best and had his difficult matchups, but Alvarez’ longevity was something to behold. Although his run to the title had its share of questionable decisions, his coordinated skill as an outfighter was best shown versus a fellow all-time great in Rafael dos Anjos, whom Alvarez drew in and landed the counterpunch of his life. Outside of Conor McGregor’s complete dissection of him that seems, in retrospect, a product of the matchup, Alvarez had never suffered a true one-sided loss either. No one could argue with Alvarez’s gamesmanship, yet there was a question, at nearly 33-years-old and over a decade as a top-tier lightweight with hellacious battles on his record, how much longer could he keep it up?
In many ways, the ultimate test of Gaethje’s seek-and-destroy tactics would be against Alvarez’s veteran savvy. Likewise, Gaethje was an enormous final test for Alvarez. Could the old dog still bring one more victory lap in what was going to be a warzone? When Eddie Alvarez termed this as a fight to decide the most violent man in the lightweight division, he seemed to acknowledge both tenets. He was determined to win this one and, if he wasn’t, he was going to make it a fight.
On December 7, 2017, Eddie Alvarez delivered on those promises as he and the most exciting man in Mixed Martial Arts engaged in a fight for the ages.
Right away, Alvarez establishes his main game. Against fighters who pursue him, Alvarez’s outfighting game excels. Whether it be the methodical cutting of Rafael dos Anjos or the relentless pace of Michael Chandler, Alvarez could play the matador and dart out of harm’s way. Likewise, Alvarez looked to engage in close with Gaethje to exploit his vaunted pocket game. And just as quick as he was out of the gate, he immediately found himself running into counters and eating kicks on his exits.
The high guard, as a defense, prioritizes the defense of the head, at a close range. By placing both forearms close to the head, it acts as a barrier that can ‘catch’ or deflect blows as they come in without compromising position or head movement. All the user has to do is make sure they shift their weight or position of the arms themselves and they can prove difficult to hit. Moreover, a high guard is a counterpuncher’s friend. Not only do the arms facilitate a shell, they provide a trigger for a ‘pitch’ - that is, counters - back once shots are caught on the forearms. Of course, this does demand that the fighter in question engage constantly, but the best high guard users are those who have an innate sense of timing.
In the case of Justin Gaethje, his high guard has proven incredibly difficult to break through partially because he augments it with head movement. However, his counterpunching tends to surprise even the most savvy boxers in the UFC consistently and close off those longer exchanges.
The patented leg kicks, meanwhile, informed Alvarez that fighting an entirely lateral fight at range was not the best choice either. Despite being a competent outfighter, Alvarez could be punished when he takes lateral steps to his trailing leg. Moreover, because Gaethje likes to employ his kicks as counters to his opponent’s proactive and reactive measures, an outside fight was not the best choice here. Without an answer at range, Alvarez is forced to go into the lion’s den, where the hair-trigger counters were.
Suffice it to say, Eddie Alvarez had some problem solving to do. In short, a twofold problem:
He had to diffuse or take away Gaethje’s weapons
He had to find ways to create his own offense consistently
If basic lateral movement was not going to be enough, then Alvarez had to alter his defensive cagecraft. He found his answer behind the utilization of an offensive tool: the jab. Whenever Alvarez need to escape proximity, he instantly began to fire jab as he moved. Not only does moving behind a jab allow evasion because it blinds the opponent, it can be used to set up better offense. Alvarez understands that a jab can corral an aggressor forward into counters. Moreover, once it’s accompanied by feints (e.g. level changes), the fighter on the frontfoot is going to hesitate. It’s through the jab and feints that Alvarez eventually makes his big read: That Gaethje’s high guard is incredibly sensitive. As soon as Alvarez makes a committed feint or strike, Gaethje will instinctively cover up to endure a possible storm and, most damningly, will have a pause until the attack is done. From there, Alvarez starts to draw the reactions: level changes, throwaway jabs, and half-steps.
Of course, Gaethje’s counters are still the gamechanging threat and it doesn’t alter how Gaethje’s head is not an easy target. Fortunately, Eddie Alvarez is educated about the high guard’s biggest issue: Because it defends the head, the body is open. All Alvarez has to do is draw the response, then go about tearing Gaethje’s ribs up.
Not only that, but Alvarez can start mixing in his feints, throwaways and bodywork together to force Gaethje’s guard to continue working, ironically, to his own detriment. Once all of those pieces come together, Alvarez is not only able to control the exchanges - he has taken away one of the most dangerous phases of the fight and turned it into his strength where the engagements were as long as he wanted.
His adversary didn’t go quietly though. Behind his own jab, Gaethje began to demonstrate his underrated ability as a tactician. After establishing the lead hand as a tool to create his tradework single collar tie clinch, Gaethje would mix in intercepting hooks or draw Alvarez into the clinch or bone-crunching knees or uppercuts. Behind the threat of damage, Gaethje began to push the former champion back again.
Said former champion, therefore, was forced to make a gamble. He couldn’t afford to fight where his weakness to kicks was prevalent. Despite having answers in the pocket, Gaethje’s clinch had changed the dynamics up-close. Nonetheless, ‘The Underground King’ could still deal damage. To that end, Alvarez decided to stand his ground and hit back, regardless of entering his inferior clinch game. If it meant entering the clinch first, hitting first or last - Alvarez was going to strike back and make his damage count. And it worked.
Justin Gaethje’s pressure game was intimidating and incredibly damaging. To fight him meant an implicit understanding that taking damage was likely a necessity. It was how the fighter in question navigated the damage and took advantage of specific weaknesses that mattered the most in their victory. There was no greater weakness in Gaethje’s game than the cost of what it took to deal damage. Simply put, Justin Gaethje can push an incredible pace, but it is only as effective as the harm he deals in the process. If he can’t outdamage his opponent, then his own gas tank in the trenches is going to eventually wear on him. That becomes especially true if the man he’s facing is also dealing intentionally attritive damage back to him. Staying close to Gaethje meant he had to respond to what was coming at him more than forcing his opponent to respond in kind. Likewise, it took away his ability to kick the legs. Gaethje’s inexperience and deficit of strategical awareness is what led to his downfall here just as much as Alvarez’s intelligence and discipline on top of his grit.
With only one round left, time was running out for Gaethje. All Alvarez had to do was continue what he was doing and press Gaethje back. The onus was on the Coloradoan to finish it. Ergo, Gaethje dedicated all of his efforts to sawing off Alvarez’s leg or decapitating him.
An effective backwards kicker in Mixed Martial Arts is an unfortunate rarity and why would require a longer discussion. ‘The Highlight’ is not one of the few who can kick on the backfoot, but he was willing to improvise.
Gaethje was always a willing handfighter, usually for collar ties, and here, he put it to good use. He would meet Alvarez’s grips to create a frame or to draw counterpunches and then try to hobble Alvarez’s lead leg. If he couldn’t establish the frames, he drew Alvarez into more collar tie uppercuts.
In a desperate battle of grit, Alvarez’s willingness to fight back in Gaethje’s wheelhouse led to a decisive knockout as he fell to the ground, finally knocked definitely out for the first time in his career as a bloodied, swollen and battered Eddie Alvarez stood over, crowned the unofficial king of violent lightweights - a proclamation he soon uttered to the camera as a rhetorical question.
To say anything less of Alvarez’s victory here would be a disservice. He wasn’t necessarily facing a stylistic nightmare, though, with the context of his career in mind and the danger Gaethje did pose, it only makes the win all the more impressive. Although Khabib Nurmagomedov and Dustin Poirier would come to best, in this writer’s opinion, better versions of the fighter Alvarez outwilled and outbattled that night, I’m not sure either of them undid the ideological tenets of who Gaethje was the way the latter did. Gaethje prided himself on breaking his opponents and Alvarez, with all of his tools and knowledge, took on the challenge and broke Gaethje at his own game. There might be better names on Eddie Alvarez’s resume; there might have been nights he was an even better fighter than he was here too. However, as far as I’m concerned, this victory stands, as of this moment, as the finest, most disciplined effort of his career.
Justin Gaethje found his equal and then some.