A Match For The Ages: Damir Ismagulov vs. Guram Kutateladze
Photo by Carmen Mandato/Getty Images
At a division like lightweight, the route for even the best prospects is treacherous.
155 has long seemed on the cusp of a massive turnover; as soon as dominant champion Khabib Nurmagomedov decided to vacate and retire, lightweight suddenly seemed wide open. The contenders at the time hadn’t just been fighting at a high level for years, they’d also destroyed themselves in war after war — when fighters like Dustin Poirier and Justin Gaethje failed in their title bids against the former champion, they were theoretically poised to be replaced in a division that was shifting in composition under their feet. However, for the most part, the vacuum in the division that should’ve occurred simply didn’t materialize. The brilliant Charles Oliveira rose to being the unquestioned top fighter at the weight, but his first two defenses of that claim were against the same two men who capped the reign of the previous era. Even the newer faces at the top of 155 weren’t, by any means, truly new faces; Islam Makhachev had seemed a specter over the division for years and entered the top-5 largely on the strength of that reputation alone, and Michael Chandler’s Bellator career paved the way for immediate contention in the UFC. For fighters at lightweight who spent any time at all as a traditional prospect — starting out unknown and trying to earn their way into the top echelon with their performances — mobility was truly nonexistent.
The consequence of this school of fight-matching, then, is that the prospects who should be competing in the top-10 are often matched up early; since top fighters on skids are only available to other top fighters on skids (such as Chandler vs. Tony Ferguson), future contenders on a tear are only available to each other as well. This sort of functional tournament for a shot at #10 is a matchmaking style that’s obviously not supportive of swift divisional change, but (if there’s a bright side) it also leads to great fighters testing one another in their primes; for instance, Rafael Fiziev vs. Brad Riddell was a fight that derailed one of them unduly, but also proved that they were promising relative to one another and not just relative to a weaker field of fodder. Guram Kutateladze’s short UFC career has been defined by this sort of fight— even if the razor-close decision in his debut against Mateusz Gamrot hadn’t swung his way, “The Georgian Viking” proved that he could push a future contender beyond his limits. With his inactivity since that terrific win, however, even Gamrot’s subsequent success wasn’t enough to get Kutateladze a high-reward fight on its own. About a year and a half later, Kutateladze ended up in the exact same position, with a different challenge.
Damir Ismagulov’s run in the UFC as a prospect was, to this point, far more conventional; the former M-1 Global lightweight champion made a run through the division’s typical unranked competition as a massive favorite at every step, and his depth as a striker carried him past each challenge in turn. However, inactivity left him stranded and unranked just the same — after a convincing win over Thiago Moises, capping off three wins in about nine months, Ismagulov didn’t fight again for nearly two years. The success of his return against the explosive Rafael Alves aside, Ismagulov seemed very likely to go the route of other M-1 standouts such as Alexey Kunchenko or Rashid Magomedov — very strong talents in their divisions whose styles failed to motivate the UFC into caring about them. That said, if anything could change that impression, Ismagulov’s fight against Kutateladze is that showing— as “Qazaq” picked up a thrilling decision over one of the toughest unranked challenges in the sport, in a fight where the skill-level rivalled any in MMA.
I — Setting The Stage
Damir Ismagulov is, in theory, a fairly simply-processed fighter — like a great deal of the elite boxers in MMA, Ismagulov’s skillset centers around probing and drawing with his lead hand, and taking advantage of forcing an opponent into aggression or passivity on his terms. Essentially every Ismagulov fight centers on the varying results he gets from the jab, and how he consistently uses these reactions; for instance,
The experienced Thiago Moises was a solid counterpuncher, but until he felt comfortable, he’d simply shell up when Ismagulov showed his lead hand; the Kazakh simply never let him feel comfortable, as from the first round, he’d show Moises the lead hand or the step-in to draw the high-guard, only to go underneath to the body with the straight or the hook.
In contrast, Ismagulov went the opposite route with lanky grappler Joel Alvarez — who reacted with leans and retreats to much of Ismagulov’s offense, and whose height made it an irritating proposition. In this situation, Ismagulov simply switched his jab a level lower, drawing Alvarez’s attention downward. When Alvarez retreated looking to deal with the body jab when Damir changed levels, Ismagulov switched to the overhand.
Ismagulov’s jab creates a very strong platform for the rest of his skillset — and Kutateladze clearly understood the necessity of cutting that off at the pass from the start. The issue with doing that, generally, is that the jab for a fighter like Ismagulov functions as much more than a damage-dealing tool — which means that avoiding damage from any given jab is almost a secondary aim, compared to the importance of denying a sharp jabber information from its use. This removes the long-term utility of a lot of options — even the marquee fight on this event saw Josh Emmett gradually get his avenues of dealing with the jab taken away, as Calvin Kattar consistently used Emmett’s reactions to his throwaways to duck him into uppercuts and lace him with straights. Kutateladze’s aim from the start of the fight was to make Ismagulov uncomfortable throwing the jab at all — bottlenecking Ismagulov’s process by taking away his most crucial tool. As an incredibly dynamic athlete and a fast kicker, the Georgian had a couple routes to make a distance-jabbing game difficult.
Kutateladze isn’t the most comfortable boxer, but he’s a big hitter — and from the very first jab Damir threw, Guram looked to scare him off with counters. Through round 1, Kutateladze threatened the right hand over the top, looking to force Damir to think twice about committing to the jab — although Ismagulov’s consistency at getting behind his shoulders kept him from danger.
The even smarter play from Kutateladze, however, was countering the jab in combination and kicking the trailing leg as Damir backed away. This was a sharp read — Ismagulov’s fight with Alvarez saw a few Dutch combinations land as Damir backed straight out of exchanges, and it could easily compromise Ismagulov’s ability to go in and out quickly with the jab. Ismagulov was diligent about mitigating this path from the beginning with measured retreats — staying in stance so he could look to turn the knee out and keep threatening the lead hand — but a singularly powerful kicker like Kutateladze could cause some dissuasion regardless, especially with how he used the left hook beforehand to load his hips and herd Damir into the kick.
Having immediate defensive responses to Kutateladze’s approach didn’t necessarily mean that Ismagulov had the upper hand; after all, if each step-in from Damir was accompanied by Kutateladze firing back three or four that forced the Kazakh onto the defensive, building on anything would still be incredibly difficult. In fact, Kutateladze attacking the step-ins of Ismagulov meant that he was able to (at least initially) force the fight into being at a longer range than Ismagulov’s jab — where the power of Kutateladze’s kicks would likely be the difference maker, and Ismagulov would need to cover the distance before really playing with the jab. However, Ismagulov quickly had some responses to Kutateladze’s approach that were proactive and offensive — to take away Kutateladze’s catch-all answers to the lead hand and reintroduce it moving forward.
Kutateladze literally didn’t get 30 seconds of completely free counters to the jab — even smart ones. Early in round 1, Ismagulov started showing Kutateladze the jab to draw the big blitz, hooking off it to catch Kutateladze covering distance. Guram would often look to push through and find the kick anyway, but he couldn’t keep countering the jab with the combination for free; the Dutchie presupposed that Ismagulov would bounce out of range after the jab, but Ismagulov planting and hitting on his terms would make rushes dangerous.
The catch-and-pitch left hook that Kutateladze used to back Ismagulov up and set up the kick didn’t go unpunished, either — within 90 seconds of the fight’s start, Ismagulov took advantage of the rhythm he set. As Kutateladze settled into chasing a single jab backwards, Damir threw the jab away to sneak his rear hand through — drawing Kutateladze’s hook and cracking him inside of it with a right hand that came quicker behind the jab than expected.
This dynamic led to some brilliant exchanges — Kutateladze now needed to wait and discern between real jabs and fake, so Ismagulov could start sneaking into range with shoulder-feints and throwing away jabs to get Kutateladze’s head moving, but Guram was still very keen to punish Ismagulov if he got too comfortable. Here, Ismagulov mixes up the rhythm of his jab expertly — drawing the cross-counter, moving Guram’s head, tracking him with a quicker backhanded jab — before getting behind his shoulders and backing off as Guram threw the Dutchie. At least with respect to this set of counters, Ismagulov had Kutateladze’s number already.
All this said, Ismagulov getting the jab was certainly an important part of the fight, but Kutateladze certainly had his own gambits to play. A phenomenally strong fighter who proved an absolute menace in-close, “The Georgian Viking” likely took round 1 on his violence out of the clinch. This wasn’t a simple phase of the fight, either — but Kutateladze figured out his route into a space where his advantages would be actionable, and capitalized as brutally as he could.
Kutateladze looked to level-change into the clinch early in the fight, but when Damir saw it coming, his takedown defense and his transitional work was absolutely stellar — shooting blind to take away the jab range wouldn’t work, as Damir just quickly framed off and hooked Guram for trying.
However, Kutateladze introduced a second threat — in the middle of all the jabbing dynamics, he stepped in with a huge left hook to the body to set up a hook up top. Bodywork to set up the shot is a very strong tactic — in fact, elite lightweight Michael Chandler uses similar looks, forcing an opponent to discern between real takedown attempts and shallower level changes to come back up to the head, and taking advantage of the resultant lag in either direction.
As such, when the fight started looking like a classic Ismagulov fight in space — him jabbing, Guram reacting — suddenly, the Georgian began stalking forward behind the dual threat of his own lead-hand and level change. This let him fully get to Ismagulov’s hips and push Ismagulov to the fence, where Guram did his best work of the fight. Using the knee to straighten Damir up from the underhooking exchange and grab the collar tie was terrific, and while Ismagulov’s defense looked sharp on the inside, Kutateladze feeling his way into the elbows and knees meant he could finally find lands that weren’t available in space.
With the tools and respect to pressure by the end of round 1, Kutateladze’s full arsenal opened up — as he could push Damir to the fence confidently, he started blasting huge kicks at a cornered Ismagulov. But Ismagulov wasn’t conceding this part of the fight either — intercepting Guram’s pressure with the jab, circling in the direction of his kicks to take the sting off them, and ducking and countering with big combinations to keep Guram from consistently using the kicks as punch entries.
By the end of round 1, Kutateladze may have gotten the round on the cards with the flurry out of the clinch — but neither man had full control of the overall dynamic. As impressive as Kutateladze’s craft was in finding a way into the clinch, Ismagulov was still walking him into the jab as he looked to close the distance — and Ismagulov had started to build off the jab, even on the backfoot, by the end of round 1. There was still ten minutes of fight to go, and it was by far the most competitive of “Qazaq’s” UFC career already.
II — The Builder
After feeling the late-round assault of Kutateladze, Damir Ismagulov went into round 2 with an additional focus — gaining ground on the terrifying puncher, and making sure Guram would need to pay a price to take it back. Kutateladze’s powerful kicks posed a much larger problem for the Kazakh against the fence, at least conceptually; while Ismagulov did a very good job mitigating the later push, it still forced him into the sort of fight that Guram could likely configure a route past. Ismagulov’s defense to kicks (as seen earlier) was largely to just pull his leg or his entire body out of range; against the fence, this wasn’t as convenient an option — and the powerful round strikes of Kutateladze posed implications for pocket exchanges as well, as they could cut off his movement against the fence and let Guram start exchanges on his terms. Ismagulov’s big combinations against the fence were a way to delay that, but they weren’t a consistent solution — luckily, with Ismagulov’s control of the engagements and the distance in space, he wasn’t short on confidence either.
Ismagulov came out in round 2 feinting his shoulders and jabbing, as before — but he also immediately starts kicking with Guram, looking to buy ground back from him at his own range. Ismagulov showed in the Moises fight that he’s a sneakily sharp kicker himself — not as crushingly powerful or fast as Guram, but with a very good feel for using his feints to herd his opponent into them. This wasn’t a consistent look throughout the fight, as trying to kick with Kutateladze consistently isn’t sustainable for basically anyone — but Ismagulov did present the threat to keep Guram from looking to simply run him down with kicky pressure early.
Ismagulov’s counterpunching was the most crucial bit of this game for him, though — as seen in round 1, Kutateladze is a fighter who does like to cover huge swathes of distance, and frustrating that was paramount if Damir was to hold his ground. As in the first round, Ismagulov’s primary tool here was sitting down on the left hook on Guram’s running entries — and the hook early in round 2 absolutely seemed to get Kutateladze’s attention and force him to back off.
When Guram abandoned the runs, looking to simply push Damir back with big 1-2s and right hands, Ismagulov was ready for that too — not just to counter, but to make sure that countering wouldn’t compromise his control of the ring. Ismagulov pivoting and shifting off the centerline as Kutateladze entered wasn’t something he needed to do particularly often, but was gorgeous when he did — as even when Kutateladze landed, the length of the right would leave him committed in that direction, while Ismagulov had defused the pressure and countered as Kutateladze needed to turn to face.
As impressive as round 1 was for the Georgian, Ismagulov came roaring back in round 2 because of his concerted and sharp efforts to keep Kutateladze from walking him to the fence. The clinch entries weren’t all that effective anymore, either — Ismagulov was back to efficiently defending every one of Kutateladze’s level changes with ease, as Guram didn’t keep up the bodypunching through round 2 (understandable, with Damir’s command of the range) and Damir stayed incredibly sharp in transitions. No longer able to convince Ismagulov to give ground for free, Kutateladze was forced to react in the pocket to the jab — and a fight on Ismagulov’s terms was what he’d been avoiding all along, for good reason.
Ismagulov’s control of the distance, through his jab, obscured the effective range for Kutateladze consistently through round 2. Ismagulov was a lot more focused on feinting forward from the start of the second, but he was still feinting in and out — to a point where Kutateladze didn’t have a consistent cue for when Ismagulov was close enough to blast kicks at him. Ismagulov could often step into the jab before Kutateladze realized he was close enough to do that, only to suddenly be too far away when Kutateladze looked for his kicks — a problem averted in the first when he got Damir to the fence, but he couldn’t do that again. This particular quality carried Ismagulov for the rest of the fight — his convincing and consistent feints forced Kutateladze into a hole.
Round 2 also saw the first bits of extended combination-punching from Ismagulov — as soon as he was able to start drawing defensive actions from Guram at jabbing range, Ismagulov could start punishing them. Here, he throws away a right hand to force Guram over his rear hip before punishing him with a left hook — and this, in itself, was building from Guram’s sharp defenses to big loaded-up rights from Ismagulov earlier in the round.
Ismagulov developing the options from his lead hand also helped him in terms of keeping the ring — Kutateladze was solid at slipping the jab, but Ismagulov pairing it with the hook meant that Guram needed to give ground to reliably defend. Here, Ismagulov takes advantage — covering distance with the hook as Guram retreats and finding the right, immediately re-establishing control of the center after Guram looked to take it with the straight (then intercepting with a bodyjab, introducing another dimension to his lead hand that Guram couldn’t slip). The way all of Ismagulov’s aims work in concert is a massive part of his success.
Going into round 3, the fight was likely 1-1 — but desperation was only warranted for one of them. Kutateladze hadn’t been dominated in round 2, but he had struggled greatly — every bit of success he had in round 1 was defused and punished by the Kazakh, and Ismagulov’s offense was getting more and more difficult for Guram to keep up with. Round 3 would be difficult to wrest from the control of someone as commanding as Ismagulov after the showing he had over the previous five minutes, but Kutateladze would give it a fair shot.
III — The Viking’s Last Stand
The third round of Ismagulov vs. Kutateladze was, by far, the closest of them — where Kutateladze had struggled to win many minutes through the first ten, he had managed to take the first round, and the fight slipping from his grasp in round 2 lit a fire under the Georgian. At the same time, however, Ismagulov still had his reads in the pocket and his setups at range— and while Kutateladze showed some new looks in the third frame, Ismagulov’s versatility and composure still shone through. Almost mirroring Ismagulov’s adjustment after the first round, Kutateladze seemed to come to a conclusion after the second that giving Ismagulov any room was untenable, no matter the cost — if his big punch entries weren’t working, Guram would simply turn to the tools that Ismagulov could (to this point) frustrate and mitigate but not quite fully avoid.
Kutateladze went into the third round incredibly urgent to push Ismagulov back — and started counter-kicking more urgently, instead of putting it behind (the now vulnerable) blitzing combo. The counter leg-kick has long been the bane of many a great boxer, for a few reasons — shifting weight to the lead-leg to throw a jab makes it a more vulnerable target with fewer options to mitigate, that same factor makes the jab harder to build on (since it likely breaks an opponent’s base by kicking out most of their weight), and Ismagulov wouldn’t have the window to back out the way he was with the counter-Dutchies. Kutateladze had landed it a few times earlier, but committed more to the tactic in round 3 — occasionally finding the lead-leg kick on Damir’s rear hand as well, in an impressive feat of dexterity considering that he was also often in the middle of moving his head.
However, this clever adjustment didn’t change how much trouble Kutateladze was having in timing the jab itself; Kutateladze was urgently bringing back a lot of the counter looks he brought in round 1 and sharply varying them, but Ismagulov’s depth still played absolute havoc with his rhythm. Only being able to distinguish between a real jab and a feint at the very end meant that Kutateladze was still in a position of having to react defensively — where only his reflexes were getting him out of the way, and therefore herding him into something else. In particular, Ismagulov closing the door with the left hook found him particular success in the third round — where he could get Kutateladze slipping into the hook, or even just get him slipping at all and fire to the body when he’s too overwhelmed to counter (although there was one instance where they both closed the door on each other simultaneously, which really is the story of this fight).
Kutateladze’s forward aggression didn’t exactly roundly fail, but Ismagulov did find responses with his counterpunching — as truly great of a fighter Kutateladze is, his skillset centers more on big committed actions that Ismagulov could time, far more easily than Kutateladze could time Ismagulov putting out 3 parts static and 1 part action. Ismagulov continued to make a habit of checking Guram with his lead hand as he entered, giving him the option to build into longer combinations later in the fight — these weren’t always meant to be hurting blows, but both the initial counters and the subsequent volume would interrupt Guram’s bigger actions, breaking his rhythm and forcing him to exit as Damir could physically create space and feel his way through exchanges. For instance, Guram’s left bodyshot made a return from round 1, but he couldn’t build on the entry with Ismagulov’s counter work at this stage.
As the round progressed — and Guram turned more and more reliably to blasting hard kicks and entering with big 1-2s — Ismagulov started sitting down more on his counter right hand; punching with Kutateladze on his lowkicks, absorbing the round kicks elsewhere on his arms and immediately firing back as Guram looked to press in afterwards, and finding sneaky overhands as Guram entered with his hands. As in the second round, Ismagulov eventually gave Kutateladze no actions for free — the kicks did do some attrition, but Ismagulov made Guram pay for throwing every one by the end of the fight.
Kutateladze had a very real argument to winning the third round, and therefore the entire fight; he was still working hard to find shots in transition, and even punching with a kicker as thudding as the Georgian could easily be interpreted as a Pyrrhic victory of sorts. However, Ismagulov’s cleaner counters and sharper volume got the nod from two judges, with a little bit of help from a borderline-illegal knee from Kutateladze at the very end. In any case, Kutateladze never stopped being competitive — and in fact, considering how the second round went, Kutateladze forcing the whole fight to perhaps hinge on the final exchange was truly a feat against someone with Ismagulov’s steady offense and progressive sequencing. “Qazaq” had done enough, but unlike the rest of his UFC wins, the result easily could have been different on another night.
In Sum
It is almost a certainty that Damir Ismagulov’s next fight will be markedly less competitive than what he faced in Austin, Texas. That isn’t just a statement on his matchmaking — in that he likely still won’t end up with a fight against a widely-acknowledged contender — but on the challenge he just faced; his opponent looked like a tricky matchup based on both overall skills and the style he presented, and yet each time the Georgian unveiled another tool to put some pressure on, Ismagulov simply reached deeper into his own bag of tricks. Ismagulov was also forced into a fairly narrow fight against Kutateladze — his wins over the likes of Moises and Alves didn’t just hinge on his boxing, but also his top game and his work at range, yet Kutateladze’s absurd danger in kicking matches and his immense strength and nous on the inside rendered those paths unactionable. Thriving in that sort of fight — without all his tools available, against another top-tier prospect, with big disadvantages in dynamism and physicality — speaks to the very real upside Damir Ismagulov has moving forward. While many great things can be said about the likes of Dustin Poirier or Justin Gaethje (or even newer contenders such as Islam Makhachev), “versatile” isn’t necessarily one of them — Ismagulov’s keen tactical mind and the breadth of his skillset (as well as already being a terrific defensive fighter for MMA) is a genuine differentiating factor among the entire field.
That said, Guram Kutateladze is in an awkward spot — far more awkward than a fighter of his caliber deserves. The brilliant win over Mateusz Gamrot should ideally give him some pull in terms of the matchmaking (considering Gamrot’s quick rise to relevance), and yet any loss can turn out to be a problem in a division where opportunities for upward mobility are so slim. There are very few fighters who can keep up with the preparation and adjustments that Kutateladze made against Ismagulov, combined with the explosiveness and depth of his skillset; even fighting into the rankings, Kutateladze likely won’t find an opponent quite like “Qazaq”.
Of all the “prospect vs. prospect” bookings the UFC has ever done, perhaps the one most similar to Ismagulov/Kutateladze — and a very plausible model for the paths of both — was Calvin Kattar vs. Shane Burgos; in January 2018, those two featherweights, unranked at the time, put on a brilliant fight that absolutely announced both as unquestionable contenders. In the years since, Kattar became one of the best featherweights on the planet, and Burgos also staked a perennial claim in the rankings — Kattar’s win became truly meaningful, as the quality of Burgos’ loss became impressive in its own right. That is to say, not every booking between fighters bound for relevance derails one of them; it’s entirely possible that both Ismagulov and Kutateladze end up fulfilling their full potential as deeply skilled and tremendously thoughtful menaces to the established lightweight ranks. However, even if they don’t, the fight that they brought out of one another is a strong legacy all in itself.