MMA Metagame: On Threats
Photo by Josh Hedges/Zuffa LLC/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images
In my previous MMA Metagame piece, I analyzed the fundamental emphasis the sport of MMA places on initiative, and how that is often sacrificed for the sake of developed defensive systems. This time around, I will be exploring the value of threats in MMA, how threats can compound, and what happens to a fighter when a typical threat is ignored or displaced.
Introduction
As the sport of MMA continues to evolve and progress, some of the most tangible ways to gauge the aggregate development of fighters comes in the form of the threats they offer. In the early days, competitors typically had one thing they knew how to do and everything about their styles was informed by that one thing. Innovators like Fedor Emelianenko burst onto the scene and demonstrated the use in having more than one threat to offer opposition, and how a confluence of areas of expertise could blow the doors wide open in terms of what was possible in MMA.
This time around, my focus will be discussing what the main threats are in MMA, how they can open up a fighter’s game when compounded, and how badly fighters can be caught out when their preferred threats are mitigated.
Establishing & Compounding Threats
It is easiest to imagine threats in the context of MMA as any of the phases or ranges that a fight can take place at. The severity of the threat can be scaled up or down depending on a variety of factors including depth of skill, tactical and strategic efficacy, an opponent’s acumen in said area, etc., but to keep things simple, here is a general list of all the major threats in an MMA fight:
Kicking range
Pocket range
Clinch
Transitions (punching into the clinch, attacking on breaks, throwaway takedown attempts into punches, etc.)
Takedown threat
Top position
Obviously, this is a bit of an oversimplification. The best fighters have linkages to move from one area to the next, and many find ways to blend threats (more on this later). This is just a rough outline of the nominal threats that generally occupy a fighter’s game. Threats inform how a fighter fights, and how their opponents react to them. At the simplest of levels, these are the threats that fighters must account for when competing in MMA. Effectiveness at handling such threats may vary.
If something as general as “pocket range” is too broad a term when discussing the threats of a specific fighter, then individual tactical components can be listed under these umbrella terms as well. For example, Renato Moicano is a fighter I wouldn’t classify as anything beyond OK in the pocket, but he possesses a brilliant and layered jab that I would classify as a predominant threat for opponents to account for when facing him. It may just be a singular tool, but his execution behind the tool can open up a variety of fight options for him (more on this later, as well).
Directionality informs threats at a variety of levels, too. For example, Edson Barboza is a violent kicking threat when he’s contested at mid-range, but as soon as he’s forced onto the backfoot, his footwork disintegrates. He begins taking long, wide circular steps along the fence to regain open space and his effectiveness is diminished. Conversely, Eddie Alvarez is an expert at diffusing committed pressure fighters, where he is able to demonstrate some impressive cage craft, pivots, backfoot jabbing, and drawing opponents onto heavy body shots. When Alvarez is forced to pressure, however, he is uniquely uncomfortable closing opponents down and his pocket craft suddenly disappears.
The question all fighters must ask themselves is the following: What threats do I provide, and how are these threats employed? In other words, what do you offer in terms of threatening in the aforementioned areas, and how exactly is this threat made to increase your odds of winning within the context of a fight?
Certain fighters offer threats that their opponents are entirely (and, often painfully) aware of. Everybody who fights Khabib Nurmagomedov understands that his wrestling + top position is the dominant threat that dictates his opponent’s approach. When Khabib’s opponents step up to the plate, they are under no illusions regarding what kind of threat the lightweight champion offers. On the other side of things, certain fighters offer more understated threats that opponents might not even be aware of until it is too late. Max Holloway looked prepared enough to handle Alexander Volkanovski’s pressure + clinch threats, but looked lost at handling his opponent’s systematic leg kicking assault, which cost him dearly. Prior to that fight, Volkanovski appeared to be a sound leg kicker, but not a consistently threatening one. It wasn’t until he began opening exchanges and combinations up from his low kicking that Holloway (and audiences) realized how layered his approach truly was.
Proficiency defines the value of a threat within a fighter. To expand upon the previous example, Volkanovski remains a more proactive clinch threat than Holloway, but largely, Max’s ability to strip grips and frame off on the inside meant that this specific threat wasn’t a consistent area of advantage for Volkanovski. Max was largely at parity with Volkanovski in that specific area. However, once Volkanovski’s low kicking system got rolling, Holloway’s mobility was hampered and it meant that Volkanovski was more capable of engaging the clinch and attacking in transitions (despite Max’s ability to shut them down earlier in the fight).
So, how does one establish a threat within a fight without making said threat too predictable or solvable? This is where depth, tactics, and strategy come into play. The most instructive example I will be using to illustrate the positives and negatives related to threats is Georges St-Pierre. As the most successful welterweight of all time and one of the sport’s greatest ever, GSP was uniquely ahead of the metagame during his reign as champion and a lot of this innovation was rooted in his commitment to an actual offensive system.
His two primary weapons were the jab and the double leg, but it was Georges’ ability to compound these two threats, cover entries for either attack, and play off one another without running out of ideas. (For those unclear about what I mean when I say ‘system,’ you can refer back to my previous MMA metagame piece here, as well as Ryan Wagner’s excellent GSP series starting here.) Georges had more variety to his game than just the jab and the takedown, but these two threats were his largest, most reliable areas of skill and the two tools he used to dominate the division for so long. Everything else in his game was built on the backs of these two threats.
Both the jab and the takedown were interconnected in their utility, but to understand the interplay, I will break them down individually and then together. Let’s start with the jab. GSP had a variety of ways to employ his patented jab. On a basic level, Georges understood how to diversify entries off his lead land and how opponents would react to him as a result. Such as in boxing, the jab would be used to draw reactions from opponents. He could feint and paw before committing. He could set a rhythm with his lead foot step-in before breaking it with a half-beat jab. He worked level changes into his jab, either feinting a shot takedown or throwing a body jab. He could double or triple up on his jab, and occasionally counter with it. At a time when most of his competitors were simply thinking about the incoming punch, Georges displayed an acute understanding of how to play with reactions, both proactive and reactive.
This fed directly into GSP’s takedown + top position threat, which was the more significant hazard for his opponents to contend with. Georges was both proactive (feinting/jabbing into level changes) and reactive (countering an opponent stepping into range with a double leg, or catching kicks to convert takedown attempts) with his wrestling. As I previously noted with the level-changes off the jab, Georges could mix a body jab with a shot takedown, causing his opponents to question the threat in front of them. Since St-Pierre was so proficient as a wrestler, a few of his opponents were petrified of even stepping into range for fear of being taken down. As a result, GSP was free to begin setting up entries with his jab and if an opponent began responding, that likely opened up the wrestling threat once again.
While I’ve simplified Georges’ game a bit unfairly above, I want to make this point absolutely clear: GSP was a brilliant innovator in MMA. On a surface level, a jab and a takedown might not seem like a consistently proven toolbox to win fights at the highest levels, but the precocity of Georges St-Pierre came from the interplay between these two threats. A small number of tools does not equate to a small amount of proficiency if they are employed correctly.
Anybody who knows me knows that I am not the type to give undue credit. I think Georges, like every human being, has made some good and bad decisions in his career, but his attitude towards approaching MMA (particularly, when MMA was at such an infancy) is nothing short of genius. It wasn’t simply the threats that GSP presented, but it was the variety and interplay between how they were presented gave way to an entire offensive system that paid off in spades. Georges was a legendarily proactive fighter who never ran out of ideas in a fight, because these two threats (the jab and the takedown) were disguised, balanced, and inextricably linked. Neither one was ever employed bare; the champion forced his opponents to respond to his threats and opened up his options based on said reactions.
Revealing Threats
As time has gone on, more fighters have built their technical games off of the interplay between threats, but few have been able to establish them in quite the same way Georges St-Pierre did. It took Jose Aldo until his seventh professional title fight against Frankie Edgar before unveiling his jab. Before then, most discussion surrounding the Brazilian champion centered around his infamous leg kicks, which became less pervasive over time, and his takedown defense. Against the former lightweight champion, however, Aldo dictated most of the exchanges with his brilliant jab, demonstrating a deeper understanding and application of it than GSP himself.
Speaking of Frankie Edgar, the former lightweight champion was an aggressive takedown threat, as he used to hunt for knee-taps and double legs to score points for decision victories. Later in his career, however, Edgar unveiled a frightening addition to his takedown threat in the form of crushing, relentless top control. Against B.J. Penn and Gray Maynard, Edgar’s takedowns were generally used to punctuate rounds or to disrupt an opponent’s rhythm. Against Cub Swanson, Edgar displayed one of the most singularly vicious wrestling + top control performances I’ve ever seen in MMA, greedily passing Swanson’s guard, attacking in transitions, and throwing unending volume that wound up drowning the WEC alum.
I bring these examples up, because these threats (Aldo’s jab, Edgar’s top control) were not apparent until these fighters made them so. Prior to these demonstrative performances, opponents simply weren’t prepared to deal with these specific threats, and thus were not threatened by them at all. It wasn’t until Aldo and Edgar made these threats apparent that their opposition was forced to react. This sounds basic, but it is an instructive piece of analysis. Aldo and Edgar peeled back the layers in their basic games to reveal more depth, and as a result, opponents were suddenly more acutely aware of what and how these threats could be employed. After slaughtering Cub Swanson on the ground, nobody wanted Frankie Edgar on top of them.
A general rule in MMA analysis is ‘only pick what you’ve seen.’ If you predict a fight with the expectation of a fighter to show off a new wrinkle to their game that they’ve given little indication of being there or to bring back something in their game that has dissipated over time, then that is usually a bad idea. Once upon a time, I figured that Jose Aldo would be a bad night for Max Holloway, since Aldo would be able to attack Holloway’s legs and mitigate much of his angular mobility. This proved to be a poor pick, because Aldo largely stopped throwing leg kicks around 2013 and he got countered off the first one he attempted. My expectation was informed by history, not trajectory.
The flip side of this argument is attempting to pick a fighter as they consistently unveil more threats, and trying to gauge what that means. Israel Adesanya appeared to be on a much slower developmental path than expected after a scrappy decision win over Marvin Vettori, where he struggled in the clinch and was even taken down and worked from top for a while. As it turned out, his performance against Brad Tavares emblazoned a dimensional clinch game, where the former kickboxer showed an ability to attack in transitions, on breaks, and safely fight for positional superiority. This is a rare gift; a fighter who continues to show new wrinkles and new threats in their game, which greatly alter the way opponents approach them.
Denying Threats
While Georges St-Pierre was a great progenitor of establishing threats in MMA and while he intrinsically understood the value behind compounding several different threats into one cohesive system meant that, what happens when a wedge is thrown into the gears? How does the greatest welterweight of all time react when one piece of his system is denied or muted?
The answer is complicated, because in GSP’s defense, he was a fairly adaptable fighter on the fly and he managed his way through a few opponents who were capable of shutting down one key area within his system. Josh Koscheck was a good enough defensive wrestler that he was able to prevent Georges from getting his takedown + top position game rolling in their rematch. On the other hand, Koscheck had absolutely no answers for GSP’s legendary jab. So, while the wrestling wasn’t much of a factor, it ultimately didn’t matter, because Georges’ feinting, level-changes, and rhythm changes behind his shotgun jab pretty much disassembled the wrestler.
However, when Georges is denied his wrestling and his jab, his efficacy as a systematic fighter is badly shut down. The obvious example to use here is GSP’s infamously contentious fight with Johny Hendricks (which I will discuss in a moment), but even Georges’ fight with Jake Shields was a glimpse at how the welterweight great looked when thrown out of his comfort zone. Shields is mechanically horrific and ostensibly not very good by most metrics, including mine. However, he diligently kicked at GSP’s lead leg when Georges planted to jab, and he made an effort to jab with Georges (or, at least, rake at his eyes).
The inherent jank behind Shields’ mechanics and tactics meant that neither tactic was enough to entirely remove the jab from GSP’s arsenal, but its effectiveness was muted. The wrestling threat was also greatly reduced, since Shields’ sprint grappling threat was clearly in Georges’ mind. What GSP was left with was an opponent who did his damnedest to shut down Georges’ two largest threats, and was able to throw and land meaningless volume to pick up points. Georges was forced to rely on his kicking game and a heinous rear overhand to win a decision. It is still probably the worst fight in GSP’s catalogue, and a closer fight than it had any right to be.
Shields exposed a few of the holes with Georges’ offensive system, but Hendricks ripped them wide open. As a southpaw, Hendricks’ lead right hand was used to great effect to slap, drag, and paw GSP’s orthodox jab away. Before Hendricks, only Shields had effectively hand-fought GSP’s jab and a lot of that was simply due to Shields’ commitment to eye pokes. Not only this, but Hendricks could counter Georges’ jab with a lead right hook around his lead shoulder even when the champion managed to direct his jab on the inside track of his opponent’s shoulder. GSP’s jab wasn’t completely useless against Hendricks, but he rarely got it for free, which put a serious hitch in the champion’s game.
The biggest issue for Georges in this bout was the wrestling defense and clinch physicality of Hendricks. As a decorated collegiate wrestler and a much younger, stronger, and more durable athlete, Hendricks looked like a man against a boy in tie-ups with St-Pierre. In the past, Ryan has pointed out that Georges’ main form of defense in the pocket was shooting takedowns. Within a minute and a half, Hendricks had snapped Georges down violently off a failed takedown and GSP realized that not just one, but both of his primary threats had been muted and punished. In many subsequent exchanges, St-Pierre would haphazardly dive on takedowns and wind up running directly into intercepting knees and uppercuts, getting muscled around inside.
I’ve been discussing a lot of this principle from GSP’s perspective, so let me shift gears a moment and discuss what this fight looked like from Hendricks’ point of view. After the first round, Hendricks understood four major things:
Georges’ jab wouldn’t be the opening tool that he had relied upon in the past, due to Hendricks’ hand-fighting and open-stance engagement.
Georges’ reactive wrestling (remember; his main defensive concession in the pocket) wouldn’t be a viable path to victory either, as Hendricks was both a more voracious defensive wrestler and clinch threat at this point.
Hendricks possessed the ability to take Georges down, which meant that GSP stalling along the fence was also not a viable option.
Tactically, Hendricks could afford to enter with pretty much whatever he wanted (such as leaping knees to the midsection), as well as throw in combination in the pocket, because Georges just isn’t all that dangerous without his two main tools.
Everything I have written above doesn’t mean that the fight was a wash. Hendricks only has himself to blame for the breaks he took and despite having his two main threats denied, Georges fought his heart out, trying to find an answer with kicks, combination punching, and single legs, but the axiom of the fight is indisputable: Georges St-Pierre was a fighter who needed every element of his game to be working to do his best work. When one of his main threats is denied, his effectiveness diminishes and his confidence erodes.
On the topic of welterweights, a more recent example of this principle in practice is Kamaru Usman’s commanding victory of the then-champion, Tyron Woodley. Woodley is a fighter who built his entire style off of threats, specifically the right hand and the blast double leg. As much as I dislike him, Tyron has managed to defeat a few fighters who I don’t think he necessarily out-skilled, but were still cowed by his threats. His inertia as a fighter was by design, largely to slow the pace of a fight to an agonizing crawl, preemptively scaring opponents off of initiating. It is notable that the opponents he has fought who weren’t intimidated by his two limited threats (Rory MacDonald, Nate Marquardt, and Jake Shields kind of) completely blew Woodley out of the water.
Kamaru Usman is a comparable wrestling threat to Woodley, and in many ways, might be an even better one, since he’s given up fewer takedowns in his career. While Woodley is a bigger puncher and has more coordination in landing his big right hand, Usman is also a functionally better striker and pressure fighter. More than that, Usman had both the defensive awareness to anticipate the right hand and no discernable fear when engaging the apathetic champion, so much of the fight consisted of Usman just marching Woodley into the clinch and fucking him up. Woodley’s two major threats weren’t just muted; they were lopped off and thrown into the bin. Within a round, Tyron’ had been comprehensively solved once more and he could do virtually nothing against Kamaru for 25 minutes.
What made Hendricks and Usman so difficult as challengers was in the totality of their ability to deny the main threats of their opponents. Largely, they were able to almost ignore the wrestling threats of their opponents, because they were so technically and physically overwhelming. This wasn’t a specifically trained tactical approach; this is just who these men are. Their wrestling pedigrees already gave them a leg up in denying the champs their wrestling threat, but that wasn’t the end of it. Hendricks’ hand-fighting and Usman’s clinch pressure mostly negated the other main threats from Georges and Woodley, which left the champions way outside of their comfort zones. Their games were generally predicated on the threats of those two major weapons, and their opponents were effectively built from the ground up to ignore or mitigate those main threats. As such, their offensive systems immediately became less effective.
The difference between GSP and Woodley both facing their stylistic nightmare in Hendricks and Usman, respectively, is that Georges never stopped looking for an answer. His main threats were muted, but he never stopped looking for tactical methods to reincorporate them. His ancillary threats (his kicking game) were still largely present, he worked harder in combination than I’ve ever seen from him before, and the welterweight great never took time off, just because he was on the losing end of the exchanges. Conversely, Woodley had absolutely no answers from the moment the fight began and never even attempted to reconfigure his approach tactically. His only concession against Usman was to dive on a few guillotines, which got him mounted and ground out against the best top position player in the division. It remains an absolutely appalling showing from the former champion.
No fighter in MMA is perfect, and very few fighters have built their games to be nearly bulletproof in specific areas. In terms of defending takedowns, Jose Aldo and Robert Whittaker remain the best of the bunch, but Henry Cejudo’s Olympic pedigree as a wrestler likely means that wrestling the bantamweight champion to victory is out of the question. Israel Adesanya is not a perfect striker, but his depth of skill in kickboxing means that, on the whole, trying to contest the middleweight champion in mid-range is typically imprudent. There aren’t a lot of fighters actively trying to wrestle with Khabib, and nobody in their right mind wanted to clinch up with Jon Jones at his peak.
Specific opponents can diffuse or ignore individual threats that their opponents provide. Yoel Romero found himself stifled by Whittaker’s takedown defense in their first fight, so he ignored attempting to wrestle with Rob in the rematch. The challenge comes from opponents who can solve, diffuse, or ignore more than one major threat in a fighter’s game and force them to contest in unfamiliar terrain.
Conclusion
In case this entire article feels like a massive oversimplification, let me defend myself here. A lot of the technical nuances in terms of how threats are applied has been covered in my two previous metagame articles. I have already spent a large quantity of paragraphs discussing how tactical and strategic capability can upend areas that are generally considered to be avantages for specific fighters, which ties in nicely with what I have discussed here about employing threats. Furthermore, I have also discussed the value of initiative in MMA, which has never been better exemplified than in the proclivity of Georges St-Pierre. I stand by everything I have written in all three of these pieces thus far.
I wanted to write a piece entirely forced on the wider scope of stylistic interplay, and how analysts can broadly make assessments about matchups through given information and apparent threats. In some ways, this is the most fundamental way to analyze MMA and understand context. Most of the time, you can’t expect to pick fighters to unveil threats they haven’t shown before, but when they do, evaluations can be extrapolated on those individual cases. Threats aren’t meant to be isolated elements of advantage, and in fact, they function best when paired and layered with others. This is half of the reason depth exists in MMA at all, to force an opponent into reactivity off a unique blend and implementation of threats. Systematic optioning should come from this exact form of structure.
That is precisely why limiting the threats of an opponent can be so crippling to their success. In the most basic terms, the job of a fighter should be taking an opponent out of their comfort zone and forcing them into one of their own. The more a fighter can mitigate the interplay between these threats, the less effective their opponent becomes and the more difficult it becomes for adaptation to be possible. Typically, adjustments come within the confines of these established threats, since that is where the depth lies. When that framework is skewed, even fighters at the highest of levels can be found weaponless.