GUEST POST: Calvin Kattar vs. Shane Burgos - In The Eye of a Hurricane
The following article is a guest submission from Discord server patron and friend of the site Dan Albert (@TypewritingDA), an emerging analyst in both mixed martial arts and boxing. You can read more of Dan’s work on his personal blog.
Opinions expressed in this piece are the author’s alone, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Fight Site staff.
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Photo by Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images
The night of UFC 220 was mostly built towards the third title defense of Stipe Miocic’s reign as the greatest heavyweight in the history of the promotion against a physical, yet unrefined force of nature in Francis Ngannou. Although Miocic would demonstrate both his grits and smarts in overcoming and dominating the challenger, his win was, in retrospect, historically the most significant moment of the night, but it was not the best. The standout moment of UFC 220 was, in this writer’s opinion, the three-round gunfight in the pocket between then-unranked featherweight prospects Calvin Kattar and Shane Burgos.
Neither fighter was or has even gained accolades as a household name in the world of Mixed Martial Arts, yet to anyone with an eye for striking and prospective ability, I would think that both Kattar and Burgos had caught and earned that kind of attention. Certainly, if they didn’t before, then their fight would. Kattar, a man whose nickname betrayed his record, was a sound, gifted boxer and outfighter by the standards of the sport. Armed with one of the most versatile jabs in the business and a solid box of fundamentals, Kattar had a preference for being able to beat opponents in an area - striking, primarily the pocket - whereupon his ability surpassed the vast majority in MMA. Burgos, by contrast, was an excellent pocket operator himself, but he was concerned with an attritional game, beset by pressure and consistent body work - the latter characteristic being one of his defining traits. Against one another, the result was, in retrospect, clearly fireworks-inducing.
It was absolutely that and more, as both men went toe-to-toe in a nearly 12-minute bout that was full of more momentum shifts and adjustments than you would see in a many five-round title fights. It looked like a battle of elite or - to avoid a premature statement here - potentially elite fighters. But, what ultimately this fight was about was Kattar introducing problems and Burgos finding solutions respectively.
Calvin Kattar
To deal with Burgos’ inherently-offensively-driven game, Kattar would commit to an outfighting game for this fight. Specifically, the cornerstone to Kattar’s success on the outside would be his jab. For Kattar, the jab wasn’t simply just a defensive tool to maintain the outside, it was used as an offensive weapon in two phases: One, as an intercepting tool to punish Burgos’ forward pressure and attempts to enter the pocket or it would, and two, as a means to create moments of offense for Kattar.
In order to facilitate a winning strategy with his lead hand as the principal tool, Kattar looked to circle towards his left towards Burgos’ power hand.
Although common prevailing do’s and don’ts would call this a bad move because said power hand will have less distance to travel, circling towards an opponent’s rear hand in an orthodox-orthodox matchup actually has a few benefits. First, because you are turning left, your opponent has to turn to their right. In other words, if they want to set up their right hand, they would have to stop moving and plant. This would allow you a chance to smother them because you would intrinsically know that the rear hand will be the main threat; it becomes easier to predict. Of course, this would mean you need to have an effective focus on defensive guarding and head movement - the point is that your opponent’s intentions with said rear hand is more predictable.
The second benefit is that it gives your lead hand priority. To elaborate, say that you are circling left towards the power hand, but that means you are, equivalently, circling away from their lead hand. If common wisdom prevails that circling away from the rear hand means it has to reach more, then that same logic would mean the same is true if you circle away from the lead hand, right? In a battle of jabs between orthodox fighters, your jab is more likely to be first because you are, in theory, leading the battle of directionality. If you’re Kattar, you do run the risk of becoming predictable, but, Kattar does minimize the risk by constantly taking l-steps and shifting directions to make sure that his movement isn’t easy to read.
In essence, Kattar winning from the outside is dictated by controlling the movement of the fight, the range of the fight, and the initiative of the fight behind his use of the jab and directionality.
Of course, should the opponent get into range, past your counters, then it is imperative to have the tools to both disengage and to prioritize defense. For Kattar, he utilized the high guard and a shift to southpaw while handfighting.
As you can see, Kattar’s high guard is concerned with guarding attacks upstairs and, even when Burgos alters the trajectory and timing of his shots, Kattar’s head is still protected. Kattar is quick to exit the pocket and not allow Burgos to build momentum if he gets any.
Due to Kattar’s upright stance, he did have a tendency to take smaller steps; therefore, he looked to use a shift into southpaw and his right hand to handfight and deny Burgos’ lead hand to regain space. Sometimes, he would throw a front kick up the middle to catch Burgos off guard.
Kattar often has the luxury of being a better boxer with a deeper toolbox on the feet than most fighters. As he shows here, savvy understanding of fundamentals allows him to control range and the pace of the fight. Unfortunately, Kattar was facing someone who excelled at finding ways to get back into the fight.
Tactical Puzzlesolving by Shane Burgos
Let’s shift gears here for a moment. If you’re Shane Burgos, essentially, you are trying to wear an opponent down and overwhelm them via superior pocket advantage and dedication to body work. So, Kattar has presented two issues: Spatial control behind a jab and a consistent, reliable amount of defense to the head.
The jab was Kattar’s main tool to dictating the fight and the main tool behind controlling the range. Therefore, it was within Burgos’ best interests to stop that jab from controlling the fight. The first and most obvious answer to a consistent jab is the cross counter. Due to Kattar retracting his lead hand quickly into a high guard while leaning to catch punches on the shoulder or forearm, the cross counter was not working.
Despite the fact that he was not going to win the battle of priority, Burgos still dedicated himself to jabbing with Kattar at range, at the very least, to ensure that Kattar was not going to control every level of the exchanges and that he could measure his way in too. He also began throwing an inside kick as soon as Kattar tried circling and jabbing to disrupt Kattar’s stance.
The second and more prevalent issue was actually hitting Kattar. Ultimately, the answer was easy enough considering it was a Shane Burgos specialty: Target the body while the arms are protecting the head. Of course, this tactic implicitly meant that Burgos needed to be inside and have Kattar’s guard up.
Eventually, Burgos figured out a way to kill two birds with one stone. It all was about focusing on Kattar’s lead hand and then attacking the body. The answer was to focus on the utility of the cross counter.
See, because Kattar relies upon the jab as an intercepting tool to punish Burgos for coming in, that means he has to plant when he does commit. Consequently, there is no better time for Burgos to attack. Likewise, because Shane has keyed into the fact that Kattar anticipates the cross counter, he starts faking it to shift his weight into a left hook to the body. Also, he chooses to fake the cross counter as he does an inside or outside slip (sometimes a dip) by attacking with a right hook to the body instead of a cross counter upstairs. Likewise, drawing or attacking the guard allows Burgos to back Kattar up in a straight line towards the cage. And Burgos starts to build and show why he’s exceptionally great at taking away the momentum of a fight once he has a grasp on the “what” and the “how”, as he built upon all of his success and attacked the body even when Kattar jabbed.
Just to keep Kattar off guard, Burgos does execute some cross counters to keep Kattar guessing.
With the body work increasing and the potency of Kattar’s jab decreasing due to feints, Burgos began kicking up the pressure. It’s important to note that he’s forcing Kattar to work and get the chance to stay in one area or gain any range without working for it.
After attacking the guard to push Kattar into the corner, when Kattar tries to handfight in southpaw, Burgos takes advantage of the change in stance to intercept the former with a right straight.
Over the course of a few minutes, Shane Burgos had effectively found ways to curtail Kattar’s main tools to create an infight and was actively controlling where the fight occurred. A quality of a skilled fighter is their ability to adjust over the course of a fight to an opponent. In this regard, Shane Burgos took the tactics test and passed it.
Take the following examples of a near identical exchange throughout the fight as a reference for Burgos’ aptitude for tailoring his advantage.
In this pocket trade, Kattar’s goal is to punctuate and, thereby, win it with a left hook to the body after catching Burgos’ right hand with his own forearm. The first two examples show him being successful, but in the third, Burgos has figured out what to do: Instead of throwing to the body, Burgos targets the midsection and looks to smother Kattar before he can dig that left hook in.
Conclusion & The Finish
Many years after this fight, I’ve found myself coming to the opinion that Kattar and Burgos differ as technicians, but even moreso as tacticians. In other words, the former is more adept with a deeper toolbox, but, when it comes to finding ways to overcome the complications that another fighter might pose, Burgos always seem to find a way back into it. What I’m getting at is that Kattar will look to fight his fight in strict conformist terms, whereas Burgos is perfectly comfortable creating his off of what the fight offers. As their future fights have shown, that very may be the case despite Kattar being, at least in terms of skill - in the opinion of this writer - better. He just might not have the higher ceiling because of that, but that will show in time.
Anyways, Kattar’s victory over Burgos did not really come from any major adjustment to counter what Burgos had done. Kattar did what may augment to my point above - he dug into his bag of tricks and pulled out a wild card.
Because Kattar is hopping to-and-fro whilst using his lead hand as a feint, he finally uses the last jab feint (as he moves forward) to make Burgos pull, exploits his head position by cracking him with a right hand. A final uppercut follows and blows Burgos head off like he were a house overwhelmed by the same calamity that his moniker came from, whilst giving “The Boston Finisher” his first highlight finish in years. In one of the finest two-way technical battles in recent memory, Kattar had weathered the storm and had won, even if there was no shame in defeat for Burgos - whose tactical demonstrations promised just as much as Kattar’s proficiency had.
This weekend, Shane Burgos will face Josh Emmett. Although Emmett isn’t a particularly nuanced fighter, he is a powerful hitter. For someone as vulnerable on entrances and exits of an exchange as “The Hurricane,” that could prove to be a problem. Nonetheless, I have to trust that one of the most electrifying competitors in the UFC’s featherweight division will not only put on a show, but probably tear another man’s ribs up to victory. At least, in a sensible world.
Thanks for reading.