How Charles Oliveira Defeated Justin Gaethje: Maximizing Initiative

Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images

Charles Oliveira did it again.

For the third consecutive time, Oliveira found himself smashed to the canvas by one of his weight class’ premier punchers, only to get up, bloodied, but unbroken. That fragile man didn’t exist anymore.; that man had his skull etched into the canvas by Paul Felder; that man had been tapped by Anthony Pettis and Ricardo Lamas; that man could only get so far. But Do Bronx wasn’t the name associated with a man who was going to be left in the UFC’s meatgrinder wastelands anymore; less than a pound aside, this was the king of the lightweight division and he had been willing to die to earn that crown - and he intended to use every ounce of his ability to keep it.

Michael Chandler came forward and met Oliveira in the center, only to be sent crashing to the fence by the vengeful Brazilian, hell-bent on doing what arguably the scariest athlete the lightweight division had seen couldn’t only minutes before.

Oliveira took the fight to Dustin Poirier in an opening stanza that ought to stand as one of the most brilliant rounds in the history of the sport. Although Oliveira proved he could match Poirier’s unrivaled grit and have answers on the feet, he couldn’t overcome him that way. He found his answer by having greater depth to his game - faking a single punch saw him take the back for a decisive victory in a scorching battle.

And then there was Justin Gaethje, whom, at the end of a four minute shootout, joined the many names on Oliveira’s growing resume.

I had written an extensive breakdown on the matchup a few days ago. Of the many factors I outlined, the biggest one, to me, was establishing and controlling initiative.

“[Whoever] can control the initiative of the engagements and capitalize on the other’s flaws with initiative will be the one to win this fight.”

Inevitably, when two of the most destructive forces Mixed Martial Arts has produced are set to collide, chances are, the results will be intensely violent and brutally chaotic. The fighter who seizes the reigns over those circumstances is going to be victorious.

In my preview, I had outlined the many ways this fight was going to materialize. If you want a more thorough outline of how I believe these fighters evolved and operate, I suggest you read that before going further. Many of my predictions did materialize, but the importance of initiative remained the biggest.

And, as I said, “Oliveira’s sense of initiative is immediate and urgent [...] Gaethje, comparatively, is more of a reactive fighter who can be proactive - but it’s contingent upon what his opponent is doing or [how Gaethje himself] is fighting.”

To reiterate, with how Gaethje has remolded himself into a neutral space cage operator, he is more likely to take the backfoot and capitalize on his opportunities when the opponent pursues him. That is, Gaethje has allowed many opponents to be aggressive for the sole purpose of trying to punish them for it. Therein lies an issue: If you’re going to be reactive, you’re going to need to have the ancillary skills to deal with a number of situations, especially when the opponent has depth to their game. And Charles Oliveira’s game on the frontfoot has certainly developed that sort of offensive depth.

Gaethje certainly had the instinctual eye for timing counters and punishing opponents with his leg kicks, though this was often in response to them coming after him in one-dimensional ways. Fighters such as Khabib Nurmagomedov and Charles Oliveira aren’t simply thinking about the basics of a fight: they are thinking about the entire cage and how engagements themselves operate - the actual cagecraft side of the game.

Let’s rephrase: What separates the skilled fighters from the special fighters of a division is how they recognize the margins of importance with minutes versus moments. If you’re a fighter who is going to look for singular moments to win a fight, then you’re going to need to have routes to navigate what is happening, where it’s happening, and so on - what you do in ‘the minutes’ matters to make those moments actually effective.

This is the crux of the problem for Gaethje: when he gets his moments, he is decisive and urgent. And yet, there is little scaffolding outside of that. Trevor Wittman is certainly a good coach in Mixed Martial Arts - his eye for building fundamentally sound strikers with composure and temperament is apparent. But even with his best product, Gaethje himself, there is an enormous deficit of strategy outside of some tactical adjustments in a fight.

I’m not saying this means absolutely everyone is going to beat Justin Gaethje or that he is a horrifically flawed pugilist to the point of some condemnation - I’m saying that one of, if not the biggest reasons Gaethje has lost to fighters like Oliveira or Nurmagomedov is because they understood what he hasn’t.

And it isn’t as though Gaethje didn’t prove that those fighters were infallible either. For instance, in my preview, I emphasized Gaethje was an adamant handfighter with a gift for attacking in the clinch off the collar tie or punching if an opponent framed at him. And he sure as hell made sure that Oliveira knew that too.

If the current iteration of Oliveira didn’t have incredible recuperative powers and an unyielding desire to win, then that single margin might well have been enough to see his reign at the top end. So, let it be said now that Oliveira, for the third time in a row, showed he was vulnerable just enough to show that he was beatable - that what he did to win against Gaethje wasn’t flawless.

But it was still an extraordinarily impressive dissection to contrast a strategical failure from his challenger nonetheless.

How you deal with a counterpuncher often entails dulling their responses with a series of feints or tools. Like any Oliveira fight, he wasted no time feinting with his front leg and throwing kicks to Gaethje’s midsection every time the latter passively conceded space or planted his feet at range. This way, Gaethje was never comfortably standing where he wanted to be at range - and Oliveira can initiate the engagements and control the positions in the cage.

Oliveira has become one of MMA’s best at understanding how his strikes convert to other options and vice versa. His use of punches into convertible frames was best illustrated versus Poirier, but against someone with more answers in the clinch and whom was willing to initiate them with his own collar ties, Oliveira had to think outside the box.

Since he was already on the frontfoot, Oliveira recognized that Gaethje would eventually have to commit to some response - and that whatever he did needed to be punished. So, he dedicated his efforts to attacking Gaethje off of the former wrestler’s favorite weapon.

Why Gaethje’s leg kicks were more dangerous on the frontfoot was because he was forcing them to move - then punishing their resets - and then threatening with the pocket combinations upstairs. On the backfoot though, Gaethje’s kicks required him to rely upon the opponent rushing in recklessly or him being able to plant first. There aren’t many kickers in MMA who are effective on the backfoot or moving laterally. Gaethje’s is at least functional, but the sheer horsepower he puts into them means he’s likely to fall off balance.

Against Oliveira, Gaethje couldn’t establish any ancillary threats to distract from his kicking game at range. This made it easier to predict when Gaethje was going to kick. And, when he did, Oliveira was ready.

Checking kicks, particularly calf kicks hasn’t often been done in MMA due to kick defenses not necessarily existing anyways. As a colleague of mine has outlined, handling calf kicks involves pulling back the knee in an adjacent motion. That way, the kick doesn’t land flush and can be caught on the shin instead. Because Oliveira was already feinting teeps and knees with his lead leg, he could convert them into checks as well.

Moreover, I highlighted how Oliveira does like to step in on his opponents when they attempt to kick him and this was prevalent from the beginning and served as Oliveira’s main entry to the clinch or to an attempted body lock to convert into the clinch.

Whether Gaethje attempted to establish ties or counter first on entry was irrelevant: what mattered was that Oliveira controlled him first.

Against collar ties, one answer was pull Gaethje’s forearms down and then establish a collar tie of his own to control the head while using another hand to keep Gaethje’s free hand in place as he threw knees to the ribs.

Gaethje being capable at breaking the clinch posed a new challenge for Oliveira, but it gave him a few ideas: Instead of committing to one extended clinch exchange to wear Gaethje down as he did Poirier, he would back off when Gaethje threw (or when he could throw) and then throw back counters to force a reset or initiate the clinch again. Gaethje was never sure when he was safe to punish Oliveira or if he had effectively closed the door on an engagement.

Oliveira made sure he was going to punish Gaethje’s defensively responsible habits too: When Gaethje threw kicks, he would dip his head as a precaution. Alternatively, Gaethje would use it as an easy wind-up for a left hook counter. After checking, Oliveira established the collar tie to keep Gaethje’s head down and blasted him with an uppercut - essentially outgaming him at his own favorite move.

On the outside too: Like Eddie Alvarez before him, Oliveira picked up on how Gaethje could be drawn into shelling up from throwaways and made him pay for it with intercepting uppercuts and knees. The pursuit would then continue, kicks blasting Gaethje’s midsection or he’d be drawn back into the clinch.

In my preview, I also highlighted that Oliveira might fake his level changes to draw Gaethje’s sprawl or guard and convert it into a clinch entry. That’s exactly what he did.

Everything is on full display. Oliveira’s cross check and intercepting collar tie, Gaethje being forced to break, and Oliveira attacking as soon as Gaethje is reseting.

Eventually, Oliveira’s work was going to keep wearing Gaethje down by the minutes as the margins for Gaethje’s counters became smaller. And, sure enough, Oliveira’s concentrated attack on his opponent’s best weapons and transitional offense gave him the ground exchange that needs no explanation. MMA’s premier finisher and, with the exception of Aljamain Sterling, best back-taker took another neck to add to his collection.

If anything else, this fight is yet another chapter to the ongoing epic that is Charles Oliveira’s redemption arc. Oliveira had been the man known for losing to other fighters who had one too many answers in phases he couldn’t match them in. And now? He’s showing exactly why having depth and fluidity in every phase of MMA makes all the difference - and is on a war path through one of his division’s strongest lineups.

There’s far more that can be said as well, namely how his team has gradually unveiled itself to be one of the better strategic camps in MMA or how the eventual prospective matchups Oliveira will face soon can fare, but I don’t really think that’s the point here.

Charles Oliveira was billed as the man who quit - and, if he was one, he certainly isn’t now. He’s one of the most offensively devastating fighters in his entire sport whose improvement, discipline and grit is putting so many of his contemporaries to shame. This isn’t a fighter who can be broken anymore; to beat Oliveira, you will either need to shut him down or shut him off. And given how his division’s last three couldn’t, the list of those who can is getting smaller by the day until Oliveira himself runs out of fuel once and for all.