How Gilbert Burns Dominated Tyron Woodley
Photo by Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images
Both in terms of his career trajectory and his performance in Las Vegas on May 30th, Gilbert Burns is an example of how far pure initiative can take a fighter. Now ranked #1 at 170, just behind his teammate and the champion Kamaru Usman, “Durinho” has gotten there in just four fights at the weight-class, and he did it largely by campaigning for every fight that he possibly could. In a division that has been somewhat stagnant near the top, he proved a breath of fresh air since his short-notice debut at 170 against then-undefeated Alexey Kunchenko. Burns followed with a clear decision over the solid Gunnar Nelson and a knockout over the great Demian Maia, and it took him less than one year at welterweight to face the #1 contender at the time, Tyron Woodley. He was a ridiculously active contender, and he parlayed that into a big fight fairly early.
If Burns’ career was built on initiative, Woodley’s was built somewhat on the opposite, even in terms of career management; Woodley had cashed in a promise from Dana White to get his opportunity at then-champion Robbie Lawler, despite a layoff of over a year at the time, and had ruled the division with an iron (if scarcely-used) fist thereafter. His loss of the belt to Kamaru Usman led to another year-long layoff, and Burns had built his claim to a big fight at 170 entirely within that span of time. Woodley’s opportunity with Burns was to show that he was still part of the “elite” of the division, at the cost of a former lightweight who had smashed his way to the fringe of the next level.
Unfortunately for “The Chosen One”, the difference in initiative proved his undoing in the fight itself; Burns not only outworked Woodley over 25 minutes, he battered Woodley, and he did it more fearlessly than any of Woodley’s previous opponents.
Burns’ Performance
Ryan Wagner: I was really impressed with Burns. At this point, the book is out on beating Woodley as an orthodox fighter - follow to the end of his range as he backs himself up, stay safe behind your lead shoulder, and use active feints to dull his counter right hand and facilitate your entries. However, it takes a high level of discipline, craft, and poise to maintain that game for 25 minutes without giving him an opening, and Burns played it perfectly.
Burns was immediately prepared to take away Woodley’s right hand, rocking him with a slip and counter right out of the gates. As the fight wore on, he increasingly stripped away every weapon Woodley had success with. Burns quickly established feints to dull Woodley’s senses, and hard outside leg kicks to score at range and rack up damage without walking onto the counter right hand. When Woodley started countering the leg kicks actively, Burns added a left hook onto them to catch Woodley if he blitzed forward. A reactive takedown late in the fight further dissuaded Woodley from opening up with his blitzes.
The early feints set the groundwork for what was to come later, as Burns systematically built off his offense. He started the fight with a pared-down game, using a conservative attack to feel his way in and build reads. Once he was confident in his ability to counter and avoid Woodley’s right hand, he started adding counter left hooks and stepping into pocket exchanges.
One of the keys to Burn’s victory was his active lead leg. Kicks to the closed side are more dangerous against Woodley, as the hips and shoulders square up, inviting the right hand counter. But kicking the open side allowed Burns to stay safe behind his lead shoulder and defuse Woodley’s right hand. Counter body kicks punished Woodley for throwing his right hand, while lead-leg head kicks kept the hand pinned in Woodley’s guard as Burns pressed forward. Burns would later pick up his leg and use a Thai-hop to close distance, showing a kick and hurting Woodley with a combination as he backed into the cage.
Burns did a great job taking advantage of Woodley’s positioning errors against the cage as well. There were a few scares where Woodley threatened counters off Burns’ rear low kick, but Burns eventually figured out when kicking was safe, and began pelting Woodley with hard kicks as he flattened his stance on the cage.
Sriram Muralidaran: Pretty much. Win or lose, Woodley opponents don't tend to engage the pocket as much as Gilbert Burns did; Woodley has classically been seen as too dangerous to reliably win there, even with his game pared down to the point of ridiculousness. Woodley stalling out fighters like Thompson and Maia was based on exactly that expectation, and even Kamaru Usman and Rory MacDonald played more of an “all the way in, or all the way out” sort of game; MacDonald stuck to the edge of the pocket to pick Woodley off with long jabs and kicks, and Usman had the poise to defend the right-hand on entry but really wanted to be in the clinch where it wasn’t a problem. Burns wasn’t reckless and he had tools at range (as Ryan pointed out, his kicking game was terrific), but his plan from the outset seemed to be to engage Woodley where he posed the most danger theoretically.
The first knockdown of the fight (video 1) really showed the thought that Burns and Hooft put into the fight, and also why Woodley’s relatively simple game was such a liability to him. To Woodley’s credit, he tried different things, he body-jabbed and left-hooked, but from a tactical perspective, those tools were largely useless; they didn’t give him reads nor did they set up his killshot, because Woodley was still Woodley. He wanted Gilbert to stroll into the pocket carelessly so he could find his counter, and Burns feinted his way into the pocket ready to duck it and come back with his own. The problem was narrowness of arsenal, somewhat like what's ruined Cody Garbrandt; there's only so long your game can be athletically same-y until someone is proactive in dealing with it, instead of being surprised by the athleticism of it. Here’s another example; Woodley looks to do a Roy-Jones-Jr, waving his rear hand to distract Burns, but Burns knows that there’s essentially no threat in ignoring anything but that rear hand from Woodley, so he just punts Woodley out of stance and left-hooks him:
Burns’ preparation wasn’t just for Woodley’s classic big counter, but also for his burst offense; Burns isn’t a great defensive fighter, largely just the double-forearm guard that Woodley found ways around when he got there, but Burns was ready to cut him off at the pass with reactive takedown-entries and his counterpunching. In particular, Burns’ lead hand was terrific; it was pointed out earlier how he started left-hooking off his kicks to contain the counter-bursts of Woodley, but he also just crowded Woodley hard behind his jab and his left hook (the flurry in round 4 off the Thai hop mentioned by Ryan had Burns doubling on his left hook, which shows an impressive amount of maturation for a man who used to be a pure grappler). It was a fearless and active performance, aided by endurance and durability that Burns hadn’t really the opportunity to show before at 170.
Insofar as flaws, probably the biggest one (the only one that isn’t “he could’ve done X more, it was working”, the way I felt about Burns’ jab), was that Burns was relatively inert in the clinch; Woodley showed against Usman that he isn’t a particularly capable clincher, but most of the clinch exchanges later in the fight were just both men turning each other from the over-under. One could raise the question of what someone like Leon Edwards would’ve done to Woodley if he got there, or (and this is more relevant) what he may do to Burns in a potential fight.
What to make of Woodley
Ryan: At 38 years of age, and with 11 years of professional competition under his belt, it’s hard not to question how much Woodley has left. His recent performances have done nothing to break me of this notion; over his past two fights, Woodley has lost 10 straight rounds, with only a couple of them being 10-9’s on my scorecard.
While athletic decline likely contributed to Woodley’s performance, he didn’t simply lose to Burns because he’s past it. Equally damning as his age is that Woodley looked like the same fighter who was baffled by Rory MacDonald only five years into his career.
Woodley’s reign as champion benefited heavily from favorable matchups. In essence, Woodley’s game is all about creating the perfect collision while preserving his cardio, and he is perhaps more picky with his counter-punches than anyone in the sport. Playing such a low-volume game is further hindered by the lack of diversity in his setups. He rarely throws combinations, never builds off his work the way Burns did here, rarely targets the body, and his variety of counters are severely limited. His ability to land that right hand has always been based on speed and surprise over fundamentals.
In a sense, Woodley has almost built his game around landing the open-side right hand against southpaws. When faced with an orthodox jab and defensive responsibility, he quickly runs out of ideas. Fortunately, Woodley’s entire title reign consisted of southpaws, and all of them but Robbie Lawler had poor pocket defense.
All this is to say that I think Woodley’s recent performances have been the result of a confluence of factors. For one, he’s clearly past his prime, and he’s built a game that’s heavily dependent on speed and athleticism to patch holes in his fundamental skills. Now that his speed and athleticism are waning, it’s no surprise he’s having more trouble finding the perfect shot.
But I also think it’s somewhat of a regression to the mean for Woodley. He exhausted his most favorable stylistic matchups in the division’s elite with his successful title defenses. Now he’s having to face more orthodox strikers and fighters with strong clinch games, which has always been a weak point for him.
Sriram: I’ve said before, throughout his reign, Woodley has constantly looked like a fighter at his wit’s end. “Back to the fence and look for right hands” is a strategy that every badly hurt fighter turns to, to keep a swarming opponent off them, and Woodley seems to have built a game exclusively around pretending to be that. It’s unquestionably worked for him, but his success has generally seemed despite himself; Woodley’s game was never particularly deep, and the success he found was more a function of terrific athleticism and a modicum of tactical intelligence (like crowding a fairly slow-starting boxer like Lawler early, or not entering Demian Maia’s guard; not necessarily nuanced gambits, but not being outright reckless). Against opponents at athletic parity who want to crowd him, who have deeper games and the intelligence to work around Woodley’s more limited one, he’s bound to struggle as he ages.
There certainly are a number of winnable fights for Woodley at 170, including the ones he’s already won and even ones like Neil Magny or Michael Chiesa, who might still have advantages on paper but likely don’t have the defensive craft to not get hit by a power-right every time they enter. However, the bar to favor someone over “The Chosen One” has to be lowered at this point, and it was arguably far too high during his title reign.
Ben Kohn: I am jumping in here because Burn’s performance was covered more than in depth by Ryan and Sriram, and I see nothing to really add to it.
What I do want to talk about is Woodley, because he is a 4 time defending champion who is also a waste of athletic potential. What we saw out of Woodley in his title winning performance over Robbie Lawler is something we rarely see from him since, and likely due to most fighters not just letting Woodley back them up, but I digress. Woodley used feints, a lot of them, both takedowns and actively with his lead hand. He was constantly extending his lead hand, feinting jabs to the body and head, changing levels, not just backing to the fence. It’s a lot easier to trap and corral your opponents into your kill shot when you’re actively positioning them to be there for it, rather than being purely reliant on speed and timing that perfect shot.
For Woodley, his drive to be elite would need to fuel him changing his approach completely and actively learning some tools and skills that would have him establish that threat of the right hand as legitimate once more. If he continues to just do the same old thing, I’m sure he still beats a fair share of ranked guys. Thompson was ranked #5 before this fight and Maia #7 for example. But he’s 38, likely losing a step, and I can’t imagine 2 straight losses feels great for him right now. I have no idea what he wants to do, but if he still wants to fight, he would really need to change things (something incredibly rare at such a late stage in someone’s career) to stay at the top.
What Next?
Ryan: I think the UFC will try to book Burns in a title shot against Kamaru Usman, but I’d rather see him fight Colby Covington for now. I’d like Leon Edwards to get the title shot he’s deserved for a while. I think Edwards is a more compelling matchup for Usman based on the strength of his clinch game and distance striking, and I favor his resume (although I’ll let Sriram give you the resume breakdown, as I’m sure he’s itching to gas up Leon).
As for Woodley, I don’t care much at this point. He’s offered very little in his past 10 rounds of competition, and I’m not particularly interested in watching him fight unless someone I enjoy is dominating him. They could feed him to Masvidal to pump up Masvidal’s title-shot prospects.
Sriram: I am indeed itching to gas up Leon. I don’t expect him to get a title shot, mostly because his best win in Rafael dos Anjos looks far worse after dos Anjos lost to Michael Chiesa; however, it was a quite precipitous decline for RDA, as he looked in genuinely terrific form against the Brit, better form than both the Maia and the Woodley that Burns beat. Burns got fast-tracked through a bit, a function of his absurd availability to fight anyone at 170, which has left Edwards’ resume at 170 far deeper; essentially, Edwards is like if Burns cleaned out the Nelson-tier before moving on to face guys like Demian Maia. Kunchenko is a good win, but compared to Edwards beating guys like Luque and Barberena and Tumenov and even less--heralded guys like Sobotta, I don’t think Burns has made that ground up in just 4 fights at 170. Leon’s been waiting for a bit, beating a lot of dark-horse top-15ers, and in a perfect world, he’ll face Usman next.
Unfortunately, I agree with Ryan on what will likely happen there. Burns/Usman isn’t completely uncompelling, but the big clinch difference (as well as Usman being virtually untouchable in terms of wrestling, so the grappling would be rough) makes it hard to find it as compelling as an Edwards bout. Edwards/Covington is probably the move in that case, considering that Jorge Masvidal has settled into irrelevant money-fights. There are a number of interesting routes to go, especially considering that there’s now a second contender who’s willing to fight anyone.
Woodley is in a weird spot, and the best case might be Woodley against Geoff Neal. The southpaw would be a bit more forgiving for Woodley than his last two, but it would still be a solid test against a deeper striker on paper, as Neal appears to be the sort of prospect worth keeping an eye on.
Ben: Burns is likely to fight anyone, though I am curious who will end up being his coach. I can’t imagine Hooft not coaching Usman in that match up. Regardless, the matchup is less than compelling to me overall. Usman is just so much bigger and as good as Burns is on the ground, we’ve seen what someone with a significant size advantage, plus skill parity, can do to him there. I have not forgotten Michel Prazeres. Maia was able to get Burns down multiple times too, and while I obviously have immense respect for Burns’ jiu jitsu, I cannot help but think he would lose handily to Usman. Burns vs. Covington is the right fight to make here to get some clarity in the division.
Edwards is the most compelling matchup. A re-match 5 years later, 8-0 since then, and we’ve seen Edwards improve tremendously since then. To be clear, I don’t have confidence that Edwards would beat Usman, as his TDD is still not bulletproof. Getting taken down by Gunnar, Cerrone, and Sobatta doesn’t bode well for him, but he is a dangerous clinch fighter in his own right and I really would like to see Usman deal with someone who’s going to do damage against him in that phase.
For Woodley, I don’t want him fed to someone for a 3rd straight loss. Masvidal is pointless, and he just wants money fights anyway so give him Diaz (again) or Conor. If Woodley still gives a damn, I’d like him to take a bit of time to retool his game, 6 months at least. Best case scenario, I know, but if that happens I would like to see him fight RDA on his return. It would be a good test of his ability to push back an opponent who doesn’t want to be forced on the backfoot. RDA has physically declined himself, and if Woodley can’t apply that game against him, I think we can say it’s unlikely he has the time left in his career to make it work. If he’s going to stay the same, whatever, book him with Ponzinibbio or something.
Sriram: Ultimately, it’s hard to trust Woodley to revamp his game this deep into his career, even after it’s been torn to pieces twice. The interesting questions are more on Burns’ ceiling in the division, questions which (with Burns’ schedule) will almost certainly be answered sooner rather than later.