The Angular Synthesis of Ilias Ennahachi
Photo Credit: ONE Championship
Though their promotional and financial standing remain in question, ONE Championship can boast about their kickboxing talent pool. Perhaps my favorite competitor amidst this august tier is their current Flyweight champion, Ilias Ennahachi, because I haven’t seen a lot of kickboxers blend two distinct ranges so seamlessly or effectively. Despite only two professional appearances under the ONE Championship banner, Dutch-Moroccan Ilias Ennahachi has firmly established himself as a phenom talent and one of the most exciting young fighters in the sport of kickboxing at the moment. Here is a look at both sides to the Ennahachi coin, and how effortlessly he glides between these fully developed, integrated ranges.
A Puzzle At Range
Ilias Ennahachi’s game is essentially a two-pronged synthesis of outside kicking and blindingly fast combinations up close. What inspires about the Dutchman’s game is how effectively these two ranges are integrated, and the subtle wrinkles rounded out both ends of his technical spectrum. Let’s begin by taking a look at Ilias’ outside range.
Ennahachi fights out of a bladed stance, and he begins fights on the absolute edge of his range. He feints his way forward with half-steps, while also hop-stepping in and out. Notice the slight rhythmic change in his footwork around 3.15 in the clip. He half-steps twice before breaking rhythm on a double hop-step. By the end of this clip, you can already see Petchdam growing uncomfortable with his opponent’s rhythm.
This type of footwork isn’t for show. Ennahachi uses these sorts of rhythm changes and feinted entries to draw out the kicks of his opponents before countering them. Not only this, but the small hop-steps he takes in the middle of combinations allows him to take and adjust angles on the fly without disengaging or resetting.
Petchdam grows impatient with Ilias’ range, so he steps in with a loaded up body kick from southpaw. Ilias takes a slight pivot off his back foot to adjust the position of his lead foot, and counters Petchdam’s body kick with a low kick to the Thai’s planted right leg.
With his bladed stance and quick footwork, Ilias can also draw opponents onto linear kicks, usually off his lead leg. His stance indicates that his lead leg would be thrown as a side kick, but Ennahachi plants diagonally on his backfoot before hop-stepping forward off it to push into his lead leg kick. The kick lands as more of a push kick than a side kick.
I appreciate Ennahachi’s style, because he combines his crafty footwork with solid ringcraft and awareness. His lateral movement in both directions is strong, and he’s a surprisingly angular fighter in kickboxing, constantly confounding opponents trying to track him down.
While doubling up on his jab, Ilias takes two short steps with his lead foot to find the outside angle on Enez Ilgin. After securing the angle, Ennahachi takes a short hop-step forward with his rear foot to open up the leg kick off the double-jab.
At his best, Ilias throws short, snappy combinations that link his punches and kicks before angling out. In particular, I like how Ennahachi shifts backward on the inside angle after landing his teep.
With his back to the ropes, Ilias springs into a knee to Wengfeng’s midsection from southpaw. After retracting his foot to the canvas for no more than a split second, he throws a high round kick to his opponent’s head off the lead leg.
If Ennhachi is successful in drawing out the kicks of his opponent, Ilias is good at countering kicks, often in sequence. This is amplified by his insane dexterity in both legs and blistering hand speed.
Ennahachi pivots off his lead leg to line up with his opponent. Petchdam throws a body kick, and Ilias immediately counters with a 1-2 which squares his shoulders and hips up with his opponent. He then takes a step forward with his rear foot to transfer his weight before throwing a head kick off his lead leg. The kick off his lead leg lands with pop, because his entire lead hip was loaded from the short step from his rear leg.
Ilias is a unique kicker on the outside, because he tends to favor kicks off his lead leg from orthodox, even in an open-stance matchup. The open stance tends to permit kicks from the open side, since it allows for a larger target and can’t be smothered or deflected off an opponent’s back. Ennahachi bucks this trend, throwing and landing kicks from the closed side of this open-stance matchup. Bonus points for the foot trap.
A developed ability to draw kicks out from opponents as well as countering them goes a long way in forcing opponents to fight at Ennahachi’s preferred range. On its own, this skill would serve to help the Dutchman draw out and dictate exchanges, but what puts it over the top is how it is married with lateral movement and angles to create an even more elusive target. Ilias has just as much utility stepping laterally off kicks as he does planting, catching, and countering. Should he plant and push forward, he has even more up his sleeve.
A Demon Up Close
To the surprise of no one, Ennahachi is also a very angular boxer, which dovetails nicely with his mobility and lateral movement from further outside. In some ways, his style is reminiscent of the karate-boxer archetype of Kyoji Horiguchi, since his darting in-&-out punching on the inside is compounded with exceptional kicking to set traps, bait out, and discourage opponents.
Ilias makes his hay with the left hook, and here is a rare example of him entering the pocket with his feet more square, knees bent, before closing the door.
Ennahachi sees Wengfeng ducking behind his right hand, and intercepts him with an uppercut before attempting a left hook. Ilias proactively leans backward after throwing the left, and slips outside of Wang’s final right hand while he pivots off the ropes.
As I said earlier, Ennahachi is at his absolute best when he is able to synthesize these two ranges, and I want to emphasize how special this kind of technical symbiosis is. Not only is Ennahachi extremely skilled in both of his preferred ranges (which in and of itself is quite unique), but his game outside on the outside and up close both inform the other. It gives him offensive options, and allows him to build on reactions better as fights progress. When he opts for longer exchanges, a lot of tricky pieces are in play such as concluding exchanges with a left hook, or trailing opponents with kicks on the end of longer engagements. Ennahachi is a consummate ring general.
Standing southpaw, Ilias shifts into an orthodox body kick before retracting his kicking leg quickly to deny Wengfeng the counter. As Wengfeng is extended, Ennahachi collapses the distance immediately, marching Wengfeng into a punching combination.
As much as I like seeing Ilias levering body-head combinations on the inside, if I have one problem with his boxing, it’s that he can get a bit wild when he extends exchanges on the inside. His positioning is strong, but he isn’t the deepest defensively when he isn’t turning opponents into his punches.
Petchdam throws a head kick from southpaw, and Ilias grabs the kick with his left hand. He parries the kick across the plane of his body and counters in combination. Notice how when Petchdam attempts to angle out, Ennahachi is comfortable shifting to southpaw, always keeping his lead right foot wedged in the middle of Petchdam’s center-line.
If there are some issues with Ilias’ commitment on the inside, he accounts for them by hitting the body when his man is hurt. As an analyst, you can’t ask for much more.
Conclusion
Ilias Ennahachi is not a perfect fighter. His style is an athletically dependent one that occasionally sees the Dutchman pushing a pace he has trouble keeping. Nonetheless, he is a thrilling, talented young fighter with a surprising amount of craft baked into an unconventional style. At only 24 years of age, there is no telling what Ilias could accomplish by the end of his kickboxing tenure, especially since he seems to have developed his finishing instincts more in recent outings as well. In most of my articles, I try to predict where a fighter will go, but I don’t have much insight with Ennahachi. Just foolish hope that we might see Ilias face off against Takeru Segawa. For the time being, Ennahachi (along with Regian Eersel) remains the must-watch kickboxer in ONE at the moment, and he needs more attention. Hopefully this article will convince you to keep him on your radar for the foreseeable future.