Lessons to Learn: Alexandr 'Peresvet' Shabliy
Photo courtesy of Absolute Championship Akhmat (ACA)/Artem Gusel
In keeping with our dissection of the exceptional talent in Russian MMA, perhaps the most immediately threatening presence to the UFC’s lightweight division is Alexandr Shabliy. Without mincing words, Shabliy is one of the very best strikers in MMA and an undeniable elite talent. Indeed, he lacks the resume of Eduard Vartanyan and Abdul-Aziz Abdulvakhabov, but he is every bit as gifted a fighter as ACA’s best. Alexandr would make a thrilling addition to the UFC’s lightweight division, and he is arguably the most immediately threatening contender of the bunch.
Certain fighters in MMA share a resemblance to Shabliy, including Petr Yan and Leon Edwards, but there are a few components to his game that often go unmentioned that deserve recognition. I would go as far to say that Shabliy is an incredibly instructive fighter for pressure fighters and counterstrikers alike, and someone more fighters in the sport should be looking at when developing their games.
#1: Knees Are Weapons & Tools
Alexandr Shabliy is a pressure fighter by nature, and a counterstriker by trade. He wants to push his opponents up against the fence, feint them senseless, and drill knees through their midsection until they fall over. When he is forced to fight in open space, he has a knack for closing distance very quickly with shifting combinations, and when he traps an opponent along the fence, he knows how to cut off their exits with his feet and punish them for remaining static.
Like any great boxing & clinch threat inside, Shabliy converts punches into collar-ties and frames to land knees. When opponents either attempt to close the distance or simply enter into Shabliy’s slice of range, they run the risk of being punched in combination or kneed very, very hard.
If an opponent tries to change levels on Shabliy, they might just run onto an intercepting knee.
In keeping with the rest of the Russian contingent, Shabliy has a knack for attacking in transitions (i.e. striking when an opponent is still convinced they’re in a grappling exchange), but this is ancillary to his fundamental stratagem. He is excellent on the counter, and one of the best combination counterpunchers in the sport, a skill that eludes competitors at even the highest of levels. His knees are arguably his best pair of weapons, and Shabliy understands how to use them as entries, throwaways, and counters. In short, the man is a very unique striker in MMA.
Shabliy shifts from orthodox into southpaw, taking an outside angle on his opponent with his back flat up against the fence. Strbak raises his lead leg to check what he assumes is an outside leg kick, and Shabliy drills a knee up the middle.
Repeating a similar exchange from above, Shabliy smashes Strbak’s midsection with a rear southpaw knee and lands a punch on the break. With this exchange programmed into his opponent, Alexandr takes a small step forward with his lead leg to push Strbak into the fence before stepping into a left high kick. Predictably, Strbak responds the exact same way (raised lead leg, posture broken), and Shabliy throws two punches as his opponent circles out.
Shabliy stings Vartanyan with a rear hand. He pushes forward after the punch, shifts to southpaw, and takes the outside angle on Vartanyan before landing the rear knee. As Eduard is attempting to circle out, Shabliy shifts back to orthodox to herd Vartanyan into another overhand right.
As I mentioned above, Shabliy is one of MMA’s few combination counterpunchers, which highlights how firm his grasp of his own distance is. As he slowly cuts off his opponent’s exits along the fence, they assume their only option is to step forward to dissuade Shabliy from coming forward. Unfortunately, this rarely works, because Alexandr tends to discourage this tactic with a combination before continuing his assault.
As Strbak steps in with a right hook, Shabliy ducks under and throws a three-punch combination, leading with a short left hook to the body.
Virtually every time Martins tried to leap into range against Shabliy, Alexandr was able to slip the initial strike and would throw back in combination.
In an open-stance matchup, Vartanyan leads with a shifting overhand right with his lead right foot wedged between Shabliy’s centerline. Shabliy slips outside of the punch, counters with a left uppercut, and retracts his lead right foot behind him, leaving him standing orthodox. Vartanyan stumbles out of the open side, and Shabliy shifts back to southpaw.
These two components synthesize extremely well. Since most of Shabliy’s pressure is built off his footwork, his positioning opens himself up to collapsing a wider length of distance with typically lower-percentage strikes like flying knees. If he isn’t willing to enter off of a knee, his ability to counterpunch in combination means that opponents are at an even greater risk of stepping in behind strikes. Alexandr also gets bonus points for not getting pinned along the fence and taken down off of failed knee attempts.
#2: Rear-Hand Feints
Shabliy isn’t a blistering feinter like Max Holloway or Israel Adesanya, but he is a diligent, measured one. In particular, Shabliy is one of the rare rear-handed feinters in the sport, and this is a tremendously useful tool that remains woefully underutilized by the majority of MMA fighters. Feinting the lead hand is common, because the jab is the least committal punch that a boxer can throw. It doesn’t compromise positioning or guard placement very much, it measures distance more accurately (since it gauges how close your closest hand is to your opponent), and it can be retracted very quickly without leaving a major opening. Optically, a feinted lead hand, a committed lead hand, and a throwaway lead hand all look similar to an opponent and, because the hand rests closer to an opponent, it is far more difficult (though not impossible) to respond confidently, since all three tactics resemble each other.
Therein, Alexandr Shabliy is a rare breed of a fighter who understands the value behind feinting the rear hand. The rear hand is generally a more committed punch and often requires a boxer to step in past the length of their lead hand to create a collision. When a boxer feints their rear hand, they are both giving an opponent twice as much information to react to and threatening an opponent with a committed entry that opponents might attempt to counter, leading to even more potential openings. What’s more, proficiently feinting off your rear hand allows a greater comfort in open-stance matchups, if an opponent is diligent about pawing or dragging your lead hand away. Without any ability to feint off the rear hand, open-stance matchups can be toxic for boxers reliant on building feints off their lead hand.
Using the classic “rule of three’s” Shabliy feints his rear hand twice, putting slightly more weight into the second feint to draw a larger reaction before playing with Martins’ expectations and slamming a right kick to his body.
Unlike Holloway (who loses proficiency in feinting when his left hand is being denied) and unlike Adesanya (who occasionally forgets to establish a threat behind his feints), Shabliy will pick and choose his feints carefully, masking his entries, establishing multiple threats for the opponent to bear in mind, and programming responses in them before confusing them.
With Strbak pinned along the fence, Shabliy disguises his entry behind a myriad of feints, all to engender a different reaction out of his opponent. I love how Alexandr subtly feints a level change with his lead hand before changing the rhythm of his committed strikes. The double-jab feints are each a full-beat apart, and the rear hand uppercut breaks the rhythm on a half beat, catching Strbak as he ducks into it. Shabliy closes the door on the right hand with a follow-up left hook, while pivoting off his lead leg to the open side.
The level-changing uppercut threat became Alexandr’s calling card against Strbak. Shabliy takes a long step with his lead foot and throws a subtle uppercut feint off his lead hand. This time, Strbak outstretches his arms and attempts to lean off it, but this reaction opens him up to the left hook.
Notice the slight level-change feint that Shabliy uses to draw Strbak down onto the uppercut.
This seems like an extremely basic concept, and in a lot of ways it is, but for whatever reason, most MMA fighters don’t grasp the value behind doubling their feinting efforts. It gives a fighter even more of a threat to build upon, and it can be an ancillary tool if the rear hand is being denied. Maybe a lot of this goes back to MMA fighters possessing an extremely nascent understanding of employing feints in the first place, but that is really neither here nor there. Shabliy understands, and so should you.
Conclusion
Since Ryan dedicated a portion of his Vartanyan article to estimate the possible success of Eduard in the UFC, I shall do the same here. Alexandr Shabliy could walk into virtually any top 10 matchup in the UFC’s lightweight division and have a damn good chance at winning. (Yes, that includes a matchup with Khabib.) Shabliy is a well-rounded fighter, but he has also sharpened his striking arsenal into razored precision. He’s a deceptively good athlete, tough as nails, and as dangerous as anybody in the world. There is no reason to assume he wouldn’t be able to wipe defensive voids like Dan Hooker, Paul Felder, Tony Ferguson, and Kevin Lee out.
Dustin Poirier’s defensive wrestling is always a red flag, but he might be one of the few lightweights in the UFC capable of exchanging with Shabliy and he quite a potent backfoot counterpuncher himself. Similarly, Justin Gaethje’s catch-and-pitch guard means that his posture is generally hunkered. Shabliy could potentially have a field day with knees up the middle if Gaethje isn’t careful. However, Gaethje is also an extremely powerful kicker, and has the propensity to push even stubborn fighters backward. Both of these are winnable, but highly threatening matchups for Shabliy.
It is very difficult to trust anybody to fight the right fight against Khabib, but if Shabliy doesn’t just concede ground to the linearly-marching grappler, he could very well take Khabib’s head off. Alexandr threatens opponents who casually walk into his range quite badly with combinations, and on the outside, his feints and intercepting knees likely mean that Khabib is far more cautious when shooting. So long as Shabliy is moving forward, he is likely winning.
All of this could be moot, as Shabliy has only fought twice in the last two years. With ten years of experience under his belt already, the time to make a run is either now or never. Regardless, even if Shabliy never departs from the Russian scene, he deserves to be recognized amongst the sport’s very best strikers and a potentially instructive fighter for the rest of the MMA world to model themselves after.