MMA Metagame: Adjustments
Photo by Rey Del Rio/Zuffa LLC/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images
In my previous MMA Metagame piece, I discussed the value and complexity in establishing threats in the sport of MMA. Moreover, I discussed how denying threats is as valuable in determining a winning strategy as establishing one's own threats. This time around, I will be examining and analyzing adjustments in MMA, as well as the developmental patterns that these adjustments can inform.
Introduction
In case anybody doesn’t want to read the following six thousand words, here is a summary of the following: After a certain point, fighters tend to just be who they are. While there are a variety of factors associated with development, it is generally a far more reasonable expectation of fighters to demonstrate a series of habits and tendencies within a skillset, as opposed to a fluctuating skillset, in and of itself.
The focus of today’s metagame article is all about the questions needed for fighters to address adjustments, when the best time to make these adjustments is, and how fighters respond to an opponent adjusting against them.
Adjustments: Four Questions
In general, my expectation for MMA fighters to make adjustments is extraordinarily low, and this is largely informed by years of watching the sport and following specific fighters. I’ve already discussed the breadth of skill that is required in MMA to be a functional fighter in this day and age, but to reiterate the point, fighters today are required to not only possess skills in specific areas, but also reactions and proficiencies in the spaces between the skills. Fighters need to know what they’re good at, know how to establish the threats of what they’re good at, and fuse these skills into an effective, consistent execution, both tactically and strategically. It takes a lot to be good at MMA. Assuming the adjustment is expected from a fighter of a certain technical threshold, proceed to the following.
The four major questions that must be answered are as follows:
What is the problem that needs to be adjusted?
How does this problem exist within the skillset of a fighter?
How are you adjusting to the problem?
Is the fighter capable of adjusting and/or committing to the adjustments?
(For the sake of this section, I will be using TJ Dillashaw [circa-2014] as my example. He has made some pretty significant adjustments throughout his career, some for better and others for worse, but they are all roughly equivalent in significance.)
Question #1
To begin, you must first identify what is in need of fixing. In asking “what needs to be adjusted,” you are required to narrow down the flaw of a fighter to a more granular level. Asking any one question regarding what specifically needs to be changed likely opens up at least five more questions in return, so the first step is always to zero in on the problem.
Let’s explore an example. One of my complaints about TJ Dillashaw was his vulnerabilities on defense. For the sake of this article, I will focus on the former champion’s lack of head movement. Despite being a fighter who initiated as much as he did and forced exchanges so regularly, TJ had to rely on his chin in engagements far more one might expect, given the platitudes Joe Rogan insisted on spewing about TJ’s utter technical perfection around this point in time. Renan Barao and even Joe Soto had success simply throwing back at TJ any time he entered into the pocket, because his defensive arsenal was shallow and he instinctually pushed further into layered exchanges without a safe way to employ them. TJ still won these fights comfortably, but a lot of his success was hinged on initiative, attritional damage, and pace as opposed to any measure of nuanced defensive tact.
However, at times, I have seen Dillashaw slip past jabs, duck under looping punches, and proactively weave off his own shots. There may be reactive holes in his defensive system, but as a proactive head-mover, exclusively, he has moments where he shines. The tools were always there for TJ, but he made it clear that improving his head movement was not a priority in his training. Nonetheless, since I have seen some of these defensive moments from him, it isn’t out of the question to imagine a TJ Dillashaw who wasn’t entirely happy with his scrappy second performance against Renan Barao in 2015, who then in turn devoted a larger portion of his training to honing his head movement. It might have subsequently saved him from a bit of damage.
As a counterexample, let me posit a far more common paradigm in MMA. Anthony Pettis is probably the most notable example of fighter who was sure he had recognized a flaw in his game, but ultimately went about fixing the wrong problem. After struggling with the wrestling of Clay Guida and even Jeremy Stephens along the fence, Pettis devoted a lot of his time training with Ben Askren to improve his takedown defense. As a result, his takedown defense improved and purely outwrestling Pettis became a difficult ask. However, Pettis didn’t address the larger, more fundamental problems with his footwork, defense, positioning, and clinch offense, which meant that opponents who wanted to push him back to the fence still had very little trouble doing exactly that. Takedown defense wasn’t Pettis’ Achilles heel, but rather the tangential problems with footwork and positioning surrounding the takedown defense. If you’re going to fix a hitch within a fighter’s game, it is paramount that you identified the root of the problem correctly, or else the attempted adjustments likely won’t make a significant difference.
I digress. To keep things target, let’s focus on TJ’s head movement as the primary issue in need of resolving.
Question #2
“How does this problem rear its head?” It is one thing to identify a flaw in the design of a fighter’s system, it is another to set about fixing it. Ignore athleticism, temperament, chin, record, and trajectory for a moment, and exclusively look at the baseline skillset of the fighter in question. If we are trying to adjust TJ’s head movement, we need a sense of who he is as a fighter and how these problems exist in he’s playing his game.
In the case of TJ Dillashaw, he was an extraordinarily active in-&-out striker who relied heavily on initiative, volume, and drowning his opposition. He combined a wide variety of feints and false entries in his striking, he would constantly flip between stances, and he willingly kicked off both legs. There were always flaws present in his defense, including a lack of layered head movement, a lack of sound defensive footwork/pivots on the backfoot, and a tendency to simply punch his way through hairy exchanges. Without going into too much detail, Dillashaw circa-2014 was a reliable, durable striker with more craft than depth, but enough auxiliary rounding to be a threat to virtually everybody at the top of the division.
Dillashaw is an example of a fighter with a solid skillset in which to adjust within. So much of his innate strengths were amplified by his high-workrate style, but his weapons were reliable, his feints went a long ways in defusing his opponent’s offense, and for the most part, his positioning was solid. I have some individual complaints with TJ’s skillset and his decision-making in fights at times, but on the whole, he was a fighter that you could watch, and see a bunch of different elements of his game demonstrated, leading to many possible avenues of further development. That seems like a fine context to fit adjustments within.
The question in this section requires a lot of critical evaluation. The problem at hand needs to be firmly established, and you must be cognizant of when and where this problem requiring adjustments shows up in a fighter’s technical game. In the case of Dillashaw, he demonstrated enough flashes in this area that it is perfectly plausible to assume that improving head movement should be inside his scope of practice.
Question #3
Assuming that the first two questions have been answered (i.e. the adjustment has been successfully identified and the skillset of a fighter is flexible enough to permit said adjustments), you can proceed to the third question, which most would probably assume is the first question, “How do we fix this?”
So, TJ Dillashaw needs to move his head more, and we are reasonably sure that he is capable of doing this given the skills that he has demonstrated, but he himself is not entirely sure how to employ this newfound defensive focus. The first method I would recommend is building on what has already been established. As I mentioned in the previous section, there have been moments where Dillashaw’s head movement, inconsistent as it may be, shined through in some trouble spots. In particular, TJ tends to have very good eyes in exchanges, he can slip/pull/duck under punches, and he isn’t easy to kick with impunity, (at least to the head). This seems like a good enough place to start. Fold over at the hip more in the pocket to bait out jabs and responses. Instead of slipping just once, keep more defensive avenues open in extended exchanges. Use both hips alternatively when slipping punches, instead of simply bobbing your head side-to-side. Proactively roll off your punches more, and try weaving into your lead hook. None of this is demanding an entire rework of TJ’s style, and assuming he’s coached correctly, TJ should be capable of utilizing these newfound skills reliably.
The challenge in answering this question is twofold. First of all, a disclaimer. I am not a coach and so any improvements that I suggest are not adjustments that I am capable of properly training or instilling in fighters. All I can do is identify.
Secondly, and more to the point, any adjustments that are to be made shouldn’t jeopardize the existing context of a fighter. The risk presented in overcoaching to correct adjustments is that you threaten the basis of your established fighter. If you opt out of adjusting altogether, then the existing problems remain. Adjust too much, and your fighter might be thrown so far out of their comfort zone that they overthink their own approach and the innate skills that they previously possessed might crumble. At the worst of times, an attempt to patch the holes in a fighter’s game could cause them to forget how they won fights altogether.
Obviously, we will never know what a more defensively flexible version of TJ Dillashaw looks like, but we can pontificate. There is a chance that this hypothetical version of TJ does a better job of defusing Dominick Cruz’s awkward punching mechanics and saves himself a knockdown against Cody Garbrandt. Maybe this adjustment serves TJ well, and he finds ways to dictate exchanges more safely, engaging often but with far more confidence in avoiding what might be coming back at him. However, there is an existing risk that attempting to rewrite TJ’s coding as a fighter means that he can’t enforce his volume-edge as frequently. Similarly, if coached incorrectly, this new head-movement version of TJ might just find himself losing more exchanges than he has been winning, as a result of opponents making a more concerted effort to kick his legs, hit his body, and draw his defensive reactions out before countering.
A lot of this is speculative, but the theory remains the same. To fix a problem in a fighter, the problem must be properly identified and fixed in such a way that it must be reliably employed, yet doesn’t threaten the existing context of a fighter. That is an enormous challenge.
Question #4
If you have made it this far, you should be proud, because it means that you have taken great measures to ensure the quality of your fighter. Unfortunately, the fourth question on this list might just be the most challenging of the bunch. Even if you have determined the context with which your fighter operates, you have identified the problem, and you have found a way to successfully make the adjustment in question, you still have to consider what I posited at the very beginning of this article.
It is one thing for a fighter to employ the necessary adjustments, but it is another for a fighter to stick to their guns. This is where a fighter’s temperament, attitude, confidence, and coaching becomes paramount. Likewise, this is where style archetypes become a unique point of discussion. When a fighter is facing a comfortable matchup, it becomes much easier to employ (or even simply test out) adjustments, because they are used to seeing what their opponent has to offer. It is a safer place to change speeds. The risk of falling behind is smaller when a fighter feels as though they have complete control of a fight, and as such, they are more inclined to utilize the new tweaks in their game. This is half the reason steps backward in matchmaking are worth anything, but that is a bit beside the point.
On the other hand, when a fighter is attempting to employ adjustments against an opponent that presents more serious threats, causes them problems that they have struggled with in the past, and/or are unlike the opponents they have grown accustomed to facing, it becomes much more difficult to employ these newfound adjustments.
Let’s say our new head-movement-centric TJ Dillashaw has internalized these lessons from the second Barao fight. He’s been practicing his weaving, and wants to employ some of these new tactics against Dominick Cruz in his following title defense. Instead of initiating with quite so much commitment, TJ enters the pocket folded over his lead hip as he looks to duck under and slip the wonky Cruzian punches coming back at him. Maybe this works in diffusing Cruz’s punching offense as well as keeping TJ from chasing such an adept lateral mover quite so much. Cruz throws himself out of position with his punching mechanics anyway, so a more head-movement-centric TJ could potentially capitalize on these layered exchanges with an even lower risk probability. With the necessary preparation and a focus on remaining a bit more defensively minded, TJ might have just discovered a way to elongate his championship run.
However, since this section is entirely based on speculating, it is worth throwing out another potential outcome to consider. There is a possibility that a more patient TJ (consciously folding over his lead hip, baiting responses, and attempting to diffuse the boxing of his opponent) might not be able to employ his trademark volume as easily. With such an emphasis on moving his head before and after throwing, his opponent might just configure a way to throw a few punches away to draw TJ’s reactions before kicking his legs or simply angling out as TJ holds his range. Maybe Cruz figures out how to feint, double-feint, paw, and change the rhythm on his jab to make this version of TJ twitchy. There’s also a chance these adjustments just don’t fit with TJ at all, and Cruz begins needling his way around TJ’s head and playing with the champion’s expectations. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that TJ burns two rounds trying out these new adjustments and he finds himself slipping behind in the fight.
Does he continue trying to utilize his improved head movement, and attempt to build more offense off the responses Cruz has already given him? Does he stick with his padwork drills, even if it is causing him visible discomfort and frustration within a fight? Or, does he simply throw his hands up, say ‘fuck it’ and go back to the hyperactive initiator from his last performance, newly-minted head movement be damned? Even if TJ has to force exchanges more and ostensibly throws all of his newly-established skills out the window, at least it is a style he’s comfortable within. At least here, he can push the advantages that he’s grown comfortable pushing.
This is one of the most fascinating elements to adjustments in MMA, because it is entirely dependent on the fighter. I have mentioned in previous articles how it is impressive enough for a fighter to demonstrate an ability to adjust their approach, but how rare it is for a fighter to commit to their coaching with complete devotion, despite any doubts or discomfort that they might experience in the middle of a fight. It requires such a distinct level of faith, trust, and belief in their coaches as well as themselves, and this is to say nothing of the technical improvements on their own merits. Any time a fighter adjusts successfully and convincingly sticks to it, the diversion stands on its own as a remarkable example of fighter-coach synergy. It warrants admiration, but demands respect.
To divert from my running example, the best paradigm I can offer for this section is an affirmative one that occurred quite recently. Against Tony Ferguson at UFC 249, Justin Gaethje entirely revamped his technical game from a forward-moving, cage-cutting destroyer to a polished, threatening outside counterpuncher, thanks to the coaching expertise of Trevor Whittman. Every one of these four questions was confirmed in this brilliant performance. The tools in Gaethje’s skillset were vastly reworked, but they still existed in the same general context. His mechanics weren’t sacrificed, nor was his output. He took decidedly less damage, while ostensibly dishing out even more. Most impressively, however, was how he suffered a bad singular moment, yet never for a moment wavered in his commitment to this modified, upgraded style. Against a relentless opponent who was decidedly tougher than any of his previous three layup bouts, Justin kept his cool, remembered his coaching, and stayed the course to downright genius effect. It stands as perhaps the best example of what I’ve been discussing in this section, as well as the technical turnaround of the decade.
Strategic & Tactical Adjustments
If these four questions serve as the base of adjusting within MMA, then the next topic should pull the focus out a bit further and examine the broader idea of how adjustments pervade the sport. In attempting to answer the four key questions, I used TJ Dillashaw and head movement as my example of fighter and adjustment. What if we widen the scope on that second part a bit further and ask a bigger question?
The example I provided is a tactical one, in which I am positing what would happen if TJ Dillashaw were to focus on adjusting a singular, technical piece of his game. In other words, how would TJ’s career have gone differently had he made a more concerted effort towards moving his head? I tried my best to eliminate any other ancillary adjustments that this hypothetical version of TJ might’ve made in concession with his head movement, such as tighter defensive footwork, a more consistent takedown threat, or more body-punching. In general, I attempted to analyze TJ ‘the head-mover’ in a vacuum.
What remains to be seen is a comprehensive strategic adjustment being made, and how that can inform individual tactical adjustments. Strategy, in and of itself, can be a bit dubious to discuss, since it can (and often does) alter from opponent to opponent and some fighters clearly have no concept of what a strategic gameplan even is. For the sake of argument, I will continue with this TJ Dillashaw example, because he is a fighter who has shown several different strategic gameplans for different opponents and it has visibly become a large part of his preparation.
In case anybody isn’t aware, the simplest way I can delineate these two concepts is the following:
Strategy answers the “why” questions, and informs what a fighter should be doing in a more encompassing sense of a fight.
Tactics answers the “how” questions, and demonstrates what specific procedures must be employed to fulfill the strategy.
Let’s use TJ Dillashaw’s fight against John Lineker as my primary example. From what I can tell, TJ’s strategy in this fight was to draw responses from Lineker, to force Lineker to throw at air, and to work his wrestling and top game. This is simple enough to lay out, but plenty of fighters have found ways to lose to the limited, but dangerous banger in John Lineker.
The next step for TJ was to utilize tactics informing the strategy in place. He went about drawing responses from Lineker with his usual arsenal of false entries, stance switches, and outside kicks, which frustrated Lineker’s sense of distance and impeded his ability to react reliably. To make Lineker miss, TJ kept a large swath of distance between himself and Lineker, filling the empty space with feints to dress up his attacks, before immediately angling out whenever Lineker attempted to respond. Finally, TJ employed his wrestling in beautiful concert with his feints, meaning that Lineker’s ability to read and react to the level changes was dulled. It was an excellent gameplan that TJ carried out very well, and it was all within the context of his existing skillset.
There were elements to this fight-specific gameplan that TJ employed before and after, but it is worth noting how big a diversion this approach was to the guy who chainsawed Barao twice. I may have some tactical complaints with the context of TJ’s technical game, but the strategic adaptations he demonstrated himself capable of within this context were uniformly terrific. He could be a tactical adjuster too, such as when he opted to begin kicking Cruz’s legs to great effect toward the end of their fight, but in general, TJ excelled as a strategic adjuster. The tactical adjustments showed themselves to be more successful when a strategic approach was firmly in place.
To reiterate a previous point, I am not a coach and thus I have no business assessing which of these two adjustments is more difficult to make, but I can say that on their own merits, they are impressive. When strategic and tactical adjustments are made together, it presents an entirely new capacity for a fighter to excel in. I shouldn’t have to tell you how rare it is to see; yet another reason why Justin Gaethje’s recent performance was such a stunner.
When To Adjust
In terms of gameplanning and making adjustments from opponent to opponent, the best time to make these changes should be in between fights. Since adjustments can be both opponent-specific and in the interest of improving a fighter’s game altogether, spending the necessary time allotted in training camp should prove to be the best, most reliable way to train in adjustments as well as giving the fighter as much time as possible to grow comfortable with them.
Of course, this can’t always be afforded. God only knows what Robert Whittaker’s original gameplan was for Yoel Romero at UFC 213, but it didn’t end up mattering as his knee exploded in the first round and the Cuban forced Rob’s hand in adjusting. The option to follow the initial gameplan was immediately thrown out of the window, and Rob had to resort to a backup plan. All things considered, his on-the-fly adjustment was a great one. Since he lacked a competent lead leg to plant on, his jab was sacrificed for a snap kick, creating space, jamming Yoel’s entries, and building up attritional damage against the decorated wrestler. There were presumably quite a few other adjustments that Rob was forced to make during the course of the fight, and we may never know all of them, but the obvious one that he made was a success. It should be considered doubly impressive that he came to this solution so quickly and converted it into a fight-winning gambit.
There has been a question that has haunted me since their infamous UFC 225 rematch: “Was this constrained gameplan that Rob and his coaches came to on-the-fly a better one than the gameplan they came in with?” In the rematch, after healing his knee and spending a large amount of time watching and studying tape from the first encounter, Rob came into the rematch with a vastly different approach. He was far more aggressive, extending exchanges further and entering behind riskier oblique strikes to Yoel’s knee. It was a more proactive approach, and it likely hinged on Yoel’s questionable gas tank, but the method was an exceedingly more dangerous one all the same. As Romero found his timing, he took advantage of these openings and largely clobbered Rob for the second half of their fight.
How much of Yoel’s adjustments were in a vacuum? In other words, how much of the difference in result of the rematch was due to Romero making the correct adjustments the second time around? To his credit, he bailed on the failed takedowns from the first bout, likely saving himself some valuable fuel. Yoel also burned two full rounds attempting to find reads and openings on the champion, giving Rob very little to react to but computing everything the champ threw, consciously making note of his tendencies. That said, I still can’t divorce myself from considering Whittaker’s approach, where there was a greater incentive to push the pace than there was in the first contest. At times, Rob was a bit more of a counterfighter to Yoel in their UFC 213 bout, shutting down his takedown attempts, breaking his line of attack, and limiting exchanges, simply because he had no other choice. With two functional knees in their UFC 225 rematch, Rob wasn’t nearly as careful and he paid for it.
Adjustments can come in all shapes and sizes, so certain fighters need their own time and space in a fight to find their reads before committing to an attack pattern. Romero is infamous for burning lots of fight-time in an attempt to look for one singular opening strike, whilst simultaneously making gradual adjustments to mitigate the offense of his opponents. This has proven itself to be a fatal as well, since Romero can’t seem to fight without adjustments. It is notable that his worst performance against Israel Adesanya came from an opponent too petrified to give Yoel anything concrete to react to.
There is another serious risk of adjusting mid-fight. The recent example that comes to mind is Shane Burgos, and (more specifically) his recent loss. While a consistent favorite of mine to watch, a lot of Burgos’ shortcomings came to light against Josh Emmett as the fight progressed. Shane is an example of a fighter who knows how to adjust his offense to respond to an opponent, and that is fine on its own, but it usually isn’t enough to carry a fighter to success in isolation. Burgos has shown himself capable of kicking the lead leg of a jabber out to impede them from planting against Calvin Kattar. In the same vein, Burgos did a fine job counterkicking his opponent’s legs every time Emmett attempted to shift his feet, to prevent him from loading up on massive hooks. On one level, it is good that Burgos is cognizant of his opponent’s weapons and that he is so proactive in establishing his own tools to mitigate the problems they cause for him.
I like seeing this, but unfortunately, Burgos seems incapable of adjusting his own defense in response to an opponent, which would be a lot safer and more reliable. He lacks the necessary depth as a defense fighter, both in terms of his head movement and his footwork, to consistently adjust his defensive system to the offense of an opponent. Using offense to diffuse offense is good and useful, but if a fighter’s only way to adjust is by means of their own offense, it makes things far more dangerous than a defensive adjustment of the same value. It effectively keeps a fighter in the line of fire and it may not consistently diminish the threat of the opponent all of the time. Every time an opponent throws out their threat, you must continually adjust to it. There is a higher percentage change of an opponent getting their offense for free, and you likely have to go to greater lengths in your response to disincentivize them. It also becomes easier for opponents to configure a way around your offensive adjustment. If a fighter is capable of adjusting their defense to an opponent’s offense, however, an opponent can only miss with a strike so many times before they eventually stop throwing it. Adjusting your defense and then finding an offensive adjustment in tandem with the defensive adjustment is preferable, but you almost never see it.
Responding to Adjustments
Now that I have established the formula for making adjustments and I have laid out the common points at which adjustments tend to show themselves, the last point of discussion that must be addressed if from the opposite perspective. How does a fighter respond to their opponent adjusting against them, be it from a rematch or in the middle of a fight?
If your opponent is adjusting to you, then it is a safe assumption that they are adjusting to something you are doing successfully. The first step should be keying in on what that is. It can be as common as a jab that keeps snapping the head of the opponent back or a leg kick to counter a step-in or a jab. In a first-layer adjustment, a fighter is likely reacting to a more immediate threat in front of them that is hindering their own game in some way. It may be as simple as establishing a threat well within the existing toolbox of a fighter (like Calvin Kattar’s jab, for example), but the impetus is on them to make sure it is established. Chris Fishgold wasn’t afraid to walk Kattar down until Kattar’s jab has been established a few minutes into the fight. From that point, the threat was firmly in place and life became a lot tougher for Fishgold.
Continuing on with the previous Gaethje/Ferguson example, I will use a specific exchange from that bout to highlight my point. The lone moment of success that Tony found against Justin came from Tony keying in on Justin folding over his lead hip, dropping his level, and entering the pocket less upright. The uppercut that Gaethje was throwing usually came from this more crouched stance. Historically, Tony has had issues punching down at opponents who get under his punches, so if we consider Gaethje’s adjustment in his stance and posture in the pocket as a first-layer adjustment, we can trace the results.
At the very end of the second round, Gaethje attempt a large rear-hand uppercut delivered from this crouched stance that he was hoping to draw Ferguson onto. Tony made an expert adjustment, countering Justin’s uppercut with his own. The punch landed first and collided as Justin threw, knocking him down. Tony did a very good job of reading the preparatory adjustment of his opponent in his stance, and countered with his own adjustment. Actively adjusting to the first adjustment is considered a second-layer adjustment.
More impressively, however, was watching Gaethje adjust again to Tony’s uppercut. After that knockdown, Justin did an exceptional job of crowding when Tony threw, folding further over his lead hip when he threw the overhand right, and smothering Tony’s counter uppercut with his right shoulder. Along with this, Gaethje listened to Whittman’s corner advice to “take 10% off [his] shots,” which loosened his punching form ever so slightly. Tony looked for the uppercut counter again throughout the fight, but he was never able to find it. Some of this was amended by Gaethje no longer going to massive sellout punches and some of this was amended by Justin’s punch-smothering, but there was a third-layer adjustment from Gaethje in the midst, where he both found a way to employ his initial tactic and managed to mitigate the adjustment his opponent made to said tactic.
This is rare. This is so unbelievably rare in MMA that I legitimately struggled in pinning down an example of this happening in the first place. This sort of change requires all of the previous four questions to be answered in the affirmative and on the fly. Generally, if a fighter is adjusting, it tends to cap out around the first layer. Particularly smart fighters can configure second-layer adjustments. For a fighter to adjust, have an opponent adjust in response, and then adjust again to their opponent’s adjustment, it is almost unheard of in such a high-variance sport. It is more likely that fighters simply manage to overcome a second-layer adjustment instead of actively responding to it.
Conclusion
It is very hard to make adjustments stick in MMA, and it only gets more difficult the further along in a fighter’s career they’re made. It requires such a high degree of self-assessment, honesty, discipline, and initiative in training and in fights to successfully alter a fighter’s course of action, but if done successfully, it can be the difference between truly great competitors and merely good ones.
Despite the fact that I’ve written so much about adjustments in this article, it is worth noting how unlikely it is to see these kinds of changes actively being made. Plenty of fighters remain incredibly obstinate in their training, reacting to their losses with frustration instead of constructive reflection. Calvin Kattar did nothing but complain about Renato Moicano’s constant leg kicking in his shutout UFC 223 loss, and then found himself on the losing end of largely the same fight against Zabit Magomedsharipov a few years later. Plenty of fighters actively make the wrong adjustments, like Junior Dos Santos improving nothing about his positioning, ringcraft, or clinch offense against Cain Velasquez in their rubber match other than throwing some random inside elbows. Cody Garbrandt’s response to TJ Dillashaw’s nightmarish angles in the pocket was to simply spam kicks from the outside.
Coaching loyalty, a lack of composure and self-reflection, and an inability to properly identify the problems until too late are just some of the problems that MMA fighters face when asked to adjust their approach. If something is working, or at least if they feel like something is working, what is the point in changing? I have made it clear that I’m not a coach, but I’m not a fighter, either, though I can at least attempt to sympathize with competitors who are asked to make changes. It can be confidence-eroding. If you’ve spent all of your career building yourself to be a certain way, being asked to step outside that construction and try something new is frightening and uncomfortable.
Nonetheless, that doesn’t make it any more realistic to expect fighters to adjust. Unless a fighter specifically demonstrates themselves as an adaptable one, it is best not to anticipate major changes later in their careers, especially if a lack of modifiability is often a culprit of a fighter’s problems (such as my all-time favorite fighter, Daniel Cormier).
Everything I have here is simply dressing up the far more streamlined rationale that I laid out at the very beginning of this article: After a certain point, fighters tend to just be who they are. So, don’t expect Tyron Woodley to have a particularly remarkable post-championship career.