The Ring Generalship of Eddie Alvarez
Photo by Josh Hedges/Zuffa LLC/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images
Eddie Alvarez is one of the very best outside boxers in MMA history. In a sport where the vast majority of competitors are deathly allergic to moving backward, Eddie built a career on bucking this typical trend, devouring relentless opponents with a healthy combination of footwork and distance management. It is a genuine treat for any combat sport’s fan to watch ‘The Underground King’ work his magic on the outside, and today, I would like to further examine what it is that makes Alvarez such a brilliant defensive ring general.
Setting the Distance
Alvarez is a unique paradox of pugilism conventions. The vast majority of MMA fighters prefer a neutral, open-space striking engagement over being pushed backward, and their own skillsets often crumble when they are in the face of constant pressure. Fighters like Edson Barboza, Chris Weidman, and Rob Font are quite dangerous when granted their preferred operating space in the center of the ring, but typically fall to pieces the moment opponents commit to pressing them back. This has become such a trend in the MMA meta that certain writers from this very site have dedicated thousands of words to scrutinizing these bad habits.
Eddie Alvarez is the opposite. He is excruciatingly uncomfortable when he is forced to pressure, yet possesses a craft and awareness on the backfoot that deserves to be taught in seminars. As such, a lot of Alvarez’s predictiveness boils down to matchups. Conor McGregor would always be a nightmarishly difficult ask for Eddie, since Conor’s baiting and masterly control of distance are practically engineered to throw Alvarez out of position as he moves forward. On the flip side, concerted pressure fighters (the likes of Rafael Dos Anjos, Justin Gaethje, and Michael Chandler) are absolute feasts for Alvarez, since he is one of the few ring generals in MMA to truly test the ring-cutting mettle of the pressing opponents.
The first element of Eddie’s ringcraft comes from his ability to control the distance in front of him, whilst drawing forward-moving opponents onto the jab. Against the right opponent, Alvarez’s boxing and footwork frequently looks masterful off the backfoot, as his bulling opponents wind up magnetized to the champion’s constant alteration of angles, throwaway punches, and combinations.
Alvarez throws a jab away to draw a reaction from Chandler. In response to Chandler’s jab, Eddie ducks under/slips outside and throws a right hand away to load up the left hook to the body on the open side. Chandler grabs an underhook beneath Eddie’s right arm, so to stifle the clinch, Alvarez immediately posts off of Chandler’s right shoulder with his left hand. As he regains his stance, Eddie throws out a final jab as he takes a diagonal hop-step to a new angle. Note how Eddie’s angles constantly force Chandler to turn and adjust his stance to keep his opponent in front of him as Alvarez floats in and out.
Against Justin Gaethje, Alvarez played with tactile feints to draw his opponent’s guard up and confound his sense of timing before punching around his forearms. Utilizing both the jab feint and the shoulder-squaring rear hand threat, Alvarez is able to bait Gaethje into reacting before landing a lead uppercut on the pivot.
Jabs are one of the most reliable tools for drawing responses out of opponents, but for such a tactile fighter like Alvarez, a handsy jab can be used to literally draw out physical responses as well as tactical ones. MMA has its fair share of excellent jabbers, many of whom I’ve written about before, but nobody in the sport uses their jab more “like a boxer” than Eddie Alvarez. It isn’t built for precision, but for incessance. He’ll throw it out as a prodder as often as he’ll stab and pivot. Maybe it lacks the thudding shock of Georges St-Pierre or the coiled spring of Jose Aldo, but I wouldn’t hesitate to call Alvarez’s jab one of the best in the sport.
Given the abundance of feints, rhythm-changes, throwaways and committed jabs, it becomes extremely difficult for Chandler to figure out when to focus on evading and when to focus on countering. After smothering Chandler’s right hand, Alvarez frames Michael off before immediately taking a diagonal step toward his opponent’s centerline with his lead foot and landing a pivoting double-jab.
In their tremendous first bout, Eddie even started timing Chandler’s level-changes with a trip-hammer counter jab.
The very essence of Alvarez’s ringcraft is explicitly demonstrated in the clips above. Fighting off the backfoot doesn’t inherently mean fighting defensively. In fact, Alvarez is a voracious output fighter and he is greedy about snatching back the initiative at every turn. When he’s angling off after an exchange, there may only be a momentary pause before Eddie springs back into range with a darting jab. One of the most valuable traits that any outside ring general should possess is the ability to continually give their forward-moving opponent a threat to react to. Even a basic pumping jab can make the most aggressive of opponents think twice before carelessly stepping into range.
Staying Off The Fence
Eddie’s outside footwork is a thing of beauty. ‘The Underground King’ possesses a few specific tactical tricks baked into his style, but the real depth of Alvarez’s footwork stems from his reliable and systematic escapes on the backfoot, particularly when his back is to the fence.
Classic Alvarez staple: the darting right hand. Alvarez throws a lead right hand as he draws his right leg forward, almost resembling a shift. However, instead of holding southpaw, Eddie immediately takes a lateral step with his left foot before hop-stepping out the open side, back into orthodox. This is not only a useful tool in creating an exit, but it also dismisses the threat of a left hook since the lateral step off the left foot maneuvers the thrower out of the punches arc.
Chandler attempts to time a left hook counter to the darting right, but Alvarez is already angling out and riding off the punch.
Eddie’s lateral movement on the outside is a treat to watch. The mechanics behind it are fairly simple; he breaks his bladed stance into a flat, shuffling stance (‘squaring up’ as one might call it) when his back is to the fence and hops to both sides, keeping his eyes on his opponent. There isn’t anything overly complex about the execution, but the brilliance of Alvarez’s ringcraft lies in his patience and discipline. The effectiveness of this maneuver works so well in part because Eddie is exceptional at keeping his exits open until his opponent commits. The moment they commit to cutting off either the left or the right, Alvarez finds to his own exit on the opposing side.
As Eddie is circling leftward, he quickly flattens his stance and hop-steps rightward, forcing Chandler to turn. Chandler explodes forward with a wide hook as is his wont to, so Alvarez ducks under and initiates the clinch to smother the punch. This technique ( formally known as a punch-&-clutch) is preferable against pressuring fighters to stifle their offense and attacking in transition. On the break, Eddie shuffles leftward once more.
Ringcutters must step across with their footwork, taking angles diagonally to cut off their opponents. Michael Chandler does not do this. He prefers to square up to keep his opponents in front of him and explode into punch entries. For experienced outside ring generals, that sort of approach isn’t particularly difficult to deal with.
I particularly love seeing Eddie’s L-step feed directly into his flattened stance along the fence, further facilitating his outside hop-stepping and shuffling.
Taking a step back for a second, it is worth discussing how Eddie’s ringcraft became such a staple in the sport. Personally, I have a theory that fighters like Petr Yan and Eddie Alvarez grew into such consummate ring generals (off the front and backfoot, respectively), simply because they spent an extended amount of time in the cage from very early on in their professional careers. Within 10 fights, Eddie had already won two regional championships. Yan was competing for the ACB title within six. This sort of ‘learn-on-the-job’ philosophy is dangerous, but it can be a benefit to certain fighters as they quickly adapt to their surroundings in real time. If you accrue enough experience after beginning your career at a high level, you quickly internalize the importance of directionality, momentum, and initiative.
Even in his nascent days in DREAM, the beginnings of Alvarez’s awareness in the ring came to light. During his outstanding battle with Joachim Hansen, the directional shifts and punch-&-clutch techniques are visible with Alvarez converting a missed right hand into a collar-tie/underhook.
In one of Eddie’s best-ever showings against Pat Curran, the champ mirrored his own technique from the opposing stance. In his square stance, he steps laterally with his left foot, but instead of crossing his feet (a generally recognized mistake with footwork), he brings his right foot to meet his left foot before darting inward, now from southpaw. The inward hop-step/open side exit is effectively a southpaw iteration of Eddie’s darting right hand.
Learning defensive ring generalship is challenge, in no small part due to how it ostensibly works against a fighter’s natural inclinations. For most fighters, the cage is a danger zone, so much of their training and footwork is focused around avoiding that hazardous position as much as possible. Eddie Alvarez, along with Dominick Cruz and Jose Aldo, understood the advantages of outside footwork from very early on in the sport’s evolving meta: The cage wasn’t dangerous on its own if you could consistently escape from it, and could even provide opportunities for offense of its own if those escapes remained reliable. Backfoot ring generalship is a very specific slice of a fighter’s toolbox, not one that most fighters need all that frequently, so I shouldn’t be surprised that most of the current roster hasn’t caught up yet. However, that simply magnifies how impressive the few who mastered it truly are.
Standing Your Ground
At a certain point, all the skill and comfort on the backfoot is rendered meaningless if a fighter can’t earn the respect of their aggressive opponent. There comes a time when the very best thing that any backfoot operator can do is to stand their ground, sit down and hit their opponent extremely hard.
This is another trait I have always been fond of from Eddie Alvarez. He concedes to being pressured, but he is nearly impossible to pressure safely. For opponents committed to pushing Alvarez backward, the jab might be the most regular annoyance that they face, but the blizzard of combinations are as varied as they are threatening. Particularly as opponents begin to slow down, ‘The Underground King’ will take advantage with a bevy of body shots that typically facilitate their own openings.
Against Gaethje, the key for Alvarez was hanging around at the absolute peak of Justin’s effective jabbing range before pivoting off. When Eddie did commit, he opted for short, snippy combinations (typically aimed at the body) before backstepping to recreate the distance with his own jab.
There isn’t anything particularly special about this sequence. Just a tap-right hook around the guard separated by a half-beat, but it is a nice punch and RDA’s stanky leg is funny.
Fighting off the backfoot means choosing your spots effectively. It is imperative for boxers conceding to pressure that they determine exactly when and how to hammer the openings available to them. Eventually, you will run out of space. Alvarez toes the line between evasion and aggression quite beautifully. Sometimes, he is content to simply draw pressuring opponents onto jabs and hooks. Other times, he stands his ground and forces heavier exchanges. Even talented ring generals (such as Israel Adesanya and Dominick Cruz) zero in on moving then striking, but Alvarez is the rare backfoot operator who can accomplish both simultaneously.
Alvarez trails his rear leg as he hop-steps in, feinting the body kick, to which Chandler reacts. As Michael resets, Alvarez throws the body kick he just threatened without the hop-step. The kick bounces off Chandler’s arm, but Eddie punches off his kick as his right leg is retracting, and Chandler doesn’t see the punch coming behind his lead shoulder. The little shove to recreate the distance is also quite cute.
Eddie’s upper body movement facilitates his combination punching. He’ll crouch and fold under shots to evade an opponent’s jab, whilst ostensibly creating a level-changing feint for his opponents to react to. Meanwhile, his rear-hand feinting squats his shoulders up, allowing him to spring into the loaded left hook.
Slipping the double-jab before darting in with a body shot combination. Pretty stuff.
Conclusion
Backfoot ring generalship requires diligence and composure, and those are not qualities that should be taken lightly in fighters. It is one thing to learn certain responses to prepare for an outside approach in a fight. It is another to continually employ safe, economical and systematic options almost every time you find your back to the fence. The key to Alvarez’s ringcraft is his consistency. His backfoot toolbox works as well as it does, because Eddie sticks to the tactics that work every single time.
There is so much to mine from Alvarez’s fight catalogue, including a few traits that even some of the best in the sport’s history fail to replicate. This is not the first time I have referenced Jack Slack’s ringcraft litmus test (nor will it be the last), but Alvarez’s standing as one the sport’s five best defensive ring generals is beyond reproach.