The Pride of Searcy: Thug Nasty's Grappling Prowess Explored
Photo by Douglas P. DeFelice/Getty Images
It’s 2020, and Bryce Mitchell recorded his 13th professional victory over Charles Rosa just about 3 months ago, absolutely dominating the Ricardo Liborio black belt on the ground from the opening bell, to the final horn. 3 rounds, 3 takedowns, 14 guard passes, and 5 submission attempts. It’s a testament to how tough Rosa is that he was able to work his way free of some bad spots, but Mitchell’s impressive display of top control is just another example of why Thug Nasty has caught the eyes of many fans.
The Ultimate Fighter
Bryce Mitchell was brought into the UFC through The Ultimate Fighter, as part of their 27th season, the gimmick being undefeated fighters only. At 23 years old, and 9-0, Mitchell was the 2nd pick by Team Cormier, having finished 8 of his 9 professional bouts by submission. His first fight was against Jay Cucciniello (8-0). Bryce out-worked and out-grappled him throughout the match. Despite his age, and relative inexperience, it’s easy to see that Bryce’s top control was going to be a problem for anyone he faced going forward. His ability to float his hips, gliding from position to position, back control, and relentless attacks, both submission attempts and ground pound, overwhelmed Cucciniello and led to an easy 2-0 decision win for Mitchell.
Bryce is struggling to find the space to sneak a hook in, and initiates a scramble rather than fighting for that small space to open. Grabbing Cucciniello’s wrist with his left hand, he shoots his right hand through and controls just under the shoulder and forces Cucciniello to roll. Aware that the back is in danger of being taken, Cucciniello tries to get his hips free and back to the mat to recover some sort of guard. Bryce smoothly transitions, ready to slide his left knee straight into mount. Cucciniello abandons ship, turning back over and giving his back again. However, we see his control isn’t perfect, as Cucciniello is able to shake him off and get on top. An impressive display of Bryce’s flow, but the control was not perfect and there was space for Cucciniello to operate.
Bryce’s second attempt at controlling Cucciniello would be much more successful, both in round 1 and for nearly the entirety of round 2 as well.
Just a small bit of something I very much enjoyed seeing, Cucciniello gets his back to the cage to begin the cage walk, and Bryce circles to his right, dragging Cucciniello’s legs with him and forcing his back down to the mat to retain and establish tighter control.
Bryce’s second back control attempt was much more successful than his first. This would continue to be the story of the remainder of the fight, Bryce dominating on the ground and controlling from the back mount, beating Cucciniello down.
Bryce attempts to get his hooks and control in, and Cucciniello gets on all fours before he can consolidate his position, trying to shake him off as he did earlier. Bryce is high on the back, but does a good job forcing Cucciniello to drop down again by sliding his right arm under the neck, forcing him to defend the choke. Bryce is still high on the back, and in danger of losing position. Keeping control of the upper body and head, Bryce rolls and throws his right leg over Cucciniello’s shoulder, locking up the figure four, and just pounds Cuccniello with shots until the round ends.
The entirety of round 2 took place with Bryce backpacking Cucciniello for nearly 5 minutes straight. Once he secured the takedown and back control, just a few seconds into the round, the fight would remain there until Bryce attempted an armbar with 30 seconds left. It was uneventful, but dominant. Securing his first victory, and moving onto the semi-finals, the 2nd round draft pick for Cormier’s team showed why he was chosen so early. His next fight would be against his fellow team member, and eventual winner of the season, Brad Katona.
The 6th pick for Cormier’s team, SBG Ireland trained Brad Katona moved onto the semi-finals with a Majority Decision win over recent UFC debutante Kyler Phillips. Undersized, and a quiet personality in the house, Brad was definitely the underdog coming into this fight. The size advantage for Mitchell alone seemed a bit too much to handle, 4 inches in height and 5 in reach, considering Brad was a grappler where size advantages are helpful. What we got were some excellent grappling exchanges, which saw the larger Mitchell look to impose this size on Katona in the clinch, and the craftier Katona looking to find openings to exploit the holes of his less experienced opponent.
With Katona on top in half guard, Bryce is aggressively looking to sweep him over. Without the underhook, Bryce nudges Katona high over him as he looked to pass, and began to come up for the single leg. Bryce is able to get an underhook and drops back down, forcing Katona to release the overhook and post to get his weight back over Bryce. Bryce inches his hips to his right as he begins to sit up again, threatening once more to come up for a single leg. This gives him space to slide his left arm under Katona’s right hamstring to begin working to a deep half guard. Katona wraps up Bryce’s neck to try and prevent Bryce from scooting under his hips and establishing the position. His balance is compromised, and too far over Bryce, who grabs hold of Katona’s ankle, pulls toward him, and comes up into Katona, riding over Katona’s hook to get top side control.
These next few portions of the fight we’ll look at are examples of Bryce’s relative inexperience coming back to bite him, and showing Katona’s craftiness on the ground.
After getting swept by Katona, we see Bryce attempt to get to the deep half guard position once more. This time, Katona is wise to it, and immediately back-steps, digs for the underhook on Bryce’s right side, and consolidates his position. Despite Bryce hooking under Katona’s right shin, preventing him from passing, he’s unable to gain any real leverage, and remains on bottom for a good minute and a half or so.
Out of ideas off his back, Bryce opts to turn his back and stand back up. He turns into Katona, controlling his left wrist as he does so, likely to prevent incoming shots, going belly down. He begins building his base, keeping control of the left wrist, as Katona attempts to get behind him and actually misses his attempt to try and get a seatbelt the first time. By the time he can grab it, Bryce has already gotten up and Katona settles for a rear waist lock.
Throughout the fight, we would see Bryce try and utilize his size advantage over Katona, many times failing to accomplish much other than wasting energy. You can see in the clips above a few examples of this in all three rounds, with Bryce visibly showing the effects of this as time goes on, which brings us to the finish of the fight. There is nothing special or interesting about the finish itself from a technical perspective, no crazy transition or getting outclassed. It was Bryce, exhausted and with time running out, desperately wanting to get up, and Katona taking advantage of his mistakes. Bryce turns into Katona, with no wrist control this time, and simply turtles up. Katona slides in a hook, pulls Bryce over with a secure seatbelt, and locks in the Rear Naked Choke, getting the tap.
Exiting the TUF 27 season, the 23 year old would fight fellow teammate, and Cormier’s first round draft pick, Tyler Diamond, winning by Majority Decision. Considering how many fighters come out of TUF and underwhelm in the UFC, you wouldn’t be able to fault someone for thinking Mitchell would not be one to keep an eye on. The next fight we will take a look at his his bout with Bobby Moffett. Coming off a “submission” win over Chas Skelly (now a NC as it was overturned), Moffett was a larger, seemingly more athletic, and on paper more skilled submission grappling artist.
The Bobby Moffett Fight
Mitchell came into this fight as the clear underdog, nearly 2-1 on the betting odds. Moffett was the more experience fighter, would have a size advantage, and had 9 (prior to the overturning of the Skelly fight to a NC) submission wins out of 14. Considering how Katona was able to wear Mitchell down and take advantage of his gassed reactions, this would be a great test of where Bryce was at this point and how he would handle such a challenge.
Having dropped Moffett moments earlier, Bryce is given no room to work and Moffett immediately begins to work on getting this fight to the ground and work his top game. There are a few moments that I think bode well for Bryce in comparison to his fight with Katona right off the bat, that still fit his style and personality.
1) Bryce tries to defend the takedown, hard. Both head on and attempting to literally leap over the attempt.
2) Bryce knows Moffett is hurt, and once he’s on bottom, immediately looks to lock up a submission, locking that triangle on fast and pretty deep as well.
3) After losing the submission, and the control it afforded, Bryce abandons the grappling engagement and stands back up to strike.
Abandoning the guillotine, Bryce begins working to get his underhooks to pull Moffett up away from his hips. Moffeet is driving Bryce back to the cage hard, and Bryce attempts to literally hop over his takedown attempt, taking advantage of Moffett’s driving momentum. Moffett shoots forward, Bryce tries to get over and out, but Moffett catches the foot and maintains a foothold (lol), begins to stand and turn into Bryce. They end up with Moffett turtled, holding on to Bryce’s foot, and Bryce oil checking to maintain top position. Unfortunately, Moffett’s control of the foot, across the back of his head, prevents him from maintaining control, and Moffett steps over Bryce’s leg to prevent him from locking in a triangle choke as he puts Bryce on his butt. Keeping his leg laced around Bryce’s to prevent him from scooting his hips away, Moffett continues to slowly work his way to top position, keeping control of Bryce’s foot as well the entire time. Bryce is unable to create any separation and Moffett establishes top control.
The remainder of the story of this fight was not necessarily about the individual ground exchanges, but the mentality of Bryce within the fight, and his fight with himself in addition to his fight with Moffett. Before the fight, Bryce had this to say in an interview:
“I’m going to try to mix it up on him and confuse him. I’m going to try to stuff all his takedowns because I think that will piss him off. That will change up his game plan big time.”
Bryce is still a young fighter, even now, but in the fight you can see his attempt to follow the gameplan fighting with his natural tendency to just, well, fight. Below is a mashup of Bryce working to disengage from Moffett, whether or not he initiated the exchange. The intentional disengagement from positions he’s disadvantaged in or to prevent a wasteful expenditure of energy is a welcome sign of growth from Bryce.
However, we also saw he was far too willing to either accept bad positions or spend way too much time trying to force positions that would lead to him accomplishing little, other than tiring himself out.
In the end, Bryce was able to gut out a grueling win, and it came down to the wire. Both he and Moffett are completely exhausted, and Moffett has his second D’arce attempt locked in.
Bryce switches his hips towards the mat, and turns his chest down as well, with his arm across the hipline of Moffett, forcing his arms open and lacing his right leg through Moffett’s, kicking back to open up his hips. Bryce posts his left foot and hand on the mat and drives Moffett into the fence. Bryce grabs Moffett’s knee with his left hand and his ankle right his right, and begins to circle behind Moffett, pulling on his leg, compromising his base. Bryce slips his head out and switches his left hand across Moffett’s hipline, maintaining control of the ankle as Moffett tries to scramble away. Once Moffett’s momentum was stopped, Bryce could release the ankle and climb the body, locking in his left hook and a hand across the chin of Moffett, putting his weight heavy on the upper back, collapsing Moffett’s base. As Moffett attempts once more to stand, Bryce gets the space to slide in his second hook, and the rides the rest of the round out on top, and securing his second UFC win.
The Moffett fight was grueling, gritty, and a little too close for comfort. Having seen him struggle in the Katona fight on The Ultimate Fighter, Bryce’s flaws were still visible and on display here, but we also saw some promise as well. The effort he made to avoid engaging Moffett at multiple points when it was not to his advantage, rather than just accepting those positions, was a clear step in the right direction for Mitchell. From here, we enter the next phase of his short UFC career, the dominating wins.
Of Twisters and Triangles (arm variety)
Bryce Mitchell’s next two wins, over Matt Sayles and Charles Rosa, would be his two most dominating performances in his UFC tenure to date. His Twister finish of Matt Sayles was, of course, cool as all hell. But his control of Sayles on the ground prior to the finish was what I found even more impressive.
Sayles attempts to frame and hip escape from Bryce’s side control, to either establish a guard or create a scramble to stand up. Rather than try to force the conversation and maintain side control, Bryce opts to step back into half guard. He flattens Sayles out and establishes good head control. Bryce switches his head over to Sayles right side, and changes his grips to that which would be more commonly used when grappling in a gi. The reason for this is in the gi, you have more control of the triceps and underhook. From here, Bryce places the instep of his left foot inside and just above the knee of Sayles, and begins to pop his hips up. Bryce then turns his hips and knee towards his left and slides the knee out (knee cut pass). Rather than settle for side control again, Bryce keeps his right instep inside Sayles leg, and when Sayles flattens back to the mat, he windshield wipers his leg over and secures a full mount.
Sayles begins to turn to his left side, trying to create any sort of space to escape Bryce’s crushing pressure on top. As he does, Bryce lands a nasty punch, causing him to cover up. Bryce takes the opportunity to secure a gift wrap position, wrapping his left arm around Sayles head and gripping his right wrist, then locking it up with a figure four grip. Bryce then shifts his hips behind Sayles and with a hook secured, falls back and pulls Sayles with him to attempt a back take. Sayles recognizes the danger and immediately looks to face his hips to the ceiling and attempt to get his shoulders to the mat, but Bryce anticipated this. He released his right hook and began to shift his hips out from under Sayles, rotating and bringing himself back on top into a full mount once again.
Having just managed to escape the back control of Mitchell, Sayles is still on the defensive and turtles up. Bryce begins sliding his right hook in, but rather than securing a seatbelt, he is controlling the left wrist of Sayles instead. He uses his grip over the wrist and waist to keep himself directly behind Sayles as he secures control of Sayles’ left leg, locking in the figure four just below the hip. Despite having his shoulders to the mat, there’s no way for Sayles to point his hips to the ceiling and begin to escape. With the leg secure, Bryce releases the wrist and begins to control Sayles’ right hand/wrist, and uses his other hand to help pass the arm behind his own neck. He then sits up to help him slide his left hand behind Sayles’ head, and locks his hands over the jawline. At this point, the fight is over. Bryce rotates the jaw and neck of Sayles while pushing forward with his hip. The pressure and rotation on the neck and spine are too much, and Sayles taps.
A nearly flawless performance, it would be impressive if Bryce would be able to top it anytime soon, and he arguably did in his very next fight. Charles Rosa is not a household name, but he’s a respectable fighter and a more than capable submission grappler. His own words may best sum up how Rosa felt about engaging Bryce on the ground:
“I think he takes pride in his jiu-jitsu,” Rosa said. “I’m a black belt in jiu-jitsu under Ricardo Liborio and Charles McCarthy. I come from jiu-jitsu. That’s what I really love the most. My true love is jiu-jitsu. I love fighting but that’s what I enjoy most when I’m training. I’d love to test him out and see what he’s got.”
“He wants his camo shorts, they better have a matching arm sling,” Rosa said. “Cause I’m going to take his arm off. He’ll look good in the interviews after.”
Rosa was the more experienced fighter and grappler, and while he was not as big as Moffett, he was a coming off an armbar victory over Manny Bermudez, and seemingly could give Bryce issues on the ground. Welp, let’s see how that worked out.
The story of this fight, would you have been on social media during, was Bryce’s twister and arm-triangle attempts, and Rosa’s survival in those bad spots. But to me, there is more to the story worth telling. The phenomenal control Bryce exhibited, both over himself and Rosa, with his ability to float and flow on top, transitioning smoothly through Rosa’s constant attempts to scramble, recover guard, and shuck him off were impressive. More importantly, he did it without overexerting himself with needless movement, there was a deliberate nature with which Bryce attacked the various submissions, and the backup plan in his positioning should they fail to exhibit a tap.
With Bryce hanging out on his back, Rosa front rolls, to try and get Bryce off of him, lacking cage awareness considering the fence is going to stop any momentum generated. Bryce keeps his knee in between Rosa’s legs and his hand across the waistline of Rosa. With his escape route closed, Rosa turtles once more, with Bryce right on top of him. Unable to sneak a hook in, Rosa prepares to front roll again, but Bryce is already prepared for it. Unlike the first roll, Bryce’s weight is not directly over the hips of Rosa, reducing the effectiveness of the front roll to create the space Rosa is looking for. Bryce is able to post for balance and drive his head back into an over/under pass position. Bryce exerts strong pressure on Rosa from here, and Rosa knows he can’t hold him. He tries, and fails, to force his head through his legs to potentially attempt to lock in a reverse triangle, but it’s not there and he abandons it. He then digs his right arm under Bryce and tries to slip out from under him as Bryce tries to establish side control. As Rosa turns and begins to run his feet and hips away from Bryce and turn belly down to escape, Bryce maintains his head and arm control, follows Rosa, and steps over, and settles into quarter mount.
Bryce has a hook in, but lacks effective control of Rosa’s upper body as he turtles. Rather than fight Rosa in a scramble, Bryce digs his hook deeper, curling his calf behind Rosa’s hamstring and rolls hard, and twister attempt number 1 begins. Two on one grip of Rosa’s wrist and a figure four of his leg prevent him from being able to try and scramble away as Bryce tugs Rosa’s arm to put it behind his head. Once Rosa’s arm is behind his head, Bryce relaxes his effort, waiting for the moment to open to get his right arm behind Rosa’s head. The moment comes when Rosa loses control of Bryce’s right hand and plants it just behind Rosa’s head. Knowing he has a moment, Rosa turns into Bryce before Bryce can lock his hands together over the jaw of Rosa. Because Rosa was able to get his body on top of Bryce, the twister is locked, but doesn’t have the spinal rotation necessary to get the finish. Rosa starts to dig his left foot into the side of Bryce’s knee, working to free his trapped leg. Bryce is aware he can’t finish, releases the leg, and swings his own right over Rosa into a full mount.
Rosa turns to his left, trying to stuff Bryce’s right leg into a half guard. As Rosa turns back into Bryce, hip escaping to create space and establish a more defensive position, Bryce countered him wonderfully. He shifts his right knee into Rosa’s belly and turns his body to his left, diving his head down and beginning to secure the arm triangle. The abrupt change in direction from his knee caused Rosa’s hand to slip off, and Bryce was able to bring his knee back to the mat (notice how he is hooking the inside of Rosa’s thigh with his foot). Rosa still has a hook under Bryce’s left leg though, and Bryce lowers his hips down and jumps them up (using that hook to help him launch up) and slides his knee to the other side, windshield wipers his right foot, and settles into another arm triangle attempt.
The entire fight was a display of composure, smooth technique, and patience on the part of a fighter who was making the mistakes almost all young fighters consistently make. At 25 years old, and only 5 years into his career, it’s encouraging to see Bryce actively working on his game in ways that makes sense. His striking is coming along nicely, but his strides in the strongest part of his game are what impress me the most. Bryce Mitchell is a prospect worth watching, and I’m looking forward to seeing how he continues to develop. Now get him those damn camo shorts.