UFC 254 Preview: Khabib Nurmagomedov’s Cage Wrestling
LAS VEGAS, NV - OCTOBER 06: (R-L) Khabib Nurmagomedov of Russia pushes Conor McGregor of Ireland up against the cage in their UFC lightweight championship bout during the UFC 229 event inside T-Mobile Arena on October 6, 2018 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Brandon Magnus/Zuffa LLC/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images)
“But he’s just so - his balance and weight distribution against the fence, when he’s on top, is so strong. Physically, he didn’t feel overwhelming. I’ve fought guys that are stronger than him. But skill-wise and balance-wise it felt really good.” - Dustin Poirier on Khabib Nurmagomedov after UFC 242.
MMA is a unique sport. From the 4oz gloves to the endless eyepokes to the massive fighting surface, there is no other sport quite like MMA. Yet the addition of the chain-linked cage barrier may be what makes it most unique from other combat sports, and it is certainly the most influential component of the sport. For a modern MMA fighter to succeed, they must adapt to the challenges that the cage creates for their technical game. Pressure boxers have to learn how to facilitate exchanges and cut off exits in a larger, more circular shaped cage. Outfighting kickboxers have to learn how to navigate themselves within the context of a new fighting surface. Most importantly, wrestlers and strikers must learn how to use the cage within the context of MMA, which means getting the fight to the mat, keeping it there, or conversely, getting back up. As fighters have grown to learn this, a meta has evolved in both using the cage to get fights down and using the cage as a balancing point to get back up. Any MMA competitor, no matter their style, must interact with the cage in some way, shape, or form.
Khabib Nurmagomedov has quickly emerged as the best cage wrestler in this ever-evolving meta within MMA. Khabib uses a wide variety of techniques that he seamlessly flows together, allowing him to slowly deteriorate his opponent’s defenses until he finds a proper opening to exploit. Today, I am going to look at some of the cage-wrestling tactics that the most vaunted cage wrestler uses in order to break the will of his elite opponents.
Twisting Style Bodylock & Side-on Angles
Once he pressures his opponent’s back into the cage and shoots, Khabib’s first priority is in scooping up an underhook with his right-arm. In his early career (specifically in his fight with Gleison Tibau), Khabib would subsequently look to instantly drop to the single leg, force his grips, and then attempt to break the balance of his opponents by finishing with a cutback or by running the pipe. Tibau famously held Khabib to zero takedowns, strictly by digging a deep underhook, pulling him up off the leg, and using the cage as a balance point.
Khabib uses his double as a decoy to set up his underhook. Khabib stays straight-on with Tibau, and completely leans on him with no good basing points. Khabib has no power or ability to lift from this position, which allows Tibau to snag an underhook and circle away. Khabib is forced to transition to a single-leg, but he cannot finish it with a cutback along the cage.
Since the Tibau fought however, Khabib has completely shifted his approach to cage-wrestling, mainly in developing a dynamic and systemized “twist” bodylock system - complete with trips, throws, slams, and double legs. Instead of trying to stay straight-on while cage-wrestling, he adds some torque to his bodylock, opening up a myriad of options that he fully takes advantage of.
A twisting bodylock provides a plethora of advantages that a typical straight-on bodylock does not:
A) The side-on angle (or “twist”) straightens the opponent’s right arm out and disconnects the elbow from the hip, lengthening the counter underhook, eliminating most of its leverage. If the opponent wants to regain the leverage of the underhook, they have to circle into the pressuring grappler, walking them right into the double leg.
B) The side-on angle opens up the ability to blade the legs and step the right leg in as base between the opponent’s legs. This allows the hips to get close inside, whilst maintaining a wide, balanced base. This step-in makes lifting much easier and can open up the inside or outside trip, should the opponent adjust themselves to prevent being lifted.
Now, let’s take a look at how Khabib utilizes these principles in action. The first and most prominent way is by baiting the underhook, and then killing it with the above tactics mentioned in section A.
Khabib initially stays straight-on - his hips facing RDA’s - which baited RDA into digging an underhook to counter, defend, and lock with Khabib’s bodylock. As soon as RDA locked in, Khabib instantly moved to the twist bodylock, angling away from the underhook (lengthening it and disconnecting it from the hip) to kill it. He then steps the leg in order to get his hips low enough to hip-in to the lift. Khabib initially goes for the trip set-up with the stepped-in leg, but RDA keeps his balance so Khabib transitions to a swing-back.
Khabib’s multifaceted use of the stepped-in leg is demonstrated here. The step-in accomplishes four things:
It forces RDA to bring his right knee up, in hopes to prevent the inside trip or to create space with a kneeshield of sorts.
It allows Khabib to close the distance between the hips in order to initiate the lift.
It opens up the trip of the outside leg once the lift is established.
It keeps him balanced throughout. Watch how he can seamlessly transition through finishes whilst mid-air, carrying a 165lb+ human actively resisting. If his base was not bladed before-hand, these transitions would be impossible.
Khabib throws a strike while moving his head, positioning up and across the body. This opens up space for Al to lock into the underhook, forcing him to stand up straight. As soon as Khabib feels it lock in, he begins to angle away and throw on the body-lock. Al keeps a wide base while lowering himself a bit to keep his hips lower than Khabib’s (a defense to prevent Khabib from lifting easily), but Khabib can then shuffle to the outside and use the outside trip with ease.
Another benefit of the twisting style of bodylock is the additional torque that it places on the opponent’s body and their whizzer. Often times, if the angle is tight enough, opponents will let go of their whizzer and turn to give up their back in hopes of better grip-fighting and defense opportunities. In the clip above, as Khabib is shuffling into his outside-trip, Al quickly gives up his whizzer and Khabib almost forces him to turn and turtle up along the cage with the torque of the bodylock + angle he has.
Edson Barboza gets locked into the twist-bodylock. Feeling that Khabib was planning to lift, he drew his hips back and away to prevent the lift and widened his base, only to have Khabib move into the inside trip as soon as he landed. Khabib’s head positioning throws Barboza over his right hip, which prevents Edson from being able to get his head to the tripping side as well as repositioning his lower body.
Khabib places a tremendous amount of focus on head positioning when he is using the twist bodylock, and rightfully so. In placing his head between his opponent’s chin and upper chest, Khabib can use his head to force his opponents to stand tall, putting them out of position to defend their legs. If Khabib cannot get his opponent to stand tall, he will drive his opponent’s head to the side and outside of their base, disrupting the kinetic chain and preventing any explosive movements or leverage in the legs. Kamaru Usman is a master at this tactic, though he utilizes the same technique from more of a straight-on style of bodylock. Keeping tight head position reduces the amount of space for opponents to throw clinch offense and inhibits their ability to quickly change direction in order to escape.
Barboza initially attempts to loosen up his underhook and push back into Khabib to re-gain his leverage, but it runs him directly into his double leg and eventual leg ride/mount.
Similar to how a dedicated striker uses their jab or feints to draw out defensive reactions or counters, Khabib draws out defense reactions that he can exploit during his cage grappling, albeit with more subtlety (like throwing a punch in the clinch or positioning himself slightly to the right). In doing so, Khabib can narrow down his opponent’s options for both clinch offense and escaping, which turns an inherently complex and broad sport like MMA into a narrow game of only a few options. Naturally, all of these options are carried out with distinct and thoughtful control with prepared counters and responses of his very own, should an opponent adjust.
An example of this is how Khabib works is in this underhook + twist bodylock system. In killing the underhook, his opponent can do one of three things:
Stall (get lifted and dumped).
Lower the hips and widen the base (get tripped).
Circle to their underhook side to try to re-gain leverage (walk right into the double leg and leg mount).
The deep systemization of Khabib’s cage wrestling is what allows him to make complex systems of grappling look so easy. Khabib is full aware of whatever might be coming next. On top of this, the champion has clearly drilled the counters thousands of times in the gym to the point where it looks like he can see the future before it happens, but in reality, it is all purely instinctual.
New Single Leg Tactics
Though Khabib has taken a radically different approach to cage wrestling post-Tibau, the single leg along the cage remains a meaningful aspect of his game that blends perfectly with the bodylock. If an opponent stop using the underhook as a defense for his clinch and opts for either a collar tie, grip-fighting, or cross underhook defense, Khabib moves directly into his single leg system.
Iaquinta attempts to use an extremely shallow underhook + grip-fighting as a defense, looking to control Khabib’s wrist to prevent the bodylock. Once again, Khabib is at an angle towards his own underhook before stepping into his single leg lift and sweeping the right leg of Iaquinta out.
The vast difference between Khabib’s prior use of the single leg and his use of the single leg on the cage now is how he goes about finishing it. When Khabib presses an opponent up against the cage, his opponent essentially has another base point (the fence) in which to balance themselves. In his early UFC days, Khabib would attempt to finish his single legs with a cut-back, which (in a perfect world) would cut his opponents off the cage and dump them right into the ground.
Here is Khabib trying and failing to get Tibau down with a single leg circle and dump. Watch as Tibau constantly readjusts his base points, dragging Khabib up with his underhook, and running his back into the cage to balance.
However, as Khabib realized in his fight vs Tibau, if a strong opponent dug an underhook with their hips and back glued to the cage, the cutback along the cage would be akin to moving a boulder. In his last few fights against Iaquinta, McGregor, and Barboza, the champion has relied on lifting to finish his single legs. Instead of forcing his opponent to move horizontally (where they can use the cage behind them as a basing point), he is forcing his opponents vertically by stepping in to gain leverage for a life lift, in which the cage becomes a non-issue.
McGregor looks to break Khabib’s posture by pushing down on his head, hoping that Khabib will not have enough drive to move to the bodylock or double leg. Khabib simply moves to the single leg, and McGregor is too late on any sort of grip-fighting defense. Khabib finishes it with the lift and dump.
The drawback of finishing upper body takedowns is the finishing position, which is something the lifting single leg finish can solve. The connection between Khabib’s upper body and his opponent’s upper body almost always means that Khabib will land in his opponent’s closed guard. While Khabib is an adept guard passer, that is extra energy needed to get into a dominant position when other finishing sequences can drop you directly into a dominant position. The lifting single leg that Khabib employs solves this positioning issue and blends beautifully with his infamous leg mount (or leg triangle). As Khabib drops McGregor directly on his butt, McGregor still has space to sit-up along the cage. This is one of Khabib’s favorite positions, as he will easily transition into his leg mount before posturing and attacking.
Feints
Feints are often thought of in a striking context, but they serve a distinct purpose in grappling and wreslting. An aggressive grappler can use feints to create openings, get a read on the opponent’s defenses, and to confuse their opponent. In other words, nearly everything that feints can accomplish in a striking context can be accomplished in a grappling context. As with most facets of cage wrestling in MMA, Khabib is the paragon of utilizing feints while grappling.
Khabib’s step-in and lifting feint gets Barboza to lift his leg up off the ground and widen his base in order to create space. As soon as Khabib feels that his feint has worked, he shuffles around to take the outside trip, providing a quick and easy route to Edson’s back.
Khabib’s step-in and lift feint draws McGregor’s handfight and circle away defense, which Khabib corrals into an outside trip, leaving him in a dominant position.
As you may notice, most of these feints come in the later rounds. Once Khabib establishes the threat of single leg, step-in, and bodylocking, his feints can really get rolling because his opponents are extremely on edge about the wrestling threat. In many ways, the step-in is like Khabib’s jab when cage wrestling. It draws reactions while not being physically intensive, it is relatively safe compared to other options, and it can be built upon as the fight progresses.
Conclusion
Khabib Nurmagomedov possesses the best cage wrestling game that we have ever seen in MMA. His use of angles, upper and lower body takedowns, and overall understanding of using leverage and strength to his advantage is a sight to behold. Nonetheless, these tactics by themselves could never lead to the amount of success that Khabib has seen at the highest ranks of MMA. Rather, the tight systemization of these individual tactics into a cohesive game turns one of the craziest sports in existence into a small, but frighteningly precise game that Khabib plays with the utmost control. As MMA continues to develop, future both strikers and grapplers must take into account the lessons that can come from Khabib’s integration of a variety of tactics that led to his undefeated and unblemished record.