Best examples of a fighter nullifying great footwork

[Vampire life]

Yoel Romero nullified the great footwork of Adesanya by standing still like a statue

Romero has knock knees and terrible foot work


He’s always off balance

 

[tequilaboy]

BJ stopped his own footwork when doing the tippy toe stance..

 

[Harlekin]

He has the most title fight wins in BW history and is one of a very very few UFC champs ever to regain his belt and defend successfully in his 2nd title reign.

It was definitely effective. He ruled a very athletic division over a decent time period.

It was also very polarizing, and I think that is reflected in the comments here, with some people imo letting their emotions get the better of them.

In my opinion, he changed the game, and that is worthy of note. He brought a lot of attention to mma footwork and use of angles on entry and exit and demonstrated how to use these things as a form of effective defense.

I think TJ began the evolution by taking elements he picked up while mimicking Dom in TAM camps and then adapting it into his own much more offensive version.

eventually I HOPE we wind up seeing something along the lines of a "Lomachenko of MMA" where someone truly masters how to use footwork defensively (like prime Dom) and offensively, like TJ showed flashes of...

I think the potential is there for something beautiful to come along.

*TJ trained with Lomachenko too, so he had at least some exposure to that style of boxing footwork, but not that insane long term footwork foundation that Lomachenko's dad instilled in Loma and Usyk. Particularly the cross training, the dance, etc



Cruz himself said he used approximately 8 segments or patterns, which he then mixed up and combined.

A chess board has 8 squares up by 8 across, and literally millions upon millions of possibilities, so much so that even with computers tracking millions of games all over the world for years, each game reaches a point, often fairly early on, where that exact combination of moves has never been played before in recorded history and a "new territory" is reached.

Point being even within set of just 8, it is easy to quickly attain exponential combinations


So... for arguments sake, even if Cruz was "random" with the way he combined his 8 movements, he is still doing something effective by creating a situation in which there is a level of "chaos" and "unpredictability" where he is moving 3 dimensionally, providing exceptional natural defensive head movement simply by way of a "randomly" moving target in a 3 dimensional plane

AND

He has a natural advantage because within that chaos he created, HE knew where he was going.
even if he only knew it a split second before it happened, that is a split second where he knew where he was going to be and his opponent didn't.

The result of this?

During his prime he was the statistically least hit fighter in BW history.

Of course there were tradeoffs.

1- I maintain he gave up most of whatever power he may have had.
( later in his career he did KO Mizugaki, he dropped Faber several times and busted up Mighty Mouses jaw, so maybe there was more power than he gets credit for)

2- heavily taxing on his body
He rode it till the wheels came off.
And the wheels came off early, shortening his prime and leaving his peak physical years riddled with major knee and foot I
injuries, multiple ACL tears and plantar's facsciitis

Great post man, sherdog needs more of this and less fan squabbling

 

[TheBulge]

Khabib did that a few times. Suffocated them with his pressure and grappling. Poor Barboza usually moves very well but he drowned in there.

 

[Paolo Delutis]

Randy Couture vs Chuck Liddell 1 ...

Randy really showed how you can cut off a striker and bring him into the wrestling world in that fight...he was a master at closing distance

 

[Deleted member 110072]

Randy Couture vs Chuck Liddell 1 ...

Randy really showed how you can cut off a striker and bring him into the wrestling world in that fight...he was a master at closing distance

Not sure I'd call it "great footwork" as Chuck was very dependant on backing up which allowed Randy to chase him down but I would say the main shift in Chucks game latter in his career was he stopped doing this, stopped backing up for strikign defence and just stood his ground throwing down and blocking takedowns.

I think that kind of explains why he fell as hard as he did when he started facing strikers, he was in decline but he was also locked into a more anti grappler game.

 

[Paolo Delutis]

Not sure I'd call it "great footwork" as Chuck was very dependant on backing up which allowed Randy to chase him down but I would say the main shift in Chucks game latter in his career was he stopped doing this, stopped backing up for strikign defence and just stood his ground throwing down and blocking takedowns.

I think that kind of explains why he fell as hard as he did when he started facing strikers, he was in decline but he was also locked into a more anti grappler game.

Although I agree that chucks style changed over time,but the big difference is in the second and the third fight with Randy is that Chuck started using more of his footwork and angles while stuffing the take downs and he made it much harder for Randy to get to him because he was constantly circling and moving he wasn't backing straight up or getting pinched in like Randy could in the first fight so Chuck definitely had footwork and he used it against other opponents too as well but I do agree that the anti-grappler side of him did affect his style later on

 

[Jackonfire]

Aldo makes Yan miss everything he threw.

Aldo keeping his lead leg outside of Moicano's

 

[jeff7b9]

Cruz had great MMA footwork for HIS TIME.

That's all you can ask.

A mistake I see fans make is to hold a fighter accountable for not performing up to a standard developed after their prime.

Cruz changed the game, these guys adapt to evolution HE CONTRIBUTED TO and some fans (not pointing fingers at you here) then diss the OGs for not holding the line that THEY MOVED FORWARD.

It's not randomness though. It's designed for mma and he would do it differently in boxing, if he were young again.

Exactly.

He made a sequence of patterns HE KNOWS and you don't. (Or good luck trying to figure them out while they are constantly being switched around in real time).

He creates a chaos he specifically thrives in. Really quite brilliant if you think about it.

Although he didn't seem to have cardio issues, it's a style for a man younger than 35. Most styles are though.

Cruz and Cain both created styles that require a workload destined to break the body.

Amazing while it lasts but the wheels fall off sooner than later, in both cases, sooner.

His head is almost always off the center line.
He circles his opponent 90 to more degrees all the time.
Tries to get the outside foot.
tons of feints and programming reactions
He managed to get away from kicks most of his career.
Stance switching makes him vulnerable for a brief moment. But so does every stance switch close to your opponent.
Probably should've used a jab feint more than usual against Cody in that case.

Cody tooled him at age 31, but so far nobody was able to reproduce it and he is 39 now.
Cejudo caught him with a knee and Vera was outpointed by a 37year old way past prime, semi retired, a dozen injuries Cruz. Till he caught him a few times.

very solid analysis.

I appreciate people who underdstand what they are watching and articulate it well.

And while Cruz is clearly past prime the last 5 years. I would say the biggest difference is cardio.

agree
And injuries limiting speed, mobility and training.

That's the main thing with getting old. You see guys like old floyd. Old Mvp. Old barboza. They're max speed and power may have diminished, but it's not by a huge amount. It's the cardio that disappears.

Cruz at 35 is different than others because when other fights hit 35, they've been in a ton of wars and have taken a ton of damage.

i think you could argue with the self inflicted damage his training added that it evens out.

how many ACL surgeries did he have?

How many years did he miss?

Cruz hasn't. He's still past prime and the injuries and age has diminished his skills.
It's just not as much as other 35+ year olds.

Or maybe He was so far ahead that now that the pack caught up he still isn't left in the dust.

Cruz in round 1 for most of his recent fights, he's still 90% there.

You can see a drop off in round 2+. He does not shuffle and dart nearly as much as his younger days. He gets tired much quicker.

Getting old sucks..

That was an interesting breakdown by Cruz.
Not just age but injuries affect cardio. When you are older and injured you can’t train as hard, can’t do as much conditioning. Especially when it’s knee injuries. Roadwork and footwork becomes near impossible without being in constant pain.

Very very important point and crucial to understand Cruz in later years.

Also Dillashaw chopped doms legs but Dom was already dealing with terrible plantar fasciitis. Pretty sure the arch of his foot basically collapsed or imploded during the fight. But yes, TJ found extreme success going for leg kicks late in the fight.

TJ did a phenomenal job of taking elements of Dom's style
(he was the TAM "Dom clone" for their camps against Dom for Uriah, Joe B...)

And making it more OFFENSIVE to work for TJ.

TJ vs Dom was poetry in motion.
One of the most beautiful and most technical dances of violence ever.

Might not apply but Weidman/Machida was pretty impressive at the time. Wasn’t super flashy but Machida presented a real problem in terms of distance management that Weidman did a good job of handling. Was interesting to see someone other than Shogun using the kick heavy pressure strategy against Lyoto. Chris kept up the pressure with kicks and when Lyoto kicked back he shot for a takedown. Led to a kickboxing match where only one guy was allowed to kick lol

I was at that fight. lt ws amazing.

Great post man, sherdog needs more of this and less fan squabbling

Thank you sir. This is a topic I enjoy which I have actually studied film on.