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It was Jack Della Maddalena’s crafty striking that got him the win against Gilbert Burns, but some surprisingly astute defensive grappling kept him in the fight long enough to make his strikes count. I want to focus on one particular aspect of his defensive grappling, the unique arm drag grip he was using to keep Burns’ hands separated on the cage.
An arm drag is a basic wrestling technique in which one hand controls the opponent’s same side wrist, and the opposite hand reaches through to pull their tricep, forcing their weight across their body while you circle to their back or change levels onto their hips.
It doesn’t come up too often as a takedown setup in MMA, since clearing ties is usually not necessary to take a clean shot, but the grip used for an arm drag has some interesting applications when fighters are wrestling against the cage wall.
Craig Jones showed the arm drag control grip in his wall wrestling DVD, Balls to Wall, as a way to prevent the attacker from locking hands around a double leg while you circle off the cage.
Since the cage wall blocks the defensive wrestler from backing up or sprawling their hips back, grip fighting becomes vastly more important in cage wrestling situations. If the attacker can lock their hands around the legs or hips, a takedown is nearly guaranteed. So the primary objective as a defensive wall wrestler is always to prevent the attacker from locking hands.
The arm drag grip offers a good way to control the opponent’s wrist and prevent them from connecting it to the other hand, but it’s also a strong secondary option when your primary defense fails.
In upper body clinch exchanges, the defensive fighter will typically use underhooks or overhooks to keep the attacker upright and pull him off the hips. But in order to do that, those hooks must be deep, or they won’t provide enough leverage to lift. One reliable way to score a takedown on the cage is to force the opponent to accept a shallow underhook or overhook, then lock hands right through the grip.
Burns tried to do that early against Maddalena. He started by controlling Maddalena’s right arm as he pushed him to the cage, pinning the arm to his chest as Burns settled into a pin with his upper body. By the time Maddalena wiggled the arm out into an underhook, he had little space to work with and was forced to accept a shallow underhook, lifting with just his wrist and forearm rather than his entire body. Burns changed levels through the shallow underhook - normally this would pin the underhooking hand to the body and nullify it, but Maddalena was quick to adjust. He turned his hips perpendicular to the cage, creating just enough space to slide his underhooking hand into the arm drag grip. Now he had an arm underneath Burns’ underhook, allowing him to pull Burns back up off his hips. From there he simply circled off to his left, creating enough space to re-establish a deeper underhook.
Maddalena would default to the arm drag grip when standing up on the cage too, allowing him to fight the grip and lift Burns off his hips while he lacked the space to pummel a strong underhook or overhook:
In open space, trying to maintain the arm drag grip would get your back taken quickly, as the opponent can pivot behind you. But on the cage, arm drag control acts as a sort of halfway position between standing square on the cage and giving up your back, as the cage prevents the opponent from stepping behind. When you’re in immediate danger of an opponent locking their hands, it makes more sense to turn side on and try to fight the grip than it does to stay square and accept a cage double that will likely put you on your butt.
Since the arm drag control position lives in the interstice between square to the cage and fully exposing your back, it’s also useful for working your way out of a rear bodylock. Instead of making a big movement that can potentially put you in danger, you can work into the arm drag grip until you find space to re-establish the underhook.
When a fighter has their back taken on the cage, the standard response is to fight the hands down and look to break the grip. But it’s hard to create separation that way against a skilled and determined wrestler, especially because the cage prevents getting feet separation and hipping back into the opponent to further tax their grip.
When they can’t break the grip with handfighting alone, fighters are often tempted to reach back for an overhook. But that’s a high risk move that puts them in an unstable stance with no strong grips to prevent a takedown, and a good wrestler will often take the chance to put them back on the mat.
Eduard Vartanyan shows Alexander Sarnavskiy the dangers of reaching back from a rear bodylock.
Leon Edwards is one of the best defensive wall wrestlers in MMA, and he makes liberal use of the arm drag grip when working out of the rear bodylock.
Edwards will look to fight the hands down until he can create enough space to slip his elbow inside the opponent’s grip. From there, he’ll take the arm drag grip and start scraping his back along the cage, re-squaring his hips to the cage while preventing them from changing levels onto his hips. As his hips square, space opens up to slide the arm out from under the armpit into an underhook on the opposite side.
When Burns threatened Maddalena’s back in the first round, Maddalena quickly slipped an elbow inside the grip, ran to the cage, and went to arm drag control to work out of the position:
Just like Edwards above, Maddalena uses the arm drag grip to elevate and prevent the hands from locking while he circles and squares his hips to create space for his underhook. The only small slight on Maddalena here is his stance and weight distribution. In the clip of Leon Edwards above, his base is wide and his hips are turned in the direction of his underhook as he pummels into it, so he’s immediately able to throw his bodyweight behind his underhook and force his weight off the cage. In comparison, Maddalena’s narrow stance and squared hips prevent him from immediately powering into the underhook and allow Burns to pin him to the cage.
Maddalena was diligent with his grip fighting for the most part and was able to quickly escape most threatening positions Burns worked toward against the cage. But the importance of always staying on the hands was highlighted in the third round, as Maddalena’s concentration lapsed for a split second and Burns quickly found his only strong control position against the cage he’d seen all fight.
Burns takes a single leg and his head slips outside as he drives Maddalena back to the cage. Instead of fighting the grip, Maddalena takes a second to throw an elbow, and Burns’ head immediately slips under his arm, giving him a clean lock around the waist. Now Burns is too tight to his hips for Maddalena to take any strong grip, so he’s forced to drop down and look for a switch. In credit to Maddalena, his counter-wrestling was solid too and the switch worked to get Burns off his hips, but Burns was able to build up to a bodylock and ended up hitting a takedown before Maddalena could fight his way out. From there, Burns settled into a cross-body ride and looked to tie up his wrist on the mat.
The beauty of grip fighting on the cage is that it prevents wrestling exchanges from beginning at all. Strikers who look to counter wrestle rather than prevent locked hands in the first place are often at a disadvantage, as their counters place them in a grappling exchange with a more experienced grappler, who has a deeper well of tactics to draw from as the exchange progresses. Trying to strike without first establishing a strong grip to keep the opponent from ducking onto the hips is likewise folly, as it concedes the grip fight and allows the opponent to secure their positioning.
Maddalena has made questionable grappling decisions in the past, repeatedly jumping guillotines against wrestler, Bassil Hafez. But his decision making was greatly improved against Burns, a very encouraging sign for his continued development as he climbs the Welterweight rankings.
I wrote more about UFC 299 here, and I also wrote an in-depth breakdown of Leon Edwards' wall wrestling that goes over these grip fighting concepts and more in greater depth here
An arm drag is a basic wrestling technique in which one hand controls the opponent’s same side wrist, and the opposite hand reaches through to pull their tricep, forcing their weight across their body while you circle to their back or change levels onto their hips.
It doesn’t come up too often as a takedown setup in MMA, since clearing ties is usually not necessary to take a clean shot, but the grip used for an arm drag has some interesting applications when fighters are wrestling against the cage wall.
Craig Jones showed the arm drag control grip in his wall wrestling DVD, Balls to Wall, as a way to prevent the attacker from locking hands around a double leg while you circle off the cage.
Since the cage wall blocks the defensive wrestler from backing up or sprawling their hips back, grip fighting becomes vastly more important in cage wrestling situations. If the attacker can lock their hands around the legs or hips, a takedown is nearly guaranteed. So the primary objective as a defensive wall wrestler is always to prevent the attacker from locking hands.
The arm drag grip offers a good way to control the opponent’s wrist and prevent them from connecting it to the other hand, but it’s also a strong secondary option when your primary defense fails.
In upper body clinch exchanges, the defensive fighter will typically use underhooks or overhooks to keep the attacker upright and pull him off the hips. But in order to do that, those hooks must be deep, or they won’t provide enough leverage to lift. One reliable way to score a takedown on the cage is to force the opponent to accept a shallow underhook or overhook, then lock hands right through the grip.
Burns tried to do that early against Maddalena. He started by controlling Maddalena’s right arm as he pushed him to the cage, pinning the arm to his chest as Burns settled into a pin with his upper body. By the time Maddalena wiggled the arm out into an underhook, he had little space to work with and was forced to accept a shallow underhook, lifting with just his wrist and forearm rather than his entire body. Burns changed levels through the shallow underhook - normally this would pin the underhooking hand to the body and nullify it, but Maddalena was quick to adjust. He turned his hips perpendicular to the cage, creating just enough space to slide his underhooking hand into the arm drag grip. Now he had an arm underneath Burns’ underhook, allowing him to pull Burns back up off his hips. From there he simply circled off to his left, creating enough space to re-establish a deeper underhook.
Maddalena would default to the arm drag grip when standing up on the cage too, allowing him to fight the grip and lift Burns off his hips while he lacked the space to pummel a strong underhook or overhook:
In open space, trying to maintain the arm drag grip would get your back taken quickly, as the opponent can pivot behind you. But on the cage, arm drag control acts as a sort of halfway position between standing square on the cage and giving up your back, as the cage prevents the opponent from stepping behind. When you’re in immediate danger of an opponent locking their hands, it makes more sense to turn side on and try to fight the grip than it does to stay square and accept a cage double that will likely put you on your butt.
Since the arm drag control position lives in the interstice between square to the cage and fully exposing your back, it’s also useful for working your way out of a rear bodylock. Instead of making a big movement that can potentially put you in danger, you can work into the arm drag grip until you find space to re-establish the underhook.
When a fighter has their back taken on the cage, the standard response is to fight the hands down and look to break the grip. But it’s hard to create separation that way against a skilled and determined wrestler, especially because the cage prevents getting feet separation and hipping back into the opponent to further tax their grip.
When they can’t break the grip with handfighting alone, fighters are often tempted to reach back for an overhook. But that’s a high risk move that puts them in an unstable stance with no strong grips to prevent a takedown, and a good wrestler will often take the chance to put them back on the mat.
Eduard Vartanyan shows Alexander Sarnavskiy the dangers of reaching back from a rear bodylock.
Leon Edwards is one of the best defensive wall wrestlers in MMA, and he makes liberal use of the arm drag grip when working out of the rear bodylock.
Edwards will look to fight the hands down until he can create enough space to slip his elbow inside the opponent’s grip. From there, he’ll take the arm drag grip and start scraping his back along the cage, re-squaring his hips to the cage while preventing them from changing levels onto his hips. As his hips square, space opens up to slide the arm out from under the armpit into an underhook on the opposite side.
When Burns threatened Maddalena’s back in the first round, Maddalena quickly slipped an elbow inside the grip, ran to the cage, and went to arm drag control to work out of the position:
Just like Edwards above, Maddalena uses the arm drag grip to elevate and prevent the hands from locking while he circles and squares his hips to create space for his underhook. The only small slight on Maddalena here is his stance and weight distribution. In the clip of Leon Edwards above, his base is wide and his hips are turned in the direction of his underhook as he pummels into it, so he’s immediately able to throw his bodyweight behind his underhook and force his weight off the cage. In comparison, Maddalena’s narrow stance and squared hips prevent him from immediately powering into the underhook and allow Burns to pin him to the cage.
Maddalena was diligent with his grip fighting for the most part and was able to quickly escape most threatening positions Burns worked toward against the cage. But the importance of always staying on the hands was highlighted in the third round, as Maddalena’s concentration lapsed for a split second and Burns quickly found his only strong control position against the cage he’d seen all fight.
Burns takes a single leg and his head slips outside as he drives Maddalena back to the cage. Instead of fighting the grip, Maddalena takes a second to throw an elbow, and Burns’ head immediately slips under his arm, giving him a clean lock around the waist. Now Burns is too tight to his hips for Maddalena to take any strong grip, so he’s forced to drop down and look for a switch. In credit to Maddalena, his counter-wrestling was solid too and the switch worked to get Burns off his hips, but Burns was able to build up to a bodylock and ended up hitting a takedown before Maddalena could fight his way out. From there, Burns settled into a cross-body ride and looked to tie up his wrist on the mat.
The beauty of grip fighting on the cage is that it prevents wrestling exchanges from beginning at all. Strikers who look to counter wrestle rather than prevent locked hands in the first place are often at a disadvantage, as their counters place them in a grappling exchange with a more experienced grappler, who has a deeper well of tactics to draw from as the exchange progresses. Trying to strike without first establishing a strong grip to keep the opponent from ducking onto the hips is likewise folly, as it concedes the grip fight and allows the opponent to secure their positioning.
Maddalena has made questionable grappling decisions in the past, repeatedly jumping guillotines against wrestler, Bassil Hafez. But his decision making was greatly improved against Burns, a very encouraging sign for his continued development as he climbs the Welterweight rankings.
I wrote more about UFC 299 here, and I also wrote an in-depth breakdown of Leon Edwards' wall wrestling that goes over these grip fighting concepts and more in greater depth here
