John Lineker (28-7): what is making him so successful?

[BAZ Rutten]

Jesus!!!!

 

[Zappa]

Jesus!!!!

Only possible explanation hahaha

 

[eseseses681]

His fighting style is exciting, but at the end of the day everybody knows his gameplan: stand, bang and swinging wild hook to the body and to the head..

I mean, no dubt about his power, and his chin, but i wonder how is possible to be so successful when you are so predictable.

If someone's good at something, it doesn't matter none too much if it's predictable if you can't do anything about it. When that happens, it typically means there's a lot more to it than meets the eye.
In Lineker's case, he doesn't just swing wild hooks and he doesn't just stand and bang.
He moves his hips into all of his punches and knows how to keep his balance and move his body-weight as he does this, making his punches a lot more powerful. He moves forward constantly and refuses to give ground, prompting the opponent to either circle away or to trade with him. He's got a good weave that he uses to avoid a lot of his opponent's punches in either case. He uses the textbook body-shot combo: jab the head, right-hook the body, which a weave pairs well with (you throw the jab as you weave your head and lower your stance, keeping you more-protected and putting you in position to throw the body hook, then you throw the body-hook.) He's got enough power in his hands to make people not wanna get hit in the head, so they keep their hands up and it leaves their body more-open, which, combined with his small stature, aggressive forward movement, head-weave, punching power, and skill with landing body shots, makes them land a lot and tire out his opponents. Then if they lower their hands to protect their body, he lands a punch to the head.
Gomi fought similarly to this during his peak from '04-'06 in the sense that he was aggressive, moved forward, moved his hips and put his weight into his punches without falling off balance (thanks to the Baseball background), and attacked the body. But he was way better at it than Lineker.

He's basically infighting like an infighting-boxer would. It's simple, but there's a lot more to doing it well than meets the eye, and when someone's good at it, it's a lot harder to beat it than you'd think. Rob Font tried to circle away and jab, which you'd think is how you'd obviously beat this at bantamweight-- especially since standing and trading with him hasn't worked out too well for those who've done it-- and Lineker still won the fight.
Another big thing about Lineker is that he's got a real good wingspan for his size. At 67" he had one of the longest reaches at flyweight-- to give a frame of reference, the guys with the longest reaches in the flyweight top-15 (going by the Sherdog rankings) are Formiga at 67" and Smolka at 69", and the guy with the longest reach at flyweight in the UFC is Ulka Sasaki at 71", and he and Smolka are towers for the division at 5'10 and 5'9, respectively, and even Formiga's 5'5. Compare that to Lineker's 5'3. It makes his punches land from a lot longer than they may seem for a 5'3 guy.