Absolute Masterclass - Garbrandt versus Cruz

When the Ultimate Fighting Championship acquired World Extreme Cagefighting, it picked up numerous talented fighters for its existing divisions but more importantly it acquired two new divisions: featherweight and bantamweight. The WEC featherweight champion, Jose Aldo, became the UFC featherweight champion and defended his throne time and again over the next four years. The path of the UFC’s brand new bantamweight champion was a good deal more convoluted.

After being handed the UFC bantamweight title, Dominick Cruz fought Urijah Faber in his debut on the big stage. Faber was the only man to have defeated Cruz and in an impressive showing, Cruz evened the score. Cruz managed one more title defence in October 2011, and then he was sidelined for three years by repeated injuries. In the meantime, Renan Barao and T.J. Dillashaw both won the bantamweight crown that Cruz had never lost.

There are many ways to become regarded as a truly great fighter and Jose Aldo and Dominick Cruz stand in complete contrast on that point. Aldo fought a busy schedule and took on all comers, performing faultlessly under the spotlight again and again. Cruz was unable to do that as his frequent, severe injuries kept him sidelined for a long stretch of his athletic prime. Without the strength of schedule to compete with Jose Aldo, Dominick Cruz’s greatness was cemented the night that he returned from a three year absence and defeated T. J. Dillashaw—the finest opponent he had ever met—to reclaim his UFC bantamweight title.

The Purpose of Movement

When any fight fan sat down to watch Cruz compete, his hyperactive movement jumped off the screen. There really was no one quite like Cruz, especially when he burst onto the scene in the late 2000s. More impressive than his movement itself was the fact that Cruz was able to maintain for five hard rounds.

Cruz’s brand of movement was divisive in the combat sports community because it was so different to what had come before, and it brought to centre stage an old disagreement over just what “good footwork” even is. Joe Louis’ feet did just enough to carry him in and out of range without using up unnecessary energy and kept him in position to punch and take a punch at all times: that is one function of footwork and for many it is the entire purpose. This echoes what the Japanese swordsman, Miyamoto Musashi had to say on the subject. Musashi’s writings on footwork insist that its purpose is to “ferry across” the battleground and nothing more, and the tone of this section of the Book of Five Rings is one of “stop asking.”

Then there are those who look at Muhammad Ali’s dancing movement, covering miles on the ring canvas over a fifteen round fight, and insist that is a higher form of footwork.Ali saw Louis as a slow, shuffling heavyweight whose feet were uneducated. Supporters of Louis insisted that Ali’s movement was wasteful and unnecessary. Both sides have been forced to begrudgingly accept that neither man succeeded in spite of their footwork, but that their particular forms of movement were necessary to their games.

The key question isn’t so much what is right or what is necessary, it is what is the purpose of footwork in the first place. Minimalist footwork serves to carry a fighter in and out and keep him in position to slip, block, or absorb a blow without catastrophic effects. The purpose of more active footwork isn’t the same—or it really would be wasteful. More active movement is used to set up offensive opportunities. Sometimes that might be by placing a foot in a particular position so that an angle can be taken. Other times it might just be to get the opponent focused on all the motion going on in their field of vision, then to surprise them with a legitimate strike.

If an opponent looked at Dominick Cruz’s footwork and said “he wastes so much energy on so much unnecessary movement”, that was fine by Cruz. The less mind you gave his bouncing around and changing stances, the more easily he could sneak in the steps that really mattered.

The Launchpad

The gyrating Cruz went through out at range appeared erratic but it often came back to one pattern which set him up to begin striking off either stance and moving down either side of his opponent. Figure 1 shows the sequence that would take Cruz into his launchpad position. From an orthodox stance (a), Cruz would step his left foot back (b), and bounce back so that he landed in an almost squared southpaw stance (c).

Breaking it down into chunks doesn’t do justice to the fact that its value came as a dynamic base which gave Cruz almost a run up on his leads. By jogging on the spot to get into and out of this position, and often by putting his left foot in and out, Cruz could effectively feint the opponent into action. In his third fight with Urijah Faber, Cruz had Faber swinging overhands and jumping for flying knees each time he placed his left foot in, never truly committing himself.

In spite of the media focus on Cruz’s style flying in the face of orthodoxy, he still punched and kicked the same way as any other fighter—it was the preamble that was different. One of Cruz’s most successful blows (particularly in his third match with Urijah Faber) was a simple jab. A long, flicking jab that almost always found his opponent’s right eye. In Figure 2, Cruz skips back into his launchpad position—left foot slightly behind his right and driving hard into the ground to rebound him back at his opponent (b). Cruz steps his left foot back in and the opponent doesn’t take flight, so he settles into a proper stance (c), and then performs a little shuffle to make some more distance as he slides down his opponent’s right side to score the jab (d).

Fig. 2

And that is the gist of it: the point of all that bouncing and dancing. Boxing’s simplest strike, but Cruz’s opponent allowed him to walk right into range because he jumped around and distracted from his real intentions first. In the animal kingdom the stoat is known for performing a bizarre “war dance” to mesmerize rabbits as it inches close enough to leap on its prey. You can argue until you’re blue in the face over whether all the movement is necessary and having the desired purpose, but Cruz still consistently got close enough to strike his man and escape untouched.

If every sequence of Cruz bouncing around ended in him sliding down his opponent’s right side and flicking out a jab it wouldn’t be effective. The key was that Cruz’s launchpad could take him into attacks off both stances and carry him off on different angles of entry. Figure 3 shows Cruz withdrawing to the launchpad and entering with a southpaw stance instead.

Fig. 3

After rebounding to the the launchpad, with his left foot slightly behind his right (b), Cruz sets his weight and advances just his right foot into a more square-on southpaw stance (c). Often from here Cruz would step his right foot down the outside of his opponent’s left and shoot the classic southpaw left straight, but in this instance Cruz steps his back foot out to the left (d), assuming an inside angle and throwing in an awkward, straight armed swing (e).

From (c) to (e) is a fairly standard method of sneaking the southpaw overhand behind the opponent’s rear hand. Manny Pacquiao used this in most of his later bouts and felled Ricky Hatton with it, yet it is hidden in Cruz’s constant bouncing and shifting. All of that preamble might seem like a lot of work to assume slightly dominant angles, but good fighters just don’t stand still when you start putting your feet into these positions without a some kind of deceit.

In some ways Cruz’s footwork was reminiscent of the milling of hands that boxers used in the early twentieth century and that many fighters still use today. Surviving footage of an aged John L. Sullivan demonstrating his techniques shows him winding his hands in forward circles (in that classic, Bugs Bunny “put ‘em up” style) and then firing with one hand or the other depending on where they were in their circular paths when he decided to move. This moving of his hands could distract from his intentions, but more importantly the top portion of the circling away from his body could be used as the start of the blow. The Japanese karateka, Mas Oyama called this circling of hands enshin or “the pinwheel”. In Cruz’s case, his feet went through the same back and forth pattern—from which he could always begin striking—and he let his opponent’s lead foot and distance dictate his attack.

If Cruz wanted to attack out of his launchpad but felt he would have to charge too far to get on a punching angle, he would go to his kicking game. Cruz used traditional low kicks through his WEC run, and adopted a low-low kick to the calf in his UFC run (it being a favourite of his training partner, Jeremy Stephens). He also made great use of high kicks, which helped keep his opponents upright—making Cruz’s scoring of darting punches easier and reducing the risk of him running onto a level change.

Fig. 4

Figure 4 shows Cruz stepping into a southpaw stance out of his launchpad (a) (b)—his lead foot still a good distance from his opponent’s lead foot—and throwing a high kick to the open side (c). The opponent attempts to step in on Cruz after the kick and Cruz sways deep to his left as he steps out the side door (d). Most slick fighters attempt to enter through the front door and leave out the side door—Cruz tried never to meet his opponent head on when possible, but always recognized the value of a direction change when his opponent started punching back.

Cruz’s deep sways acted as evasions, but they also allowed him to mesmerize the opponent in the same way that his footwork patterns did. The bouncing and shuffling worked at long range where the opponent could see the big movements that Cruz was going through, but at a closer range, the feet and legs are often out of focus or in the blind angle—below the opponents field of vision. Moreover, committing to bouncing stance changes and steps in punching range will get you hit while out of position—Cruz did all his dancing out where he was safe to do so. No, in closer range engagements Cruz used large movements of the upper body to hide his feet. Figure 5 shows a typical example.

Fig 5

Cruz is on the end of his opponent’s jabbing range (a), then sways his head drastically out to his left (b) as if to side step off in that direction. But as Cruz’s head sways out to his left, his right foot advances to the outside of his opponent’s lead foot (c)—taking him into a slight dominant angle as a southpaw. From here Cruz would drive off his left foot, returning his head to centre as he attacked with a left swing. This kind of misdirection confounded Cruz’s opponents and against T.J. Dillashaw, Cruz was able to leave a couple of exchanges by slipping punches in one direction while appearing to moonwalk off to the other side.

No Love

Despite a lengthy absence from 2011, Dominick Cruz returned to action in 2014 and decimated Takeya Mizugaki, earning his first knockout in the UFC and one of just a handful of finishes on his record. In January 2016, Cruz met the new UFC bantamweight champion, T.J. Dillashaw and—against his most talented opponent to date—Cruz looked marvellous. Every act of Dillashaw aggression left the champion swinging air or eating slapping counters as Cruz led him around the cage. In June, Cruz took a very obvious showcase match against the ageing Urijah Faber and performed as well as expected. It looked as though the long absent champion was entering a new period of his life as he lined up his third fight of the year—targeting Cody Garbrandt for December 2016.

Garbrant made sense as all of Cruz’s most compelling rivalries had been with representatives of Team Alpha Male. He had fought Urijah Faber—the owner—three times, he had fought Joseph Benavidez in the WEC, and he had just bested longtime Team Alpha Male member and defector, T. J. Dillashaw. Because he so seldom finished fights, Cruz’s style was alienating to a large section of MMA’s fanbase, but like any number of crafty boxers he used trash talk to get fans invested in his fights—whether they were rooting for him to win or to lose. Team Alpha Male was largely made up of meatheads who Cruz could talk circles around in press conferences and his extended beef with the team made up most of his UFC career. As Cruz told Garbrandt in the run up to their fight, he had bought a house with all the money he’d made beating Garbrandt’s teammates.

More than any other Team Alpha Male member, Cody could not open his mouth without something downright stupid tumbling out. The interviews and press conferences leading up to the Cruz bout were brutally one sided. But Garbrandt was a phenomenon in the bantamweight division, there was no denying that. He had wicked speed and the power to fell just about any man in his weight class with one good punch. But for all the talk of his talent, he tended to fight recklessly. Despite a good boxing pedigree and plenty of amateur experience, his success in the cage was often down to simply running in on the opponent with his hands proving too fast and too heavy for them to handle. Covering Garbrandt’s rise through the ranks for Fightland was a strange experience: each time he met a stiffer opponent the expectation was that “this time we’ll see him have to fight a little smarter” and each time he smoked them all the same. The jab would occasionally sneak out and hint at a slicker fighter beneath the surface, but for the most part it was cartwheel kicks and leaping left hooks.

One Night Only

The scouting on Cruz’s habits was spot on. Garbrandt and his team identified the key features of Cruz’s game and set about taking him apart. Two of these features were his ability to slide down the sides of his opponent out of his bounce, and his reliance on shifting with blows. In Cody Garbrandt’s corner, Justin Bucholz repeated the mantra: “show him your wheels, Cody.” Where Garbrandt had won every previous UFC bout on his power and speed alone, going forward and leaving himself open as he did so, on this night he fought almost entirely on the back foot.

The trick of acquiring angles is that it considerably easier to do against opponents who are stationary or moving forward. The most basic application of an angle that most fighters learn is to side step as an opponent charges in. If the opponent really commits to his advance you will commonly see the angling fighter end up on a ninety degree angle or even get around behind their attacker. It is considerably trickier to acquire angles on an evasive opponent. Not only that, angles can be undone with space. If Fighter A gets around to the flank of Fighter B, Fighter B is at a disadvantage if he tries to turn and face. Fighter B’s best option is to step away and create some distance so that he can turn to face his Fighter A with no risk of being hit as he does so. It is often best practice to step directly away from the opponent when they acquire a dominant angle.

Consider Cruz’s jab from Figure 2 again. It works in a similar way to the Safety Lead that Edwin Haislet wrote about. Figure 6 shows the footwork. Coming out of his launchpad, Cruz establishes an orthodox stance (a), then shuffles both feet forward to slide down his opponent’s right side as he extends again into the jab (b). Cruz would lean heavy on his lead foot to reach with the jab, and this also meant that his lead shoulder was that little bit further off the opponent’s centre line. Very often—if his opponent wasn’t already moving away from him—Cruz would continue to pivot around his lead leg (c). This allowed him to angle even further out to the side of his man and force them to turn before they could retaliate. By bringing his head back over his centre of gravity or even leaning it towards his back foot as he pivoted, Cruz could stretch out the path of his opponent’s right hand even while circling towards his opponent’s right side. Not only that, but by pivoting around, Cruz could place his lead shoulder in between his jaw and the opponent’s right hand.

Fig. 6

When Garbrandt met Cruz, he didn’t chase or stand still. Instead, Garbrandt gave ground each time Cruz seemed to be stepping in. Not only did this frustrate Cruz enormously—as he made three or four bounces or fakes before every entry—but it drew Cruz out and lessened his angles. Each time Cruz started sliding out to his left side to flick the jab, Garbrandt would retreat a little and—if Cruz persisted—Cruz would be entering Garbrandt’s striking range at twelve o’clock instead of half past one or two o’clock. This slight diminishment of angle made all the difference in Garbrandt’s counter punching efforts. Furthermore, each time Garbrandt gave ground he stretched out Cruz’s sequences and forced him to take extra steps—forcing more sincere commitments from a man whose entire game was about deception and being unpredictable.

Fig. 7

Figure 7 shows a cross counter that Garbrandt was able to time on several occasions through the bout. Cruz bounces out of his launchpad (a) and steps into an orthodox stance. Garbrandt has already given ground so Cruz must shuffle his right foot up underneath him (b) and step forward again with his left (c) in order to jab. Garbrandt times the second step, slips inside the jab and arcs a right hand over the top of it (d). When Cruz applied it from his preferred angle, it was difficult to get inside of his jab. Because Garbrandt forced Cruz to come in straight on and stepped inside, Cruz’s pivot was largely ineffective off these counters. Each time Cruz attempted to pivot off line from the position in frame (d), Garbrandt was able to follow and clap him with a left hook that was more severe than the initial counter.

By drawing Cruz forward, forcing him to take an extra step and to enter through the front of Garbrant’s guard, Garbrandt was also able to time a beautiful counter kick. Garbrandt hammered Cruz’s lead leg with a right low kick just as Cruz was putting his weight down to jab. Cruz had been hurt by low kicks in the Dillashaw fight but insisted that it was purely a result of his pre-existing plantar fasciitis. The truth is, of course, that a fighter who relies on being mobile will suffer more when opponents focus fire on their legs. Movement based fighters are also more often out of position to brace for the impact of a low kick. Garbrandt’s low kick buckled Cruz’s knee inwards and a few more connections of that sort could have slowed Cruz down and made Garbrandt’s job as a counter fighter far easier. In fact Garbrandt’s corner called for more kicks throughout the bout, but Garbrandt seemed satisfied with headhunting—something which would come to hurt him in his post-Cruz career. It could also have been the danger of a Cruz takedown, as Cruz had shown himself happy to take advantage of the smallest opening in order to hold the opponent down for a minute or two: T. J. Dillshaw had been taken down off several of his low kicks. Garbrandt’s corner repeatedly asked Cody to throw a high kick into the open side when Cruz went southpaw, and he did this only once—at the start of the second round, when he opened an enormous gash underneath Cruz’s eye, but was also bundled to the mat momentarily. He never revisited the high kick.

Another way in which Garbrandt took away the angles Cruz was trying to acquire was to switch to a southpaw stance. He did this in motion because changing stances in place is asking to be knocked off your feet should you eat a punch as your legs come together. Figure 8 shows a typical Garbrandt stance switch. As Cruz tried to jab off to an angle, Garbrant would retract his left foot and retreat while cutting an angle off to his left. In doing this, Garbrandt could step back in and re-engage even as Cruz pivoted around to a ninety degree angle. Notice that in panel (c) Garbrandt can step down the outside of Cruz’s pivoting foot and acquire a dominant angle for his left straight.

Fig. 8

Of course the angle of the step taken to shift to southpaw could be changed—sometimes Garbrandt would be retreating away from Cruz, other times he would be cutting an angle out more to the side. One of the early shocks of the fight came when Garbrandt took Cruz down seemingly without effort. Figure 9 shows that sequence. Garbrandt slipped Cruz’s usual slide-by jab (a) (b), then weaved underneath it, stepping deep out to his left while Cruz was performing his pivot (c). As Garbrandt skipped out into a southpaw stance Cruz decided to re-engage, rushed in, and was knocked off his feet as Garbrandt changed levels and hit his hips for the double leg (f).

Fig. 9

One of George Foreman’s mantras when commentating for HBO Boxing was “never chase a puncher.” Get hit while you are running in the opposite direction and a lot of the force of the blow will be lost. Get hit while stepping in and there is no turning with or riding out the blow. Had Cody Garbrandt entered his fight with Dominick Cruz looking to play the aggressor, he probably would have found himself coming up short in the same ways that T.J. Dillashaw did. Dillashaw moved as well as Cruz but had considerably more pop in his punches, leading many to believe that the bigger hitter of the two would have the edge. But by playing the aggressor, Dillashaw lost his ability to apply the angles he had used against other opponents, and fell into the A-game of Cruz. Even without the effect that Garbrandt’s retreat had on lessening Cruz’s ability to cut angles, by inviting Cruz forward Garbrandt made a more solid target for himself. Defensive considerations are easy when bouncing around at range or retreating, it is far more difficult to be evasive while also playing the part of the aggressor.

By adopting the role of the matador, Garbrandt also gave himself the opportunity to stop in his tracks and create a collision. So much of counter punching is in getting an opponent to take extra steps—to anticipate your retreat and commit to running through the space you’re standing in because you have already given ground several times. Retreat, retreat, retreat, stand and counter. In this way, a fighter can run his opponent onto severe blows. Garbrandt so masterfully got a read on Cruz that he was even able to step in and intercept Cruz on a couple of his fake steps in and out of the launchpad.

Interceptions played a vital role in some of the most important engagements of the fight. Cruz was in the habit of moving his feet on every punch and especially liked shifting—the action of changing stance as the punch is thrown. This meant that Cruz was often marching with his punches. This worked tremendously well when angling around an aggressor, or even while stepping backwards and moving his head, but Cruz was often left running past Garbrandt as Garbrandt gave ground and angled off. When Cruz shifted and Garbrandt stepped in instead, Cruz would find himself out of position, with his feet level underneath him, in the middle of a punching exchange. To Cruz’s enormous credit, he was not known as a thudding hitter and he will readily joke about that fact, but as the rounds progressed he fought as though he had to do some damage and secure a stoppage. Unfortunately this carried him into more exchanges with Garbrandt and the man with the tighter straight-forward boxing technique tended to come out on top in those.

For all his physical talents, Cody Garbrandt was probably not the perfect man to dethrone Dominick Cruz. In fact, that might have been T.J. Dillashaw had he fought to a better strategy. Yet the discipline with which Garbrandt applied a gameplan a million miles removed from his usual method allowed him to defy the odds and do what no one else had been able to. In retrospect that performance is made even more spectacular because it proved to be an anomaly. At the time of writing, Garbrandt looks set to burn out as something of a one hit wonder. In the three fights after his title winning performance against Cruz, Garbrandt suffered three knockout losses—all through fighting a stubborn, dim-witted fight and getting caught overextending in wild exchanges he had no business continuing. This might be partly related to the ongoing drama at Team Alpha Male, with coach Justin Bucholz being expelled by Urijah Faber after the Cruz fight.

Skill is the application of knowledge and talent. Cruz was the watershed that forced Garbrandt to apply his talents and practice the discipline to stick to a well prepared gameplan. The fights that Garbrandt has been involved in since then have been like chickens coming home to roost, as Garbrandt’s talent alone and complete lack of self control fail to carry him on. But for one night only, Cody Garbrandt was the finest fighter on earth.