Advanced Striking 2.0 – Alexander Volkanovski
Combat sports undoubtedly benefit from having weight classes. In a world where all fights were open weight, most of the top two hundred fighters in the world would be the kind of sloppy sluggers who are currently floundering in the lower heavyweight and light heavyweight rankings. Yet few other sports will make the same concessions to the smaller men on the field.
Alexander Volkanovski spent his youth playing rugby at a diminutive five-foot-six and having to stand up to the physical force of men who would be two or three weightclasses above him in mixed martial arts. Like any good “rugger bugger”, Volkanovski tactically drank himself into being a more formidable unit, at one point weighing in at over two hundred pounds. But in transitioning to a mixed martial arts career this gave him some serious work to do getting down to a reasonable fighting weight. Through his first five fights Volkanovski was competing at welterweight, then moved down to lightweight, and finally settled at featherweight after already competing for four years as a professional.
Fig. 1
Through this time Volkanovski was forced to contend with always being the shorter man. It was a far more ridiculous contrast when he was fighting lightweights and welterweights, but even within the UFC’s featherweight division he is always looking up to meet his opponent’s gaze. Volkanovski is a good hitter, and strong in the clinch, which are the traditional must-haves for a shorter fighter, however the majority of Volkanovski’s bouts are won by his work on the outside. He does this through sharp shooting at range, and his use of these longer range weapons to transition into closer work.
The key feature of Volkanovski’s kick-boxing strategy is a continuous game of footsie. He makes the opponent consider their steps, and uses his own to hide his strikes and work his way into punching exchanges where his power can be brought to lever. This is combined with Volkanovski’s constant use of feints in what some have playfully termed “bullshit volume.” The root of it all though is the step up left kick.
Fig. 2
The step up left kick is the meat of Alexander Volkanovski’s outside game and it works as both a single shot, and a transition to punching range and exchanges. The inside low kick has sometimes been called “the jab of the kicking game” because of its use in probing for openings and point scoring, but it is often misunderstood.
Many coaches and fighters will tell you that the step up left kick is one of the longest weapons in fighting and this isn’t really true. The range of any kick is dictated by the position of the standing leg: throwing a right low kick from an orthodox stance the fighter anchors and pivots around the left foot—the one out which was already out in front of him in his normal stance. Throwing a step up left low kick, the fighter anchors on his right foot, which was in the back of his stance and—unless he is stepping through, past his lead foot—this will place his pivoting leg further back than on the rear leg kick, causing his kick to not reach as far.
There are advantages to the step up inside low kick though. One is that the fighter does not square himself to throw it. Kicking with the rear leg means turning into the opponent and presenting the centreline. An inside low kick—particularly with the hands in good framing position—allows a fighter to long guard against punches coming back at him or simply pull the opponent into him and smother.
The trait that Volkanovski best exploits is that the step up kick has a telegraph: a preliminary motion which is necessary to the strike. A load-up is often seen as a negative: we say “he’s telegraphing his right hand” when a fighter drops his lead because if the opponent picks up on it, the telegraphing fighter will get read and chinned. But with his left kick, Volkanovski uses the step up to create patterns and force reactions in his opponent’s own footwork.
The first element of the footsie game is that Volkanovski can rattle off the step up and kick at a furious clip. Quick enough that if the opponent isn’t working on a hair trigger Volkanovski can get in some good digs. Against opponents who pick up the foot to check his inside low kick—like Jose Aldo— Volkanovski will take the same left kick up to the body, often digging in the ball of the foot below the elbow.
Fig. 3
As Dan Henderson demonstrated through his MMA career: both a good inside thigh connection and a checked kick can result in an opportunity to punch. When an opponent lifts their leg to check, Volkanovski has locked them in place momentarily. When Volkanovski can punt the leg for free and knock it out of position, he can put his foot down inside the opponent’s range and start swinging: as when he teed off on Chad Mendes along the fence.
But the threat of the inside low kick alone can help Volkanovski push the fight towards the fence—where he can corner his opponent and enter with punches more easily. Figure 4 shows the simple step up that Volkanovski repeatedly uses to chew up distance and force his opponent backwards.
Fig. 4
By scoring with the inside low kick, Volkanovski creates a reason to respect the telegraph—the “step up” part—and can create pressure and openings with this telegraph from then on. Chewing up distance with the feint in Figure 4 is great on its own but the step up can also be used to sneak up the rear foot—a key principle of point fighting. The back foot is the anchor of the thrust for a jab and by sneaking it up as close to the opponent as possible, the fighter can thrust far further into his jab than expected.
Fig. 5
This T-step jab, as Volkanovski used repeatedly against Brian Ortega, is one of the ways that Volkanovski can routinely surprise much taller, longer men with his jab. The one considerable downside of the technique is that in shortening the stance to sneak the back foot up, the fighter becomes more vulnerable when he is hit. At several points Brian Ortega jabbed Volkanovksi while his back foot was underneath him and forced him to stumble backwards.
The importance of footwork to the kicking game can be seen in one of Volkanovski’s other key weapons: the counter right low kick. For Volkanovski timing is far more important than power for inflicting damage. Whenever an opponent moves to him, Volkanovski will shuffle back and try to time a right low kick on the outside of their leg as they step in. Against fighters like Brian Ortega, Volkanovski has been able do this by letting them take a couple of steps forward (as in Figure 6).
Fig. 6
Against Max Holloway, Volkanovski waited for Holloway to attempt to jab his way in and hammered Holloway as he extended into his stance. Often the kicks that Volkanovski throws in these scenarios are not the most beautiful: he can’t get his hip all the way over, he has to hop back a little, he often only really kicks with his right leg instead of his whole body. But the important point is that it lands, and it lands just as his opponent’s position and knee joint are at their most vulnerable.
Those are the two pillars of this game of footsie: the inside low kick on offence, and the counter right low kick on the retreat. When Volkanovski’s opponent tries to steal his idea and begins throwing the right low kick as Volkanovski steps in—and they often do—Volkanovski starts floating in behind a raised knee. This little Thai style glide is often seen as a faked teep, but nobody really hops into teeps in MMA, least of all Volkanovski. The purpose is to advance him through range without giving up the opening on his lead leg. Figure 7 shows Volkanovski using the floating knee to close in on his opponent, and immediately skipping up into the inside low kick as he comes down into stance.
Fig. 7
The raised leg is not to avoid being kicked altogether of course, but getting kicked in the shin or foot as it is floating in the air is far less noteworthy than getting your leg kicked in just as you are relying on it to catch your weight.
We have examined how the inside low kick can get Volkanovski in with a follow up, how the expectation of it can be used to move the opponent onto the fence, and how the T-step can be worked straight into a long jab, but the other way that Volkanovski can get his mitts on a taller, rangier opponent is to get them to come to him.
Throughout a fight Volkanovski will vary the dynamic of his kicks. Sometimes he is point scoring, other times he is hammering home serious blows. Whenever he digs in a serious kick, he can be almost guaranteed that the opponent will come back at him because “get one back” is the golden rule of MMA. Figure 8 shows an example of Volkanovski punishing an opponent for turning southpaw. Against a southpaw stance, Volkanovski’s step up inside low kick simply becomes a step up outside low kick. Rather than picking the opponent’s leg up and forcing it outwards, it buckles the leg inwards.
Fig. 8
Figure 9 shows how Volkanovski can create counters off his kicks. Any time he lets rip a powerful kick, Volkanovski retreats the kicking leg, shifting back into the opposite stance. As his opponent follows him, Volkanovski reaches to parry, slips his head offline, and swings a wide lead hook over the top. The way that Volkanovski reaches for his opponent’s punch could be seen as risky, but because the return to a well landed low kick has an almost one hundred percent chance of being a committed straight punch Volkanovski almost always gets away with it.
Fig. 9
Convincing feints are vital to the operation of Volkanovkski’s game and the key to successful feinting is very simple: willingness to engage. A fighter cannot hide a reluctance to commit for long—four or five minutes of feinting with no real threat is not going to hold an experienced opponent off. Volkanovski’s feints draw responses because on every second or third feint he tears off a real, hurting blow. When the opponent steps in on him as he kicks, he bites down on his mouthpiece and makes the most of it. He never loses sight of the fact that his feinting is not to fool the judges or keep the opponent off him, it is all serving the goal of planting his right hand on his opponent’s chin as often as he can manage while fighting at a reach and height disadvantage.
Nowhere is Volkanovski’s preparedness for a tear up more clear than when his opponent tries to apply stoicism in the face of Volkanovski’s shoulder juking and knee pumping. Figure 10 shows Volkanovski’s infamous stepping right hook, which has checked the chin of many a great featherweight. Shifting through to attack the opponent in a linear charge is about the most committed move a fighter can make—the reason that Volkanovski can make it work is that it is hidden amid that constant game of deception.
Fig. 10
This shift was applied frequently against the southpaw Brian Ortega, but also against the usually orthodox Max Holloway. Because Volkanovski was able to time his low kicks and jar Holloway’s lead knee as he jabbed in, Holloway switched to southpaw through the middle portion of their first fight and this presented the opportunity for Volkanovski’s shifting right hook. The shift works especially well against southpaws attempting to drop back to their left and score the left hand across the top—the “open side counter” that Tenshin Nasukawa, Conor McGregor and a heap of other modern southpaws rely on.
For Alexander Volkanovski’s opponents the turn of a shoulder or a step forward is sometimes just that, and other times it is the momentary tell on a committed charge to the inside. Sometimes a low kick is a stinging slap on the meat of the thigh, other times it is a knee-jarring thud designed to take the opponent out of the fight. Under these circumstances nothing can be safely discounted, and yet looking for clues to distinguish fact from fiction in every motion is an exhausting exercise. Every misjudged read piles on doubt and the punches and kicks connecting in between add injury to insult. It is in this fog of confusion that Volkanovksi’s height and reach cease to matter and his opponents are brought into a fight where all the challenges are directed solely at them.
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This study is part of a series called Advanced Striking 2.0 . Join the Patreon to read the rest of the the studies: