Advanced Striking 2.0 - Jose Aldo
The “Greatest of All Time” conversation is one that doesn’t offer much reward. It is the same four or five successful fan favourites having their records re-examined time and time again in hopes of discovering new evidence that only serves to bump them up or drop them a place in one man’s own mind. Yet it speaks to Jose Aldo’s brilliance that in this game of “who is your favourite UFC mega-star?” Aldo is begrudgingly accepted into the conversation despite not having nearly the same popularity with fans as other contenders. His accomplishments, his ability, and his almost supernatural longevity are simply undeniable.
Aldo grew up in Manaus—a curious city in its own right: once the heart of the rubber boom, Manaus’ fortunes quickly collapsed once the British Empire began growing Brazilian rubber trees in Asia. Aldo missed Manuas’ heyday as the jewel of the continent, one of the first electrified cities in the world. He was born about a hundred years late and, like a great many in modern Manaus, grew up in poverty. His mother left with his sisters while he was still small and the young Jose Aldo grew up working to support his father. Yet his father, Jose Aldo Sr., in turn threw himself into his sons ambitions in football, then capoeira, and then jiu jitsu and vale tudo.
In 2008, a couple of months out from his twenty-second birthday, Aldo received his big break. He was signed to World Extreme Cagefighting, the most major MMA promotion that actually showcased featherweights. In his North American debut Aldo was matched against Alexandre Franca Nogueira. Nogueira was long in the tooth, but was probably the most accomplished featherweight in MMA’s short history. Jose Aldo performed beautiful transitions on the ground and bludgeoned Nogueira with elbows, beginning the five fight knockout streak that would see him become WEC featherweight champion and the consensus best featherweight on the planet.
Fig. 1
Thirteen years later, Jose Aldo is still fighting and beating the cream of the crop. This is absurd for a couple of reasons. The first is that a career in combat sports is an accumulation of gym injuries, with the odd fight and payday in between. The second is that the sport of MMA is still evolving so rapidly that most fighters who hit their prime in 2009 can now no longer keep up. Aldo’s great strength has been constantly building new looks onto his game.
A constant through Aldo’s career though, and one of the “secrets” to his success, has been his reliance on pivots in several different situations and through the course of this study we will examine three of his best.
Wheeling Out
Pivoting is among the most fundamental mechanics of fighting for the simple reason that a fighter needs to be able to turn and face his opponent. Simply letting your opponent circle around you and not turning to face them would, quite obviously, be disastrous. Every fight contains pivots but they can either take on a very basic role of stitching the action together, or be brought into a role of greater importance. When two great technicians meet the pivot is a means to break off line and acquire angles, but forcing the opponent to pivot is a means of locking him onto one foot momentarily and cutting off a good deal of his effective offence.
A great many of Jose Aldo’s opponents could be convinced to attack him on straight line charges and it was then that Aldo was able to use the pivot to bamboozle them as in Figure 2. As his opponent steps to close the distance, Aldo takes a big step forward and to his left, slipping his head to the left and weighting his lead leg (2). Having slipped the opponent’s punch, Aldo and his foe come almost chest to chest (3), meaning that as Aldo pivots around his lead foot, he can crack his opponent with a left hook in the same motion (4). The pivot carries Aldo out to almost ninety degrees from his opponent’s original line of attack (5) and the opponent is forced to then perform his own pivot to turn and face Aldo out at long range again (6).
Fig. 2
Frankie Edgar was the most notable victim of this as he pumped his hands and ran in at Aldo, time and time again. Each time Aldo would step his lead foot out and slip his head to his left, just outside the line of Edgar’s lead shoulder, then pivot around his lead leg to place him on a dominant angle as Edgar ploughed past him, fully committed to the charge. In fact, Edgar earned a rematch with Aldo and simply did the same thing again, making for a very easy and impressive night of work for the Brazilian great.
Figure 3 shows the footwork of this pivot. It is necessary to perform an inside slip, stepping out to the left with the lead foot and squaring the stance (2) in order to place the pivoting foot further out and flank the opponent with a more severe angle on the pivot (3).
Fig. 3
Obviously not everyone Aldo met would commit so wholeheartedly to charging him. Edgar’s aggression meant that Aldo could pivot and end up on Edgar’s right side or even behind him. Against more measured attacks Aldo would end up slightly off to their right side but could remain close enough to hook on the pivot. When pivoting clockwise around his left foot, Aldo was locked out of throwing his right hand or right round kick with power because his hips were rotating in the opposite direction, but the left hook could be timed to make use of the rotation of the body during the pivot. It is seldom as powerful as if the fighter is standing on both feet and throwing his weight from one foot to the other, but it has some surprising snap for a technique thrown in motion.
In other instances, Aldo would use the inside slip to step in and crowd his opponent in order to smother their offence, and then pivot out to his left with the left hook to break out to long range again. Against Pedro Munhoz, Aldo would step in and crowd whenever it seemed like Munhoz was going to commit to a combination attack, then break away with a huge swing.
Feeding the Single
Aside from disengagements and the odd left hook while turning out, pivoting took on a more general role in Jose Aldo’s martial arts philosophy and was a key part of making him the sport’s greatest anti-wrestler. By 2021, after twenty six fights in major promotions, Aldo had successfully defended 91% of takedowns attempted against him. That statistic is an extreme outlier in mixed martial arts, where defending 70% of takedowns successfully would have you regarded as a tough man to get down. Trying to double leg Jose Aldo is akin to trying to tackle a horse.
There has always been a lot more to Aldo’s takedown defence than a great deal of “sprawl training.” His footwork and maintenance of distance have always been excellent, and he has always been cautious about when he engages for the specific purpose of preventing a well timed level change into double leg. Indeed much of the criticism of Aldo’s featherweight title run was to do with him establishing a lead on the scorecards and then making his opponent come to him. But one of Aldo’s key techniques in overcoming the many powerful takedown artists of the featherweight division was feeding the single.
A double leg takedown involves changing levels onto the opponent’s hips and, with some kind of control on both legs, running through them. In mixed martial arts the sprawl quickly became the go-to method of defence, getting both legs back and dropping the hips on the opponent. In freestyle and folkstyle there are a number of “lines of defence” before the sprawl, but strikers in MMA were generally swinging hard and hoping for a knockout, and then sprawling as hard as they could when the opponent inevitably dropped on their hips mid-flurry. Furthermore, in wrestling both competitors are bent over at the waist already, so the sprawl is often more a short drop down to the knees. The sprawl in the early days of MMA was a gut-busting driving of the hips through the back of the opponent’s head and hopefully either bellying out to a front headlock position or digging underhooks and drawing the opponent up in the clinch instead.
Fig. 4
Aldo’s approach was more sophisticated. When the opponent changed levels to run through his hips, Aldo would put his hips into them momentarily to dull their momentum, and then switch direction and concede to his opponent’s force, spreading his feet wide and pivoting around the lead leg to present the opponent with a bladed stance.
Fig. 5
As the name implies, the double leg takedown works by preventing the opponent from stepping out on either of his legs. Once Aldo had turned side on to the opponent, they were no longer running through his hips, but rather driving into his lead hip, directly against his back leg. Not only was the opponent trying to drive through strong resistance from the back leg on the mat, but he often couldn’t reach Aldo’s back leg to try and snatch it up or lock his hands together. It was a situation where the double leg takedown no longer existed, but the lead leg could be easily picked up for a single leg attempt. It was an example of a fundamental grappling principle—funneling the opponent down a predictable path of correct choices.
While the wrestler could stay on offence by switching from a double leg attempt to a single leg, he was engaging in a more technical battle having lost his momentum. Aldo was not unique in his preference for feeding the single leg, B.J. Penn also found success with it. Penn would tend to hop to the fence and, when the opponent transitioned back to a double leg attempt or a clinch, he would hit a switch or free himself and circle out.
Much of Aldo’s takedown defence was done out in the open: immediately after feeding the single he would turn his knee away from the opponent and force them down the single leg and onto a stooped over low single, eventually kicking his leg free in the opposite direction.
Fig. 6
Aldo and the Low Kick
Every fight of Jose Aldo’s UFC career featured the commentators alluding to the threat of a low kick. They would recount the bone shattering, nerve damaging low kicking of Aldo’s WEC career and then, after twenty five minutes of waiting, the low kick would fail to arrive. Even against opponent who seemed an obvious target for the low kick, Aldo would throw one or two in perhaps the entire fight. This was a stark contrast to his WEC title days, when targeting the lower body was Jose Aldo’s obsession.
But for all his technical excellence Jose Aldo was a fighter of whims and phases. In his early WEC days, Aldo was besotted with intercepting knees. He starched a young Cub Swanson in the opening seconds, he almost decapitated Rolando Perez as Perez lingered on a body jab, and in his title winning performance against Mike Brown, Aldo met every sign of a Brown advance with a knee to the gut. Then Aldo went off them. He still showed the knees from time to time, but they were a sometimes weapon and never the ever-present danger that they were against Mike Brown.
The way that various Aldo weapons moved from centre stage to the background periodically reflected Aldo’s commitment to learning, his personality, and his longevity. Aldo seemed to enjoy training new tools through his career: his jab barely existed until the first Frankie Edgar fight and a few years later he was talking about wanting to compete as an amateur boxer. In fact, one of Aldo’s best shots in recent years has been what Bruce Lee would have called a “corkscrew hook.” Aldo’s opponents end up reaching to palm his jab more and more to compensate for its speed, so Aldo steps in as if to jab but instead curves his left just enough to land behind the opponent’s reaching hand.
Fig. 7
While it is only semantics the term “corkscrew hook” neatly differentiates the mechanics of this blow from a standard textbook left hook. In a textbook left hook the arm is held steady at the elbow and the trunk is rotated to draw the shoulder and elbow through to the centreline. In a corkscrew hook the elbow is still extended towards the opponent—as on a straight blow—but the path of the shot is arced like a hook. This is similar to the idea of the forward reaching “corkscrew uppercut” or “upjab” versus a regular floor-to-ceiling uppercut.
But amid all these changes the almost disappearance of Aldo’s low kicks stood out because they were such a large part of his most famous performance, against Urijah Faber. There may have also been a number of tactical considerations in Aldo’s downplaying of low kicks. It was a common criticism during Aldo’s WEC run that MMA fighters just weren’t good at checking kicks. This was because the sport was rife with squat-stanced wrestlers, sprinting into big overhand punches. And that was especially true in the lower weightclasses as Team Alpha Male did little else. But as the game progressed, fighters became better at controlling their weight, managing distance, and being a short, nonchalant movement away from a solid leg check. Aldo was likely also influenced by an errant kick in his title defence against Chan Sung Jung, which broke his foot and hampered him for the rest of that fight.
A number of high profile shin breaks on checked kicks likely gave the rest of the MMA world the pause for thought that Aldo’s own experience with Jung had. The calf kick sprang from the fear of the check. Fighters began kicking below the knee where the opponent’s attempts to pick the leg up could only place the kick further down the targeted leg. That was good, but the discovery that the calf kick quickly sent the opponent’s foot to sleep and rendered him defenceless was even better.
Through 2019 and 2020, as fighter after fighter fell before the Dim Mak like power of the calf kick, Jose Aldo remained completely unharmed by them. Renato Moicano and Pedro Munhoz were top ranked fighters at the time they met Aldo, they were both considerably younger than Aldo, and both relied heavily on the calf kick. When they attempted to step in and hammer in long range kicks below Aldo’s knee, Aldo demonstrated the modifications that need to be made to the regular check of a low kick in order to deal with a calf kick.
The calf kick can be a devastating strike on its own, but much of its value is in its lower chance of going horribly wrong. A kick thrown just above the knee can ride up the leg and allow the fighter being kicked to step in and capitalize with counter punches or a takedown. And when the kick is thrown above the knee and the man receiving the kick picks his leg up to check, he places the kick on the top portion of his shin—the sturdiest and least sensitive section. When throwing the kick below the knee, the kick cannot ride up the thigh and if the opponent raises his leg, the kick will clack through at the softer, more sensitive lower shin and ankle. It is not impossible to hurt oneself throwing a calf kick, but the chances of punting a knee at full force are considerably lower.
When Moicano and Munhoz attempted to calf kick Aldo, rather than performing a traditional check, Aldo performed the modified check in Figure 8.
Fig. 8
Rather than raise his knee as in a traditional check, Aldo hinged at the knee and swung his heel back to behind his standing knee (3). The effectiveness of the calf kick had given Moicano and Munhoz the confidence to abuse it. They stepped deep and committed whole heartedly to pounding Aldo’s lead leg with little concern about a return. When Aldo withdrew his lower leg, the committed calf kick would fly through below his knee.
The calf kick had been serving as a long range weapon to abuse the opponent from beyond his reach—hard to close in off and harder to counter. The moment that Aldo withdrew his leg and the opponent powered through beneath his knee, the tables turned. Now their weight and been committed and their back was being turned, where Aldo had only to place his foot back down to begin threatening a counter attack.
To deter a kicker the fighter need only put him in danger of punishment and punishing a kick can broadly be divided into two categories: counters and checks—or, for the old school martial artist, “destructions.” Counters are obvious—catch a leg and score a takedown, or blast the opponent with punches while they’re on one leg. Destructions are more to do with making it physically painful to land the kick successfully. You will see the occasional use of an elbow to spike the foot on a middle or high kick, but typically checking with the sturdiest part of the shin, just under the knee, is the way to put an opponent off kicking hard with impunity.
The difficulty with checking the calf kick is that it enters below the knee already. Raising the leg to check would only place the kick lower on the leg. So fighters often try to change the positioning of their leg—to take the kick on the front of their shin—and brace for the impact without raising the leg. This means stepping out into the kick and lightening the lead leg enough to turn the shin into the kick, resulting in the calf kick landing at the same level as intended, but on the front of the shin. Chris Weidman famously snapped his shin when Uriah Hall stepped into his calf kick in this way. However, to turn the foot out the fighter must step or pivot on the ball of his front foot, lightening the leg and often resulting in him being knocked off balance instead of creating a sturdy check as in Figure 9. The current MMA landscape is full of fighters failing to brace their weight as they step into calf kicks and falling over in the process.
Fig. 9
Jose Aldo demonstrated a subtle variation on this idea which proved considerably more reliable but has not yet been adopted by other fighters in MMA. Once again, it proved to be the application of a pivot—but this time around Aldo’s rear foot.
Rear foot pivoting is far less commonly used than lead foot pivoting because it is an awkward motion and even novices realize that having their back foot light and moveable (as in a lead foot pivot) is good, and having their back foot weighted and locked to the canvas is generally not good for the quick retreats, pulls and ducks that are necessary in a fist fight.
Typically the lead foot is out front of the stance as the measure, ready to push the fighter back away from a threat, there aren’t too many occasions where picking it up pointing it out in a different direction are going to help you in boxing. Yet Figure 10 shows just how Aldo used a rear footed pivot to punish the calf kick.
Fig. 10
Figure 11 demonstrates the check. As Aldo’s opponent began kicking, instead of stepping into the kick, Aldo gave some ground in order to turn and face it. This was accomplished by pivoting on the ball of his right foot, and dragging his lead foot back underneath him (2). Aldo’s stance was effectively the same, but he had rotated thirty or so degrees and now the opponent’s kick was entering on the front of his shin. By drawing his checking leg in underneath him, rather than trying to step out onto it, Aldo also made sure that it was weighted and firmly rooted to the floor when the opponent’s kick connected.
Fig. 11
Even as his body winds down, and Aldo comes to accept the harsh truth that all fighters have a shelf life, the greatest featherweight of them all remains ahead of the game technically and tactically. At the time of writing, Jose Aldo has just defeated the top ten ranked bantamweight, Pedro Munhoz. Munhoz was on the best form of his career having dropped a controversial decision to Frankie Edgar and then battering Jimmie Rivera. After a fifteen minute Aldo masterclass, the cageside microphones caught a candid conversation between the two as Munhoz declared “I’m far from on your level. I might go down to flyweight.”
We may only have a few more years of Aldo left, and no one expects him to stay this sharp forever, but as a case study for up and coming fighters and martial artists I expect Aldo to prove timeless.
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Check out the previous entries in the Advanced Striking 2.0 series: