Cedric Doumbe and Hokage Steal the Show

The mystery of kickboxing became even more confounding last night. The classic kickboxing paradox is that most MMA fans want to see striking fights with minimal clinching, and yet kickboxing promoters seem incapable of capitalizing on this. The new question is: how the hell could Glory not afford to pay Cedric Doumbe like a star when he elicits reactions like those of the sold-out Zenith Paris on Saturday night? A relatively quiet crowd erupted for Doumbe’s entrance alone. Better yet, Paris St-Germain’s Kylian Mbappe—arguably the best player lacing up boots in the world’s most popular sport—flew back from an away game just in time to have his reaction to Doumbe’s nine second knockout go viral. There is plenty of time for Doumbe to suffer a grinding fence wrestling clinic from some tricky old journeyman, but it is hard to argue that PFL didn’t perform a masterstroke with Doumbe’s promotional debut.

To write a paragraph about a nine second knockout might already be over analysis, but Doumbe was served up a high kick and countered perfectly. High kicks are usually relatively safe in mixed martial arts, particularly if you are the only man in the match up who wants to grapple. Jordan Zebo came out southpaw, threw a left high kick, and Doumbe caught it in the Saenchai cross-catch style. Taking the kick on his right forearm, Doumbe’s left came across underneath and caught Zebo’s leg at the calf, sandwiching it between Doumbe’s forearms (c), (d).    

Fig. 1

Doumbe dragged the kick down and across his body (e),(f), exposing the easy kick across Zebo’s back to his standing leg (g). After failing to sweep the leg, Doumbe dropped his right foot to the floor and threw a left hook (h), which caught Zebo on the chin and knocked him out cold.

Figure 2 shows the sequence from the opposite side, and allows us to see the details of the cross catch. Notice that Doumbe’s left glove is on the outside of Zebo’s leg as the kick connects with Doumbe’s guard (a). This is a true “catch” and allows a more controlled pass across the body than taking the kick on both arms and parrying it downwards across the body as in Masvidal vs Cerrone.

Fig. 2

If there was a theme this weekend it was the moment of vulnerability created by kicking. The standard of striking and wrestling continue to improve in mixed martial arts, but kicking is the moment where a fighter confidently puts himself on one leg. In a pure wrestling exchange you would have to furiously exert yourself to claw a leg off the mat, but encourage the opponent to strike a little and they will give it to you for free. The lack of serious commitment to training kick catches into foot sweeps, counter strikes, and wrestling takedowns is obvious in MMA. Even in the last three months, I have seen fighters catch kicks in high level fights in the UFC and then look uncertain what to do with the opponent standing on one leg.

Eduard Folayang looked like a shadow of his former self at ONE Championship: Stamp vs Ham, but when he read Amir Khan’s step up left kicks correctly, he achieved effortless takedowns. He did nothing with them, but that is neither here nor there.

Fig. 3

A reminder that the whole ONE Champion: Stamp vs Ham card is available on Youtube.

Stamp Fairtex versus Seo Hee Ham was an open stance match up. Ham was the southpaw while Fairtex stood orthodox. Both threw powerful, rear leg round kicks at each other and poked with rear handed straight punches. While the rear leg round kick is the heavy artillery of striking, both fighters were able to land their best hurting blow of the bout by timing a step up the inside of the kick. Ham landed first, timing a left straight to the head up the inside of Fairtex’s right kick, performing a little block on the kick with her right hand as she did so.

Fig. 4

And later, Fairtex was able to end the bout by timing a right straight to the body inside of Ham’s left kick.

Fig. 5

A beautiful cut kick, taking advantage of the opponent’s round kick, also featured prominently in Menshikov vs Rungranwee. The Russian walked the Thai to the cage consistently and offensively counter struck well. When Rungranwee hesitated or covered up, Menshikov entered with strikes and tried to land folding elbows over the guard. When Rungranwee lashed out with his back to the fence, Menshikov made him pay more dearly. Figure 6 shows two offensive counters: first Menshikov cut kicks under a Rungranwee round kick, and secondly Menshikov throws the cross counter over the top of Rungranwee’s left straight. Both the cut kick and the cross counter benefit enormously from crowding an opponent, and the reads are easier to make if his back is to the fence and his feet are to the fire.

Fig. 6

Returning to the PFL Paris card, Abdoul Abdouraguimov did exactly what was expected of him in the co-main event. His opponent took the fight at short notice and had almost as many losses on his record as wins, but that is not The Lazy King’s fault. One neat feature of the bout was how Abdouraguimov recovered back control after losing it.

Figure 7 shows how Abdouraguimov initially took the back. His right hook is in but his left hook is not (a). This means that Wheeler can begin to slide his hips over Abdouraguimov’s left knee and put his back to the mat, hoping to recover guard (b).

Fig. 7

Figure 8 shows how Abdouraguimov used wrist control and bailed to top position. In (c), Abdouraguimov is losing Wheeler to his left side but keeps the left wrist grip. He places his head and elbow on the mat and heists his hips, coming up onto his knees (d). By retaining control of the wrist as he does so, he ends up on top of Wheeler with his arm passed under Wheeler’s back, creating that “Dagestani handcuff” handtrap and leaving Abdouraguimov in a great position to strike (e), (f).

Fig. 8

After a few punches which Wheeler struggled to defend, Abdouraguimov opted to transition to the back again and Figure 9 details this.

After punching, Abdouraguimov reaches through to take the claw grip on Wheeler’s left trapezius muscle (g). He brings his left foot up next to Wheeler’s head (h), and throws himself and Wheeler back into the space behind him (i), throwing his left hook in for full back control en route (j).

Fig. 9

Hokage Stops the Show

This writer’s favourite performance of the weekend came in the grappling world. At Polaris 25, Fabricio Andrey entered an open weight tournament where he was by far the smallest man, and he pulled a blinder.

At ADCC 2022, Andrey competed in the smallest weightclass, under 66kg. He was the smallest man to enter the ADCC 2022 Absolute bracket and met the towering heavyweight, Victor Hugo in the first round. We often reflect on how some fighters have skills and tactics that are better suited to competing up in weight, and Andrey has one of those in his wrestling. Not only is he surprisingly strong, he has mastered a position that is commonly a stalemate in no gi grappling. Andrey is brilliant off the “mercy” tie up: when two grapplers meet hands and interlace fingers. This is normally a stalling tie up, and some coaches will get angry if their grappler ends up falling into it, but Andrey uses it to hit beautiful duck unders that exaggerate his height “disadvantage”.  

Being shorter is awful for striking because a range disadvantage is a pain to navigate. Being shorter in grappling likely locks you out of triangle chokes, arm triangles and other lanky man moves. But being shorter does offer one small advantage: speed on the level change. Victor Hugo might tower over Fabricio Andrey, but Fabricio Andrey has a much smaller level change to get to Hugo’s hips or get his head into Hugo’s armpit.

At ADCC, Andrey put on an exciting performance but lost to Hugo anyway, going out of the Absolute tournament in the first round. At Polaris 25, he made it to the final beating the much larger judoka, Owen Livesy and the ADCC 2022 champion from two weightclasses up, Giancarlo Bodoni.

Andrey had to navigate his opponents’ front headlocks throughout, but his ankle picks and sneaky duck unders surprised both Livesy and Bodoni.

Against Bodoni, one neat piece of trickery came as Bodoni hit a “mollywhopper” style off balance from reverse de la riva. We examined Mateusz Szczecinski’s use of this a few months back. Essentially the guard player picks the passer’s ankle by turning from their inside hip to their outside hip. Here is a clip of Keenan Cornelius doing it twice against Romulo Barral.

Following the off balance the bottom man has to unravel his legs to stand up into an athletic, passing position. When Bodoni hit his off balance and put Andrey down to his rump, Andrey caught underneath Bodoni’s bottom foot and pulled it up into an ankle lace, locking Bodoni’s feet together and preventing him from coming up on top. This was a cool little detail not least because it was a practical application of an ankle lace in a submission grappling match.

Bodoni inverted and created a scramble where he came up holding a single leg, and this gave Andrey another chance to show off his level changing magic. As Bodoni looked to strip Andrey’s grip on his wrist and continue attacking, Andrey ankle picked the ADCC middleweight champ while hopping on one leg. This led to a scrambling sequence which ended with Andrey attacking Bodoni from the back bodylock.

It speaks to the quality of Fabricio Andrey’s no gi specific wrestling that Kaynan Duarte—the biggest man in the tournament and easy favourite to win—came out and sat to guard. Even then, Andrey scrambled up from a position where his back had been 90% taken, and immediately hit an uchi-mata that almost gave him points against a grappler at least thirty kilograms heavier than him.

Polaris 25 is up on UFC Fight Pass and even if you only watch Fabricio Andrey’s matches, it was a treat.