If Henry Cejudo’s retirement announcement is genuine, his career will be one of the most bizarre and difficult to measure in the history of MMA. He edged Demetrious Johnson in a controversial decision, but Johnson fled to easier paydays in Asia and denied him the rematch. He beat T. J. Dillashaw, but in a strange flyweight fight where the bantamweight champion opted to dry himself out ten pounds more than usual. And on Saturday night, Cejudo fought his only bantamweight title defence against the great Dominick Cruz—three years removed from competition, on short notice, and over the many real contenders currently competing in the 135 pound weight class.

When Cejudo fought Demetrious Johnson the first time he was in no position to be a challenge. Few knowledgeable fans or pundits rated his chances and yet in the very early moments of the fight he hit on something very effective and gave this writer a momentary flash of hope. Cejudo pressured Johnson towards the fence and as Johnson collapsed his stance and started side-skipping with his feet level, Cejudo punted Johnson’s trailing leg. But Cejudo never went back to it, and when the two met for their rematch a few years later, Cejudo was playing the role of the Karate Hottie—fighting on the counter and trying to draw Johnson in.

Kicking the trailing leg is a brilliant strategy against fighters who use a good deal of lateral movement because they will abandon their stance to do so, coming up into a feet level position and side skipping or performing a more classical side step, until they set their feet in a stance again to engage. One of the ways that a fighter can force this movement out of his opponent is to back him towards the fence. The genius of men like Cruz is to get opponents swinging wildly at his head the moment they feel they have a chance—but the head can move and sway and chance levels. Once the fight gets close enough to the fence, the legs are on a set track.

Henry Cejudo moved Dominick Cruz to the cage from the get-go of their UFC 249 title fight, crowding the dancing master to the fence—removing his retreat and forcing him to try and step out the side door. Where so many great fighters had got this far and then blown it all swinging for Cruz’s elusive head, Cejudo kept attacking his trailing leg.

Kicking the trailing leg on the side step combined perfectly with Cejudo’s general low kicking strategy throughout the bout—which was to force the backward shift and then attack the new lead leg. In Absolute Masterclass: Garbrandt vs Cruz we examined the back and forth bouncing that Cruz does—bouncing back into a short southpaw stance between each feint or movement. He uses this in-and-out with his lead leg to draw low kicks and swings at his head then is nowhere to be found as the opponent commits. After his first low kick, to Cruz’s leading left leg, almost every low kick Cejudo threw was a deep stepping kick to Cruz’s right leg as Cruz jumped back.

But Cejudo tempered his aggression well throughout the bout. When he wasn’t crowding with the goal of punishing Cruz’s leg, he was stepping back and giving Cruz the room to blow off some steam ineffectively. An ideal Cruz performance sees an aggressive opponent chasing or following him around the ring and Cruz bamboozling them with feints, slapping them with single shots, and stepping out the side door before they can return. Yet Cejudo did exactly the same thing we examined Garbrandt doing in that Absolute Masterclass piece: he took away angles before Cruz could create them and gave Cruz the choice of breaking off the attack or trying to run up the centre of Cejudo’s guard with none of the striking science.

The above example is interesting because it shows Cruz trying to bump into a southpaw stance and slide down the side of Cejudo’s lead leg to acquire an angle. In this instance Cejudo slides back to his right, creating space and placing Cruz back at twelve o’clock. But this move was one of the major developments in Cejudo’s striking a few years ago—he would adopt whichever stance he needed to be in open guard with the opponent, then spiral back to the inside of their lead foot and try to counter them as they followed. Wilson Reis got chewed up in this way, Demetrious Johnson quickly abandoned boxing and focused on Cejudo’s lead leg to avoid the counter punches. In fact, while we’re on the subject it is worth noting that Cejudo’s method of sliding back and withdrawing from low kicks in his stance worked far better in this fight than it did in his bouts with Johnson and Moraes.

Returning to the offensive portion of Cejudo’s strategy: one of the problems T.J. Dillashaw ran into while trying to low kick Dominick Cruz was that Cruz would try to take him down off even successful kicks. Cejudo seemed well aware that this was Cruz’s means of deterring the low kick, and his sprawl was cat-like each time Cruz grabbed a leg. Cejudo also returned the favour by ducking in on a high crotch when Cruz overstepped. This led to a beautiful little sequence where Cruz scrambled to his base, built up to his feet, got one arm underneath Cejudo’s and threw himself forward into a hip heist, turning back into Cejudo and shucking him off as he tried to switch to a front headlock. For all the time off and Cejudo having Cruz’s number, Cruz is still a damned hard man to control on the mat.

It was clear that Cejudo was looking for the knee throughout the bout, he would throw it after sprawling out on a Cruz leg grab, but he also entered on single legs, climbed to a body lock, and then tried to knee the taller man as Cruz threw his hips back. Throughout the bout Cruz had been throwing and dipping low as he stepped out the side door. A beautiful example came in the first round as Cruz came out of his launchpad to score a southpaw counter right uppercut—a very tricky punch—slipping inside a jab as he did so and weaving low as he angled out to Cejudo’s side on the exit.

Cruz has spoken about Willie Pep’s influence on his game, and the uppercut to deep weave was a Pep favourite. There is something about coming from below and then tracing the path of the uppercut in reverse with your head that works so wonderfully. A large part of it is that if you hit the opponent with the uppercut they will likely be straightened up by the blow and if you miss it is probably because they were already standing tall. Uppercutting while upright without a slight level change is an unnatural and exposed feeling at the best of times, it is even stranger to try and do it on the counter in the moment.

The wonderful thing about knee strikes in this regard is that it helps to be upright to throw them. Cejudo, far back in his karate stance, let the uppercut fall short and knowing that Cruz’s head would be weaving low, nailed him with the knee at the perfect time. The stoppage has been the cause of some debate but honestly, all it did was rob us of a few more rounds of a wonderful gameplan on Cejudo’s part. There were elements of Garbrandt’s plan there—giving ground and denying the angles and intercepting when Cruz was committing to the extra step—but the pressure fighting and the use of the fence at Cruz’s back was entirely Cejudo’s. By removing Cruz’s retreat he contained Cruz to moving his feet along one plane, and guaranteed that Cruz would be stuck trying to side step and weave to get out of exchanges, rather than sliding by with those jabs and darts that he puts on more confused opponents.

If he calls it quits here, just how good a bantamweight was Henry Cejudo? I don’t think it is unfair to say due to the timings of his fights and the strange circumstances of a few, we don’t really know. But I hope you have enjoyed the Olympic wrestler turned ikken-hissatsu karate-boxer while he lasted: you won’t get another.