Lessons from Makhachev – Tsarukyan 1

 When Islam Makhachev and Arman Tsarukyan met for the first time, Makhachev was a known problem and Tsarukyan was a mystery. What unfolded in their fifteen minutes in the cage was remarkable. They might as well have been sent from the future to show us what MMA should be in another twenty years. And yet they were both still young prospects with time to grow.

Now, five years on from their original meeting, we get to see the two rematch for the UFC lightweight title. Let us take a look at some of the notable tactics and habits both showed in their first fight.

Striking in the Clinch

Randy Couture believed that pummeling was the key to mixed martial arts, and his success with this philosophy lead to a general belief that Greco Roman wrestling was the “best base” for MMA for quite a while. Pummeling in principle is exchanging one control or grip for another. Most commonly pummeling means digging for underhooks, but the idea can be extended to other controls and the devilish details of modern guard passing and leg lock work is in “leg pummeling.”          

Couture himself stressed the importance of pummeling for grips while using strikes. Most of his fights involve him grabbing a collar tie with one hand, scoring a few uppercuts with the other, and then switching to holding the head with that hand for a few more. But in Makhachev vs Tsarukyan 1, the use of strikes to lubricate the pummeling for controls was a little sneakier.

When the two men hit the over-under clinch, Makhachev would begin digging with his knee to ribs on the side that Tsarukyan had the underhook. If Tsarukyan tried to move Makhachev around to keep his feet on the mat, Makhachev would start hacking away with short uppercuts on the same side. These successfully irritated Tsarukyan to the point that he tried to block them. He could not block with his underhooking arm because that was already committed to its own task. Instead Tsarukyan brought his overhooking arm across to block his midriff.

Fig. 1

At this point Makhachev used his own overhooking hand to grip Tsarukyan’s wrist or glove. He successfully used this grip as a handle to help off balance and rotate Tsarukyan into a textbook sasae-tsurikomi-ashi which carried him straight into mount.

Fig. 2

Makhachev was able to secure the wrist and attempt this throw twice before Tsarukyan sought to deny him the grip altogether. Yet there was still the problem of the knees and uppercuts. Tsarukyan attempted to raise his knee to close off the path to his body, but had to stand on one foot in order to do so. Having only one leg to hop on, Makhachev hit him with the same sasae-tsurikomi-ashi, to the same success.

Fig. 3

Finesse in the clinch was not a one-way street though. Tsarukyan showed some tricks of his own. Figure 4 shows a deceptively simple, slightly risky tactic that you will see fighters use successfully at all levels.

Fig. 4

Tsarukyan uses his overhooking (right) hand to block across Makhachev’s hips and prevent the knees to the body (a). In the process, Tsarukyan has stooped over at the waist and is obviously open to be kneed in the face. But knees cannot be thrown without a change of balance. Makhachev steps his right foot into the middle (c), and Tsarukyan is already drawing his framing hand back ready to stand up (d), catch the leg under the knee, and attempt to throw Makhachev to the mat (e).

In this way strikes in the clinch bridge a gap between wrestling and judo. From a wrestling perspective they facilitate pummeling to a better position. And from a judo perspective they can often be drawn out as a form of kuzushi or off-balancing technique. For instance, Makhachev is famous for his overhook throws off the fence. This one against Charles Oliveira is a great example because he does not get his optimum grip on the wrist, but uses a couple of needling knees to the body to get Oliveira to throw back. As soon as Oliveira launches his own knee, Makhachev is already leaning Oliveira into the space underneath his raised leg and attacking the throw.

Fig. 4

Butterflies / Elevators

Makhachev’s recent success as a striker has not made anyone forget what he is really about: smothering top control. There have been just a few opponents who have found some success getting out from underneath Makhachev, and the fact that Tsarukyan did not get held down until late into the third round was remarkable at the time of the first fight.

Tsarukyan’s success from the bottom had a common factor with Alexander Volkanovski’s and Mansour Barnoaui’s: it took place out in the open mat. When Tsarukyan attempted to wall walk in this bout, Makhachev sat on his legs and stalled him out in the seated position. When Tsarukyan was out in the open, he was able to use the space to create scrambles.

Another important feature of Tsarukyan’s bottom game was his use of butterfly hooks. Butterfly sweeping Makhachev onto his back is almost an absurd prospect, but Tsarukyan was able to use his butterflies to draw Makhachev’s weight onto him, and then throw it away from him and get to his knees.

Fig. 5

Figure 6 shows the key moments of the exchange. Makhachev has a good underhook (a), but Tsarukyan is able to use the overhook as he elevates Makhachev. Between the butterfly elevation and Makhachev sprawling, Makhachev lands on his knees, but his hips are a good distance from Tsarukyan (b). This gives Tsarukyan the space to turn to all fours, but crucially Tsarukyan has wrist control on Makhachev (c). If Makhachev had control of Tsarukyan’s bottom wrist instead, Tsarukyan would have a hard time getting to his elbow and then up to his knees. Makhachev has to settle for the front headlock and Tsarukyan wrestles his way up.

Fig. 6

While this likely played out in the moment and was not a specific “technique” that Tsarukyan was looking for, it is an example of a time that is advantageous to break one of MMA’s foundational rules. It has long been said that when you attempt to get up off the bottom you want an underhook. The overhook get up seems to be catching on, particularly off attempted or “failed” butterfly sweeps.

When Makhachev took Alexander Volkanovski down in the fifth round of their first fight, Volkanovski used the reverse butterfly sweep / cross elevator to throw Makhachev’s weight off him (b), (c). Makhachev was far from “swept” but it did give Volkanovski the space to get to his elbow, then to his hand, and build up to the front headlock with the overhook.

Fig. 7

More on the reverse butterfly sweep in my Linton Vassell Film Room.

When Volkanovski used his “head into the ringpost” defence with Makhachev behind him, Makhachev ended up tripping Volkanovski down on top of him, and Volkanovski was able to turn over into the overhook and stand up again.

Fig. 8

The brilliant fight between Charles Oliveira and Arman Tsarukyan saw Oliveira use the same overhook butterfly sweep as Tsarukyan did against Makhachev. One interesting aspect of this sweep attempt was that Oliveira used double overhooks to hold Tsarukan, then caught Tsarukyan’s wrist against his chest in a “hand on heart” sort of control as Tsarukyan attempted to slip the overhook and deliver an elbow.

Fig. 9

The reason you do not see everyone attempting to butterfly sweep Makhachev all the time is two-fold. Firstly, almost everyone thinks the wall walk is a safer bet to get up—an idea that seems to be crumbling further with every new cage wrestling savant that comes along. Secondly, Makhachev is actually very good at guard passing out in the open and he likes to ride butterfly elevations into what BJ Penn called the “dope mount”. You will also see this called a smash pass, a folding pass, or occasionally a leg weave.

Figure 10 shows a butterfly elevation from later in the fight. Makhachev is able to ride the sweep and switch his hips through so that he lands on top of the outside of Tsarukyan’s extended leg. Before, Makhachev’s weight landed next to Tsarukyan. This time Makhachev is very much on top of him.

Fig. 10

Many fighters and grapplers have used the dope mount / folding pass position. Marcus ‘Buchecha’ Almeida has won all the titles you can win in the gi using it. For guys who invite the butterfly sweep in order to ride it into the dope mount, you have the holy trinity of BJ Penn, Demian Maia, and Roger Gracie.

There is an old saying that there is “nothing new under the sun.” When you start talking about the kimura, some dork turns up to tell you its a double wrist lock from catch wrestling. Names do not really matter though, techniques come and go and trend in answer to each other. The butterfly guard as a scramble-maker is just the elevator that was common in amateur wrestling back in the sixties and seventies. Here is the all time great pinner, Wade Schalles, using a butterfly sweep to win the 1969 Philadelphia state championship.

While it is not strictly butterfly offense, I would be remiss to not point out that Tsarukyan did something I have seen maybe a handful of times ever to get out from underneath Makhachev later in the fight. As Makhachev sprawled over his butterfly hook and into a half guard, Tsarukyan turned in, grabbed inside Makhachev’s thigh and powered his way up on a head outside single leg by basically doing a Turkish get up with a man attached.

Fig. 11

You will see weirder fighters like Linton Vassell and Rani Yahya use head outside singles from their knees, but they don’t just explode up out of bottom half guard like this. Maybe not something anyone else will ever be able to use, but notable.

Arman’s Lack of Open Stance Options

The first fight is remembered for the scrambles and the long periods of clinch work, and this did not leave a great deal of time for striking at range. In the few moments that did unfold on the feet it was hard to ignore that Tsarukyan struggled with the open stance match-up presented by the southpaw Makhachev.

This merits even more attention when you account for the level of success Tsarukyan has had on the feet in the five years since. His left hook is lightning quick on the counter—as Christos Giagos was told once he woke up—and his left leg kicking game stands out as both powerful and dexterous, which is unusual on an orthodox fighter. Yet since the Makhachev fight, Tsarukyan has met just two southpaws (Aubin-Mercier and Beneil Dariush), and encountered brief moments of it against the switch-hitting Mateusz Gamrot.

The complete extent of Tsarukyan’s striking against Makhachev was using the shifting right hook to chase him back. Volkanovski had success doing the same thing in his first fight against Makhachev, until it became apparent that against a southpaw this was going to be a solid 85% of his output.

In the gif below you will see two identical moments from different points in the fight, wherein Tsarukyan throws a right hand, steps through into a second right hand (now his lead hand), and then throws a left high kick. One quirk of Tsarukyan is that because he can kick high, he feels as though he always should. A left low kick after the shift might have served him much better in the long run.

Fig. 12

Tsarukyan’s next southpaw was in his very next fight, Olivier Aubin Mercier. The tactics had not developed much, it was shifting right hands and high kicks that did not do much but hide the wrestling, where Tsarukyan comfortably won the fight.

Mateusz Gamrot switched to southpaw for moments in his fight with Tsarukyan, and Tsarukyan took that as a visual trigger to throw the right kick to the body. As his most effective offence comes from his left side, it is likely that Tsarukyan is a left handed orthodox fighter, which might explain why he often looks less comfortable running up into his right kick. Gamrot was able to begin cross checking later in the fight and used that to try to catch the kick, as Makhachev did on the few occasions Tsarukyan threw it at him.

Fig. 13

But it is hard to ignore that in December 2023, Tsarukyan met the only other southpaw on his record and obliterated him on the feet. Beneil Dariush is the quintessential southpaw: he makes his living off the left kick, the left overhand, the left straight, and the odd sneaky right jab. In that fight, Tsarukyan came out jabbing—something he didn’t use at all against the other southpaws he fought—and finally stepped in to swing a big right hand against the guard, grab the double collar tie, and score the Andy Ristie special: knee and same side punch on the way down.

Dariush is a fantastic name to have on your record, but the fight did not tell us much. Not only was it over fast, but Dariush did almost nothing but stand still and hold his gloves high. The jury is out on whether Dariush has suddenly become old, but Arman Tsarukyan vs southpaws is still largely a mystery coming into this rematch with Makhachev. As is his ability to deal with Makhachev’s one-size-fits-all answer of simply taking a step back whenever Tsarukyan started swinging.

In terms of raw talent, you might never find a better match up in the history of the UFC lightweight division than Makhachev vs Tsarukyan. Yet in the first fight is seemed that Makhachev’s patience and methodical attitude paid dividends while Tsarukyan ran out of ideas and became predictable and tired at around the same time.

If you’re all grappled out and just want to talk about hitting people, check out my recent striking-heavy articles on Yothin, Carlos Prates, or Yuki Yoza.