Rose Namajunas: Long and Short Rhythm

With Rose Namajunas getting another crack at the UFC straw-weight crown this weekend, now seems as good a time as any to explore one of fighting’s more abstract concepts. Every fighter you speak to will have something to say about “rhythm,” but few can elaborate much on the idea more than a sort of feeling. That is fair enough—you can’t learn to dance by reading about it nor fight by talking about it—but it does seem like rhythm has a different meaning to each fighter you ask. Sugar Ray Robinson tried to set it down in words once and gave us the terrific line : “It all starts with your heart, and if that isn’t in rhythm you’ve got bigger problems.”

You will occasionally see reference to an idea of “long rhythm” fighters and “short rhythm” fighters. This refers to the way a fighter keeps himself in motion between engagements—their “idle animation” if you will. Long rhythm fighters bounce forward and back where short rhythm fighters will bob their head and shoulders from side to side.

It is not a very fleshed out notion but the connection is that both fighters are transferring their weight from foot to foot, whether that’s a long bounce or a short side-to-side slipping of the head. There isn’t much to be gained from trying to categorize fighters into one rhythm or the other, but to better appreciate Rose Namajunas we have to discuss how she uses both.

When Namajunas is on the outside and doing her best work, the right foot—her rear foot—is often acting as an anchor and it is her lead foot that is bouncing in and out of range as she shifts her weight between her lead foot and her rear one. This would be that “long rhythm.” An extreme example of long rhythm would be Dominick Cruz bouncing from orthodox back to his southpaw “launchpad” position that we discussed in Absolute Masterclass: Garbrandt vs Cruz.

Perhaps the longest rhythm you could imagine would be the ginga of capoeira. A cycling between southpaw and orthodox, swaying from foot to foot in rhythm—often with musical accompaniment. That is why capoeira is the “dance-fight game.” Each step can set up a number subsequent movements or lock a player out of others until he is back on the other side—it is the most extreme example of using rhythm as a running start. We could use the example of MMA capoeirista, Marcus Aurelio here, or an instance of Anderson Silva throwing a ginga into his bouts, but why not extend that idea of an “idle animation” by using everyone’s favourite capoeirista, Eddy Gordo from Tekken.

But to return to Namajunas’ own application of long rhythm, here is a small example against Joanna Jedrzejczyk in their second fight. Jedrzejczyk was well aware of just how fast Namajunas could close the distance at this point, but Namajunas was still able to have her snatching at shadows with false entries.

By bouncing the lead foot in and out from beyond striking range—as Namajunas, Dom Cruz and a few others do—the fighter is often leaving his stance and adding an additional step to every attack. Yet the large in-and-out motion is established as a non-threat the more it is repeated. This allows the fighter to take a running start into an actual attack and catch the opponent sleeping. Rewatching the first fight between Namajunas and Joanna Jedrzejczyk three things are noticeable. The first is the amount of movement Namajunas uses. The second is that this movement causes Jedrzejczyk to swing at air a lot more than against more “honest” opponents like Gadelha, Andrade and Kowalkiewicz. And finally, it is astonishing how Namajunas establishing a pattern of movement allows her to walk right in and crack Jedrzejczyk on the chin without triggering the razor sharp reactions of the then champ.

The act of stabbing the lead foot in and then retracting is a type of false entry and it doesn’t look like a whole lot but it opens just as many doors as a feint without having to be particularly convincing. You don’t have to establish a step in, it’s something you’re going to do any time you attack. To see more examples of false entries in action have a read of Ilias Ennahachi: Fake Entries and Enzuigiris. Ennahachi uses false entries especially well after knocking an opponent down—they know he is going to swarm in, so Ennahachi uses a false entry to draw out their best shot before going in for real.

False entries are also an irreplaceable tool against the current obsession with calf kicking in mixed martial arts. The same is true against the low line side kick and oblique kick. Any technique where the opponent is relying on timing a swipe at the lead leg becomes a lot more difficult when the lead leg is only in range for moments at a time. Namajunas has whipped the rug out from underneath everyone from Jessica Andrade—who never low kicks but did so out of frustration with the elusive target Namajunas was presenting—to the masterful low kicker, Joanna Jedrzejczyk. But more than that, there is nothing to say Namajunas has to advance her foot to the same position every time. This means that if the opponent seems to be trying to time the low kick, Namajunas can step in on an angle, pointing her knee into the kick and timing a good right hand as the kick rides up.

Namajunas using her movement to draw poorly timed side kicks out of Michelle Waterson. You will recall that it was a misplaced kick that allowed Namajunas to sneak down the side of Waterson’s stance and knock her down.

One notable feature in Namajunas’ game is that when she retreats she retracts the lead leg first, and often when she is bouncing in and out the rear foot is serving as an anchor. This recalls something Jimmy Wilde wrote in his Art of Boxing—that the rear foot should be moved as little as possible. Both Wilde and Namajunas make extensive use of that galloping retreat, wherein the lead foot retracts into the stance and then the rear foot is pushed back to re-establish the stance.

We discussed this same galloping retreat in some detail in Sean O’Malley and the Cross Step.

Additionally, the retraction of the lead leg allowed Namajunas to square up and frame off Jessica Andrade when Andrade pursued clinches or reached in for the high crotch attempt. When Jon Jones fought Daniel Cormier this was his first line of defence against the wrestler attempting to perform a snatch single or duck into the high crotch.

Namajunas’ other “mode” is more reliant on that idea of short rhythm. By setting her feet in a stance, and having some distance between her feet in the lateral plane, Namajunas places herself in position to move her head as her weight rocks from foot to foot.

It is in switching seamlessly from the narrow, bladed stance to the spread out stance that Namajunas can combine her darting in and out and slips-to-counters so successfully. Where the first Joanna Jedrzejczyk fight was one dominated by Namajunas’ quick closes from the outside, a large portion of the second bout was won with counter punching flurries from this more squared, slipping stance.

It is from the more squared position that Namajunas gets to work her right hand leads. Typically her right hands from the outside are winging overhands off her closing jab, or winging overhands on the counter as her opponent steps to her.

When Namajunas moves into a closer range and spreads her base, she likes to square her shoulders and show the right hand lead in order to coil her hips and shoulders to follow up with the jab. Sometimes she will time the opponent and shoot a crisp inside right. Or she will use the right hand lead purely to gain a response and then counter with a left hook. But the right hand lead mainly sets the table for a follow up left hand, often on the pivot.

The task ahead of Rose Namajunas this weekend is a tough one. In Zhang Weili she faces an opponent who was powerful enough to knock out Jessica Andrade in a firefight, but sharp enough to go counter for counter with Joanna Jedrzejczyk. And while Namajunas brings a lot of looks, she has a real tendency to stand closer and get greedier in exchanges as the fight progresses. This is likely exacerbated by the fact that the long distance work, built around false entries, is more energy consuming. Furthermore, Namajunas had the life sucked out of her in the clinch by Karolina Kowalkiewicz. As Weili is such a force in the clinch this might take closing to smother off the table for Namajunas and force her to focus exclusively on hitting and exiting each time— a far more taxing game than if you can just fall into the clinch from time to time without worrying about it.

The key to victory for Namajunas here seems like it could be drawing Zhang Weili into the kind of awkward kickboxing work she did on the outside against Tecia Torres and Danielle Taylor. Those fighters were a full foot shorter than Weili and—while her repeated use of the inside low kick to side kick was interesting—she didn’t get a whole lot done. Where Weili is a force on the inside her long range weapons are decidedly less fight-changing than Namajunas’ long entries to stiff right hands have been. Drawing Zhang into a long range kickboxing match, scoring good long leads and counters when Zhang is on one leg, and then punctuating it with the surprising inside flurries sounds like the smartest goal for Namajunas.