Sean O’Malley and the Art of the Cross Step

In A Filthy Casual’s Guide to Thomas Almeida vs Sean O’Malley we discussed the idea that Almeida was probably being set up. His issues with good straight hitters, good feinters, and good southpaws all seemed worrisome, and the fact that he hadn’t actually won a fight since 2016 didn’t fill gamblers with confidence either. So when Sean O’Malley went in and did the job there weren’t too many surprises. Yet the fight did serve as an excellent showcase of just what makes O’Malley a unique character on the mixed martial arts scene.

Switch hitters come in a lot of forms. There are those who have a favourite stance and switch occasionally for a trick play. There are those who switch between but divide their fights into southpaw and orthodox periods. And there are those who comfortably move between both-stringing together offence from both stances to create something that is greater than the sum of its parts. O’Malley falls comfortably into that last category as he plays both stances throughout a fight—circling and feinting and striking in order to hide his switches.

To see a great example of a stance switch set up, let us examine his intercepting back kick from round 1. O’Malley began in an orthodox stance (a), and side stepped out to his left, bringing his feet to level and creating some distance between himself and Almeida (b). He then stabbed his right foot in to feint an attack from southpaw, causing Almeida to recoil (c).

Fig. 1

This in itself is a neat enough trick and worth copying. In point fighting this is sometimes called the Switch 45—opening out the stance to the side and then cutting back in on the opposite stance. Yet O’Malley continued into a set up for a strike from orthodox position.

Fig. 1 (continued)

As Almeida recovered from reacting to the feint, O’Malley took a full step back onto the Molenkamp logo, into an orthodox stance again (d). As Almieda closed back in, O’Malley was already stepping across himself to line up his feet and blade his stance (e), enabling him to spin tightly into an intercepting counter back kick (f).

It was a terrific little sequence and aside from demonstrating the importance of movement in switch hitting, it brings us onto another area of switch hitting. Sheffield boxing coach, Brendan Ingle used to divide switch hitting further than just two stances, Ingle believed there were five. According to Ingle—who trained Herol Graham, Prince Naseem Hamed and Kell Brook—his fighters learned to box orthodox and southpaw, but from a more squared stance and a more bladed stance in both, as well as with the feet level in front of the opponent.

In boxing, blading the stance extends the jab—essentially making the fighter’s whole body a straight line—but places a greater distance between the rear hand and the opponent. In kickboxing and MMA, the more bladed stance is obviously extremely vulnerable to low kicks, but it is half way to the back kick, wheel kick and spinning backfist. If you can switch stances directly into the bladed stance, you have hidden the preliminary step-across motion that is so easy to read when most MMA fighters attempt a turning technique.

This brings us to the cross step. The golden rule of footwork is “don’t cross your feet,” for a plethora of reasons: you compromise your balance, you compromise your hitting power, and it’s just plain more cumbersome than the old athletic staple of “outside foot, inside foot.”

But with any rule there are exceptions and they tend to be eye-catching. Guillermo Rigondeux has used the cross step extensively throughout his career. By blading himself behind his lead shoulder, Rigondeux has been able to march around the ring using the cross step and try to sneak wide lefts around his opponents guard as he steps through to complete the movement.

But the applications of cross steps in boxing are somewhat limited. One of the best uses of a cross step came from Jersey Joe Walcott and succeeded precisely because it seemed to put Walcott in a disadvantageous position. Against Joe Louis and Ezzard Charles—two of boxing’s all time greats—Walcott would draw his lead foot back across himself and show them part of his back, before walking himself back out into a full length stance and turning back to face them. This incensed Louis who moved in to take free shots on a man who was completely out of position, but always ended up running onto a counter right hand instead.

Yet the cross step is a little more useful when turning techniques are permitted. After knocking out King Mo with a spinning backfist, Emmanuel Newton stood along the cage against Joey Beltran, repeatedly cross stepping as he circled—encouraging Beltran to enter. When Beltran did, the very same spinning backfist knocked Beltran out too.

O’Malley uses side steps and cross steps to set himself up for back kicks, and that backfist into high kick on the same side that he loves, but he also uses the cross step in the fashion of Rigondeux—to carry him out to the side. If you haven’t noticed O’Malley stepping across himself it is because he almost always hides it with his kicks.

Fig. 2

Figure 2 is taken from Sean O’Malley vs Eddie Wineland. Both men are orthodox, making the bout a closed guard match up (a). O’Malley throws a front kick with his right leg, then places it down in front of himself, on his centreline (b). This means that when he lands he isn’t in a great position to keep hitting, but he is in a great position to immediately push off that lead leg and retreat to his left (c), (d). You will recognize this drift back to the left as a common southpaw tactic for drawing out the opponent’s right hand and firing over the top of it in what we term the “open side counter”.

By dropping his lead foot so close to him, O’Malley is only really in a half length stance. In fact, the position that O’Malley first lands in when his foot returns to the floor is almost identical to the one that he and Conor McGregor use when performing long retreats to draw the opponent forward. That is retreating but drawing the lead foot back first and then driving off it, instead of moving the rear foot and then drawing the lead foot up to shorten the stance after the movement.

Figure 3 shows O’Malley using the same technique against Almeida, except this time he begins from an open guard position. In frame (c) you can see O’Malley’s landing position and how it is almost identical to the mid-point of that sort of galloping retreat wherein the lead foot is moved back first. You will also notice that against Wineland, O’Malley stepped out to the side, squaring his stance more to threaten the counter left hand. In this instance against Almeida, O’Malley retreats to a position with his feet on a line and his stance bladed, as if he is hoping to spin for a backfist or kick.

Fig. 3

This is a small difference in the angle he pushes his rear foot out as he resumes his stance, but it changes the strikes that he can access with the most ease and it is in this way that O’Malley uses his front kicks to hide his transitions between four of the five stances Brendan Ingle categorized. And it helps that the front kick in itself is so obnoxious for his opponents. They can’t just sit there and take it because he’ll stomp a hole in their gas tank, so most will try to push in on him or “get it back” when he lands. This is exactly how O’Malley scored the knockout against Almeida at UFC 260.

Fig. 4

In Figure 4, O’Malley throws the left front kick (b), brings it down close and across himself (c), but this time glides back to the left as he did against Wineland. Almeida shifts through to chase him and gets his chin checked with the left straight through the open side angle.

This knockout was the coming together of several elements of O’Malley’s game in perfect synchronicity, helped along by the perfect opponent. While the cross stepping and springing back off front kicks has been a feature of O’Malley’s game for a while, it takes some dexterity to pull off. While he hasn’t been caught with blows while out of position, the trade offs of cross stepping are still present—O’Malley slips and stumbles quite a lot. A couple of his fights have even been turned around by O’Malley seemingly injuring himself, but that has been discussed ad inifinitum at this point.

Whether you think he has world championship potential or is just a flash in the pan, Sean O’Malley’s style of striking contains a good few looks that you won’t see used by anyone else in the UFC at this point. The head whips to feign spinning techniques, the spinning backfists into same side high kicks, the punishing low line side kicks, all are worth studying just as much as the cross steps. The fact that in the course of studying him you get to watch one of the most exciting fighters in a division stacked with great talent is just a happy bonus.

While you’re in a switch hitting mood, take a look at our tribute to Marvelous Marvin - The Tao of Hagler.