The co-main event this weekend is a match up between two very different types of prospect. Sean O’Malley’s appeal is obvious and he is already as close to a star as the modern UFC seems capable of producing. There is a reason that he is a company favourite in spite of his troubles with USADA and his outspoken distaste for the Reebok deal. He throws flashy techniques, and scores spectacular knockouts with his crisp counter punching, while being “a bit of a character” to top it off.

At the heart of it, O’Malley is some good straight punching, some flashy kicks, and a greatly attuned sense of timing and anticipation. While he lacks a lot of the technical markers we look for in top tier “MMA boxing”, he still gets a lot of his work done with a deeper understanding of feints, drawing, and lateral movement. It is easy to draw comparisons between O’Malley’s fighting style and Conor McGregor’s in performances like the one he gave against Andre Soukhamthath—wherein O’Malley applied pressure, threw fancy kicks to rattle Soukhamthath, and then faded back to counter punch as Soukhamthath tried to swing his way off the fence. Though aside from the Soukhamthath fight, O’Malley has fought more out in the open and made use of point scoring front kicks and low line side kicks with the odd back kick or wheel kick thrown in.

But getting past the surface level McGregor comparisons, one key way that O’Malley distinguishes himself is as a competent and active switch-hitter, who moves between stances consistently and neatly. Often he will circle out the side door and come back in on the opposite stance, but just as often he will use his kicks as a means to change stance. Sometimes that means throwing a back kick or wheel kick and then dropping the kicking foot down and turning over his shoulder to face the opponent in a new stance. Other times he will use the front kick to the body to shift in—a move that this writer honestly believes every young fighter should be working into their arsenal.

With O’Malley the switch hitting is more than simply a feature, it is his entire fighting style. A great many fighters recognize that they aren’t going to get their weak side up to the level of their natural stance—particularly as a defensive platform—and this makes them hesitant to fire when they switch stances. They switch thinking that it will throw the opponent off and if anything it is the switch hitter who gets spooked. The longer you take to throw after switching stances, the further you get from actually surprising the opponent with your new positioning. Then there are those who only have a couple of looks from their weak stance—think of Pat Barry going southpaw to then only throw winging right hooks and left high kicks.

O’Malley’s greatest strength is that he changes stances, often while turning the opponent, and immediately throws. Sometimes it’s just one-twos or filler, but most of the time O’Malley shows understanding of the difference his stance makes to his lines of attack: he throws up his turning kicks and rear leg round kicks into the open side, or goes into the back of the lead leg or high over the lead shoulder. By fighting so actively and changing stances almost constantly he can actually make himself harder to read where so many fighters actually become easier to read when they switch.

A few weeks back we looked at Ilias Ennahachi’s false entries and how he used them especially effectively after hurting an opponent. The moment the referee gets out of the way, Ennahachi fakes an entry, gets his opponent’s honest response or disarms their Hail Mary counter, and then steps in for real to capitalize a beat later. It is a feint that Ennahachi shows throughout the fight anyway, but the moment his opponent is hurt it becomes ten times as effective. The same is true of O’Malley’s switch hitting. After chinning Jose Quinonez with a southpaw right hook, he swarmed in from orthodox and high kicked Quinonez over the shoulder for the finish. Likewise he dropped Soukhamthath with an orthodox pull counter, and immediately moved in to pursue the stoppage as a southpaw, throwing kicks into the open side and lancing him with left straights.

The comparisons between Sean O’Malley and Conor McGregor are not limited to their long stance and striking style, but are often drawn due to the seemingly unshakeable confidence O’Malley projects. This is where Marlon Vera draws a stark contrast: he doesn’t have the undefeated professional record and where O’Malley seems to know who he is and what he can do, Vera is still sort of working it out. While O’Malley’s potential is very obvious and well advertised, Vera is the darling of the undercard viewers.

From late 2018, Vera put on a streak of activity that resulted in some of the best performances of his career. Wuliji Buren, Guido Cannetti, Frankie Saenz, Nohelin Hernandez and Andre Ewell all met their end inside the distance against Vera. But with the exception of Saenz, all of those names are a little ho-hum. Vera got a real test of his improvements when he met China’s wunderkind, Song Yadong and gave him the toughest fight of his career, dropping a questionable decision in which the last six or seven minutes were Vera’s.

Vera is hardly a sniper on the feet—he switches stances as comfortably as O’Malley but gets cracked all the time as he does so, so that comfort might be a little foolhardy. But he takes an incredible shot and since working with Jason Parillo his jab has gotten sharper and he will actually move his head from time to time. Vera’s best weapons out in the open are certainly his kicks. But you will notice that I wrote “out in the open”, his best weapon on the feet is the clinch and he is one of a handful of consistently dangerous and effective clinch strikers in MMA.

When Vera fought Ewell he walked Ewell towards the fence, cut the cage on him, kicked his legs and body as he circled, and entered clinches beautifully. Whenever Vera could get his man to the fence he immediately posted the head and worked for either a double collar tie or an underhook.

The head post and underhook allow Vera to drive his opponent into an upright position while getting his own hips back, giving him some space through which he can throw the knee. Wrestling is the overwhelming threat in the clinch in MMA because if you get taken down you might lose a couple of minutes or even the full round trying to get back up. But for men like Vera and Matt Brown who strike effectively in the clinch first, the strikes create the openings for the trips. You need only look at the takedowns Vera scored on the very capable wrestler, Song Yadong just by getting him wincing with the knees first.

Hypothetical Gameplans

In many ways these two men seem built to test each other. Sean O’Malley is the master of range, excelling out in the open. Yet he is also somewhat at the mercy of the space because his style hinges entirely on movement and long retreats and jogs out to the side which he cannot do in confined spaces. He has slowed down and been caught near the fence more as his fights progress. He has also found himself stuck in clinches from time to time but only until his opponent drops on the leg. Then he will feed the single and run out to space. Marlon Vera excels in the clinch and in longer, harder fights, but is just so hittable and haphazard out at distance.

One of the things that will help O’Malley in the early going is just how slow Vera’s eyes seem to be. Similar to Justin Gaethje before he got his eye surgery, Vera seems to see blows coming just a little too late. A lot of Vera’s responses are drastic overreactions and this was particularly obvious when Song Yadong showed him feints. Vera also uses cover-ups extensively, which work in some contexts but make you a sitting duck if you just use them out in the open when the opponent shows you a jab or a feint. Here Ewell fakes his way in, Vera covers up with high forearms, and Ewell looks to land a body shot.

An adept feinter who can hide his work like O’Malley is going to look at that same defensive reaction on repeat and will likely to get to work feinting his way into big body shots and uppercuts, or knees and high kicks—just anything that he can find while Vera is handcuffed and his vision is obscured.

Then there is Chito Vera’s boxing which—in spite of Jason Parillo’s best efforts—still sees his head come up in the air as soon as he wants to throw anything more stern than a jab. It is especially obvious when Vera throws a kick and then loads his hands up at his chest, only to get cracked with a counter before he can step in with his follow up shot. This happened too often in the Yadong fight. Except where Yadong was a shorter, looping puncher, O’Malley is a rangey counter fighter likely to throw fastballs back down the centre.

For O’Malley then the plan should be clear. Keep the fight out in the open. Keep Vera circling and fighting into the middle of the cage. He is not nearly as effective there but he is just as confident and this results in a lot of openings for clean, telling blows. Kick the body, kick the head, kick to draw kicks and then throw in counter punches. Use the distance trap to get Vera lunging into space—head up in the air—and blast him with counter punches as he falls short.

If he feels confident O’Malley could also benefit from pushing Vera back towards the fence and applying a pressure counter-fighting type gameplan as he did for periods against Soukhamthath. If only because it keeps O’Malley’s back as far away from the opposite fence as possible.

Vera has an equally clear path to victory, it’s just that he has to get through that open space in order to do it. He seems to get better over the rounds—particularly after taking some of his opponent’s best shots and gaining some confidence (or perhaps simply slowing them down as they tire themselves out on his chin) so getting O’Malley into the second and third seems important.

Not only does Vera’s best work come against the fence, O’Malley’s best work is complicated by the fence because he requires so much room to manoeuvre when he’s cycling through his repetoire of spinny kicks and then running back three paces before jogging out the side door. He’s a lot easier to hit when he is limited to 180 degrees of possible movement. Quinonez did a good job getting O’Malley to the fence, and waiting out the direction changes while keeping O’Malley under pressure, but then ran his face straight onto a swing-and-hope check hook instead of working his way in effectively.

Vera should probably limit the amount lunging in with body hooks as he did against Ewell (who often fed him counters). But the kicking of the body and the legs—particularly his gouging teep to the stomach—would be perfect techniques against O’Malley. Body kicks to take away O’Malley’s puff and low kicks to hinder his mobility—which has seemed to work in previous bouts. With both men being switch hitters, Vera might do well to make chaos out of it and try to switch as often as O’Malley does. In terms of entering clinches, Closed Guard match ups are preferable but, of course, you can kick and shift from an Open Guard match up just as easily. There have been plenty of good switch hitters who suddenly become half as dangerous when their opponent is no longer a fixed stance to be scouted for openings.

If Vera can get into the clinches off his kicks and the odd punching combination along the fence he should invest heavily in the knees. Dropping on a leg gives O’Malley the chance to take a breather, to attack with Travis Browne style elbows, and to slip away and run back out into space. Knees and trips seem the best course for Vera because they provide a path where he can always be working without stalling and, in turn, keep the pace on O’Malley.

Of course, if you’re Vera it is very unlikely to go perfectly, and cutting the ring on O’Malley is not going to be easy. He’s a damn sight better at changing direction and faking his way off the cage than Andre Ewell. In which case, Vera’s work in the last round half of the Yadong fight could provide an answer. Against Ewell, Vera was able to wait on Ewell’s punches and duck into clinches, almost locking a head and arm choke from standing at one point. He wasn’t able to time Yadong like that and struggled with a speed disadvantage. But then he found a way to play with Yadong’s expections: he went forward, forced an ugly exchange, began to retreat away from it, and then closed to clinch with Yadong.

The act of going on the lead and annoying Yadong with a hard kick to the arm and a couple of haymakers forced Yadong to throw back. Vera fleeing the exchange fired Yadong up more and now he was chasing Vera out with wild combinations that he never would have offered up before.

This is not just a tactic to achieve the clinch either, this is something that is worth considering against any elusive ring general. Look no further than T.J. Dillashaw’s few successes against Dominick Cruz, and Cody Garbrandt’s subsequent masterclass. If you’re having no luck pursuing, let the other guy take a turn pursuing you. Even for savvy vets like Cruz it is very easy to fall into the back-and-forth dynamic and be tricked into leading. It is just something about how the human mind works: you could watch fights all your life and you wouldn’t see many where one fighter retreats and the other fighter responds by also retreating.

Of the two fighters, it seems like Vera has the harder task and it is complicated by his willingness to just go out and “have a go” in all stages of the fight, only to adapt in the later rounds, rather than pursue a clear gameplan from the beginning. Yet while we know Vera’s flaws and have seen him struggle and lose, O’Malley is a largely untested fighter. While ideally Vera wouldn’t be getting blasted in the face in the early going and rallying into the second and third rounds, more hard-hitting super-prospects have been derailed by old fashioned grit, stubbornness and conditioning than by good gameplanning.