On Saturday night, Stephen ‘Wonderboy’ Thompson met Kevin Holland in a fight that had many fans feeling apprehensive. Holland was taller and longer than Thompson. In fact, he was just “bigger”: a middleweight cutting down to welterweight. Holland also seemed to have Thompson beaten for raw hitting power. And Thompson, aged thirty-nine, had looked nothing like the elusive ring general of his prime in his last two showings. It seemed to be one of those “pass the torch” or “give the rub” type set ups.

Except ‘Wonderboy’ came out and put on the fight of his life, and now I’m going to wax lyrical about it.

The Constant Collar Tie

Holland’s most significant threat to Thompson throughout this fight proved to be not his jab but rather his collar tie. Each time Thompson engaged, Holland might not have been slick enough to crack him with a dynamic left hook but he could fumble his left hand to the back of Thompson’s head and use it as reference for a right elbow. This collar tie elbow has been a Holland staple in recent years and against Thompson it made Holland a threat as soon as an exchange extended beyond pot shotting from the outside. With Holland’s height advantage and Thompson’s desire to duck out of the collar tie, knees were also a serious threat from this collar tie position.

Figure 1 shows a sequence that played out repeatedly in this bout: Holland would back Thompson up towards the fence, Thompson would flurry with straights to back Holland off, and Holland would grab the collar tie and throw an elbow. In this example Thompson is quick to duck the elbow and shuck the collar tie off his head in the same motion (d,e).

Fig. 1

The moment of adversity that defined the first round for Thompson came as he switched to orthodox and was hit with a prompt right hand. As Thompson reeled from the shot, Holland slapped on a collar tie and scored some right hands and a knee which did some visible damage to Thompson’s face. In that first collar tie clinch and others through the bout, Thompson could be seen making use of an overtie to stifle Holland’s striking. Figure 2 shows the overtie position.

Fig. 2

We are all familiar with the 50/50 collar ties that many fighters adopt under fire: if the opponent has his left hand on your head, you get your left hand on his head on the other side and you both start throwing right hands like Frye and Takayama. This tends to work out with the man who was already stunned getting hurt even worse.

By adopting the over tie with his right hand: grabbing the head over Holland’s left hand rather than a collar tie on the opposite side, Thompson’s left hand was free to grab or block Holland’s right hand to prevent the elbow.

Figure 3 shows Thompson pulling Holland in tight with the overtie and seizing his free hand at the wrist, before circling off the fence and ducking his head out of Holland’s collar tie as Holland’s arm extends.

Fig. 3

Thompson was clearly prepared for Holland’s collar tie elbow because Holland went to it in every exchange and Thompson managed to get away largely free from damage after that brush with disaster in the first round.

Stepping Up the Middle

This fight was the first time in a long time that Stephen Thompson has competed with a height and reach disadvantage. He has fallen in love with lean-back counter hooks in recent years and he’s had great fun making shorter fighters fall onto them. Against Holland he was always going to have to do a bit more work to get up to Holland’s chin.

The trick Wonderboy used was the classic intercepting counter. He got Holland kicking and stepped up the inside to chin him with a good left straight while he was on one leg. It worked incredibly well at every phase in the bout. While trying to find decent examples for this article I collected over a dozen clips of Thompson drawing Holland into leading with a kick, and then lunging up the centre as Holland committed himself.

Figure 4 shows Thompson stepping up the inside as Holland glides in behind a faked side kick.

Fig. 4

While Figure 5 shows Thompson stepping up the inside as Holland attempts to pot shot him with a step up low kick.

Fig. 5

The remarkable part of this fight was that despite Holland being the bigger, rangier man and a more severe hitter than Thompson, he was readily drawn into periods of slappy kick-for-kick point fighting on the outside. At times this fight resembled a 1970s karate bout with both men flicking out side kicks at each other, until Thompson—and it was always Thompson—used this dynamic to score a great counter punch.

Figure 6 shows one of the annoying step up low kicks Thompson used to draw Holland into this kind of outside kicking contest.

Fig. 6

Especially in the early rounds, Holland could reliably be coaxed into kicking back. This made Thompson’s job much easier on the counter. Figure 7 shows Thompson performing a step up low kick to Holland’s lead leg, and Holland immediately responding in kind only to walk onto an easy left hand from Thompson.

Fig. 7

And just because my cup runneth over with examples, Figure 8 shows exactly the same thing from yet another angle.

Fig. 8

The Side Kick

There is no one in MMA using the side kick as effectively as Stephen ‘Wonderboy’ Thompson. There are lots of fighters capable of throwing one—even Michael Chandler has thrown a powerful side kick from time to time—but few fighters stand in a way that makes the technique easy to “get to”. Even Thompson isn’t really in position to throw out the side kick all the time, he has to sneak himself into it. Figure 9 shows a typical example.

Fig. 9

Thompson has shortened his stance and put himself in a bladed position, he has lightened his lead leg and is standing sturdy on his rear leg (a, b). He draws his foot up, coiling his lead leg and pointing the sole of his foot at Holland (c). This is a notable departure from traditional side kicking wherein the knee is coiled high with the foot facing the ground.

Thompson’s side kick is heavily influenced by old point fighting styles and you will see the Raymond Daniels and Michael ‘Venom’ Pages of the world use this in point fighting tournaments as a “defensive side kick” or “D-side”. It’s a short kick that checks the opponent at the abdomen as they advance. But while the technique is built around the idea of economy of motion and straight line hitting, even successful side kicks often result in Thompson having to make major positional adjustments. In the above example he hits Holland clean and still ends up turning his back.

In Figure 10, Thompson bends Holland in half at the waist with a great defensive side kick as Holland advances, but ends up exposing his back and has to step wide with his lead leg (d) and perform a huge pivot around it (e, f) to get Holland back in front of him.

Fig. 10

With that being said, Thompson’s side kick is sneaky. Because he is using it as an intercepting counter into the midsection, his opponents soon slow down. Thompson had landed about ten good kicks to the body in this fight when Holland visibly began to wilt. The other upside of the defensive side kick is that while you might be ricocheted off your opponent and have to run out of range to recover in the early going, the opponent won’t keep running through the side kick forever and soon you are offensive side kicking rather than defensive side kicking. In rounds three and four, Thompson was no longer intercepting a charging opponent but going to a stationary one, and it was here that he was able to use the side kick to set up his famous hook kick.

Figure 11

Kicking with Creativity

It was Thompson’s creative offence with his legs that provided the flashier moments of this bout. In round one he demonstrated the pairing that was going to score big for him: he threw a high kick, and then moments later he looked high and kicked Holland in the body. This double attack would come back in rounds three and four to seriously hurt Holland. It worked because Thompson kept kicking Holland’s arm or face with legitimate high kicks (Figure 12.)

Fig. 12

And then when Thompson kicked the body, he did his best to project everything upwards. He kicked from a long stance and rose up onto his lead leg, he looked up, and even threw his hands up. Figure 13 is taken from the slow motion replay of the kick that winded Holland in round four and you can see just how much acting Thompson is doing before turning the kick over low.

Fig. 13

Fig. 14

As the fight entered its final stages, Holland backed himself onto the fence and Thompson was left to try and find a big shot to end the bout. This is somewhere that Thompson has struggled in the past. Wonderboy hasn’t finished anyone since 2016 and it is not for lack of well timed counters. Much of the job of becoming a good finisher is mopping up once the other man is wounded or tired and is going to fight to not get stopped. Hurting connections are a lot more forthcoming when the other man is opening up and coming forward, focusing on his own ideas. Once they go into a shell, even very slick strikers can struggle.

As Holland hit the fence, Thompson took his chance to work more from an orthodox stance. He had been hurt going orthodox in round one and only went to it momentarily through the second and third rounds. When he went orthodox he found himself in an closed stance position with Holland and this is where Thompson goes for his wheel kick. One aspect of Thompson’s game that I particularly admire is the way that he throws a wheel kick, plants his kicking foot, and immediately leaps in with a punch. It is a great way to take advantage of the opponent recovering his nerve after a big kick, and it keeps the missed wheel kick from becoming a liability. Rather than miss and run away, Thompson essentially steers into the skid.

Fig. 15

Fig. 16

We briefly touched on the fact that Thompson can side kick better than anyone else in MMA because the side kick fits into his game better than anyone else. Thompson is a very curious fighter because his stylistic choice can lock him out of some techniques, and others that make sense for him he just doesn’t like. For instance, his bladed, side on stance makes him great at side kicking and spinning, but it means that he seldom uses the rear leg front kick to the body even though he has a very respectable one. He put it in against Johnny Hendricks in 2016 and scored it during his three minutes of non-stop offence against Holland along the cage.

Then there are his whims. He loves the side kick but refuses to use the low line side kick because he seems to think it’s ungentlemanly. He loves to spin for wheel kicks but almost never throws a back kick to the body. But his constant willingness to spin also means that when he steps his feet onto a straight line in front of you, you have to respect it. As he was trying to put Holland away, Wonderboy took a break from wheel kicking, stepped in with his feet on a line as if to spin again, and threw a regular high kick. His lead foot was deep on the inside angle of Holland’s, and his hips couldn’t turn nearly as well into the kick, but the set up meant it landed.

While Thompson couldn’t get the stoppage outright, we were treated to a rare bit of compassionate corner work as Holland’s coaches threw in the towel before round five. The bout will most certainly be a contender for Fight of the Year, and—though I hope this is not true—it may be the last truly great performance we see out of one of MMA’s most remarkable and unusual strikers.