Ilia Topuria vs Max Holloway -

The Tactical Guide

Alexander Volkanovski was racking up title defences while Max Holloway was relegated to the role of the stiffest gatekeeper in MMA history. It had all fallen into a uncomfortable groove when two surprising turns gave the fight world an almighty jolt.

In February, the great Volkanovski lost his title to the young upstart, Ilia Topuria by way of a devastating knockout. Then Holloway, after months of being redundant at featherweight, took a “just for fun” fight a weightclass up to provide a main event for UFC 300. A massive underdog against the lightweight division’s biggest hitter, Holloway put on the performance of his life and—after seeming to lack power in his last trip up to lightweight—he left Justin Gaethje unconscious on the mat with one second left on the clock.   

And so Ilia Topuria versus Max Holloway came together organically within a few months. Yet you would be hard pressed to find another fight that has the same effect on casual viewers, lapsed hardcores, and full time pundits alike. We are all chomping at the bit, anxious for the opening bell.

I have published a great deal of analysis covering both of these fighters. Most recently Ilia Topuria: The V-Step, the Shoulder Roll and the Pivot, How Ilia Topuria Killed the King, and Max Holloway – The Master Study: Back Kicks. For today, we will focus entirely on the specifics of the match up between the two men and hypothetical gameplanning for each.

The Topuria Toolbox

Ilia Topuria’s striking is deceptively simple: jab, cross, left hook, and the occasional body shot or uppercut. There may be a right low kick thrown in there from time to time but his stance is not set up for comfortable kicking. There are two tactics that allow Topuria to get incredible mileage out of this stripped back arsenal:

1. Leading to get on the counter, or going “first and third.”

2. Using the cage to corral his opponent.

Simple ideas but the difference is that Topuria forces them onto his opponent consistently, while other fighters just sort of wander into them.  

The Josh Emmett fight and the Damon Jackson fight are prime examples of leading to get on the counter. Springing in behind the jab, and then bouncing out behind a low lead hand and high lead shoulder—inviting Topuria’s opponent to throw back and creating openings for his own counters. We talked about this tactic at length in Ilia Topuria: The V-Step, the Shoulder Roll and the Pivot.

Figure 1 shows an example from the Damon Jackson fight, where Topuria jabs in (b) and slides back (c). Jackson’s right hand glances off Topuria’s lead shoulder, and Topuria returns with an overhand right (d) and a left hook to the liver (e).

Fig. 1

The Alexander Volkanovski fight, the Jai Herbert fight, and the Damon Jackson fight are examples of Topuria corralling the opponent towards the fence and using the boundary as his ally to collapse their stance, square them up, and expose them to blows they would otherwise slip or retreat from. Poor old Damon Jackson got the worst of both tactics.

The educated viewer will look at Topuria’s jab-in and retreat—or V-step—with his feet on a line and his body bladed, and say “there’s a low kick there.” That is correct. The reason that it so seldom manifests in his fights is that Topuria does an excellent job of putting the fear into his opponents by using false entries. By faking a step in, Topuria can draw the low kick and let it fly across in front of him, then threaten to swarm in on the opponent while they stumble to recover their position.

Fig. 2

The vulnerability is still there in Topuria’s blading of his stance and pivoting around the lead leg, but by making the opponent concerned about the repercussions of missed low kicks, and by making his false entries look just the same as his legitimate entries, Topuria can convince them to ease their finger off the trigger.  

Max Holloway is a wonderfully versatile striker but he is still vulnerable to the “first and third” tactic because his game revolves around volume. The way that Holloway gets ahead of his opponents is to make sure that every exchange—whether he initiates it, or they do—he is chasing them back out of it with the last one or two punches. He has to outwork his opponents and to do that he has to commit to throwing not just one big counter swing but a couple of pops each time the opponent opens up an exchange. In this way, Volkanovski was able to draw Holloway forward and hammer him with a significant counter before stepping out the side door or smothering him in the clinch.

Figure 3 shows Volkanovski and Holloway exchanging jabs (c). Volkanovski drops away and Holloway immediately tries to get in another one-two, chasing Volkanovski back. Volkanovski ducks down in his stance (f) and weaves out to throw an overhand that Holloway leans into (g).

Fig. 3

Removing the A Game

It has been our theme for over a decade at this point: the key to beating great fighters is to take away their A game, forcing them to do things they don’t practice as much, and turning them into just pretty good fighters. Holloway’s task is to take away those two aforementioned striking tactics. To avoid being corralled along the fence he must use defensive ringcraft, direction changes and—when things get hairy—attempt to tie up without overextending with zombie arms as Volkanovski did.

To counter the “first and third” tactic there are a number of options. Trying to get the read on Topuria and get that right low kick off at the correct time is a middling risk, middling reward prospect. Jai Herbert had success jabbing with Topuria—dipping to slip his jab and following up with two handed hitting—but Herbert was also cushioned by his large height and reach advantages. Holloway is taller than Topuria, but not as absurdly as Herbert was, and his reach is famously a little under average for his height.

The Southpaw Question

The most fascinating aspect of the Ilia Topuria phenomenon is that he has established himself as a potent striker—perhaps one of the best boxer-punchers in MMA—in just a few performances. Topuria has fourteen professional fights to his name, and the first seven he spent trying to secure takedowns and hunt front headlocks, with the striking portion of the contest being something he simply had to get through as fast as possible. From his arrival in the UFC he rapidly assembled this minimalist striking game and pressure tested it at the highest levels.

A rapid rise comes with the side effect of inexperience in certain stylistic match-ups. Topuria has fought two southpaws, and only fought on the feet for any length of time against one: Bryce Mitchell.

Fig. 4

This “highlight” was assembled as a gag, yet anything but the most charitable study of this fight will confirm that Topuria looked uncomfortable leading against a southpaw. His jab is a building block of his offence, and Mitchell simply pawing at his lead hand removed all but the body jab. Jabbing in an open stance match up is obviously not impossible, it is not even right to say that it is more difficult, but it is a different skill. Georges St. Pierre’s legendary jab was rendered mute by the southpaw Johnny Hendricks doing a little handfighting with his lead hand.  But then against Nick Diaz, a southpaw who did not engage much in the handfight, St. Pierre’s jab was as effective as ever.

Struggling to score his lead hand against Mitchell, Topuria made many lunging right overhands that saw him fall short and even eat a couple of open side counters and lean-back right hooks from the comically wooden Mitchell.

Here is the interesting part: Max Holloway does not just have access to a southpaw skill set, he fought exclusively southpaw from his August 2014 fight with Clay Collard to his June 2016 fight with Ricardo Lamas. He switch hit against Anthony Pettis, then returned to orthodox from the Jose Aldo fight onwards. That is seven fights where Holloway adopted his less practiced stance and made a point of winning from there. I cannot name another example of this in mixed martial arts. Another way to look at it is: Max Holloway has fought as many MMA bouts southpaw as Ilia Topuria has contested on the feet.  

Fighting southpaw not only seems to diminish Topuria’s offensive skillset, it serves up the open side body and high kick. Mitchell had success with a left front kick to the body, a great “wrestler killer” for how quickly it drains the gas tank and how, unless it is expertly parried, it does not afford a simple run-through double leg as many round kicks do.  Youssef Zalal stood southpaw for periods of his fight with Topuria but oddly always switched back before trying to strike. The one strike he did throw—and land—from southpaw was a left round kick to Topuria’s body.

Against a big right hand, the southpaw body and high kick are wonderful weapons because they force the opponent to keep that hand at home, they cause tremendous damage if they land as he is opening up to punch, and they can be initiated from a longer range than his right hand can. Add a height advantage and Topuria’s tendency to duck, and open side kicking and knees are a no brainer just as they were for Islam Makhachev against Alexander Volkanovski.

A southpaw gameplan for Holloway does not need great depth. The left round kick to harass Topuria’s open side (as Volkanovski began doing from orthodox), and the lean back right hook he made his stock and trade between 2014 and 2016 would more than suffice. Add in a left knee whenever Topuria ducks in or backs up onto the fence and you have the makings of a great anti-Topuria strategy.

However, in recent years the majority of Holloway’s work has been done from an orthodox stance. He switches briefly in most fights, but the last time he used his southpaw stance extensively was the first Volkanovski fight, out of necessity—having eaten numerous jarring low kicks as he jabbed in. In his brief switches he shows he is still a better southpaw than many full time southpaws, but when faced with the scariest hitters a fighter will typically go to what is comfortable and familiar.

This is where Holloway’s versatility can be a hinderance and not an aid. Topuria does great work with a handful of weapons, while Holloway has every strike in the book and works out of both stances. Yet Topuria must use his weapons as best as he can to win. Jai Herbert was piecing him up and he had to bite down on his mouthpiece, crowd Herbert, and try to find a big shot. Holloway has had fights where he should kick and opts not to, or should use his elbows and knees but wants to box. Despite a strong grappling game, the only opponent in his entire UFC who had it forced on them was Yair Rodriguez. Having all of these tools at his disposal should make Holloway “like water”: a formless, shapeless answer to any opponent’s individual wrinkles, and yet he seems more victim to his whims than other fighters can afford to be.

Taking Out Max

For Topuria, he lacks some of the tools that Holloway owns, but the theme of his striking success has been about context and not mechanics. We have mentioned that Holloway’s desire to get two or even three punches off for each of his opponent’s can lead him to chase them out of an exchange and Volkanovski ran him onto overhands in this way. Volkanovski’s lead hand dexterity gave Holloway a lot of trouble, though Topuria is mainly about a piston jab and not so much about feinting, slapping, and handfighting with that lead hand.

There could be some sense in Topuria stealing the upjab that Volkanovski used to end his combinations in the third Holloway fight. After a right hand, Topuria likes to dig his feet down into the mat and throw a left hook that takes his whole body off to the right when he misses. Shortening that up into a shooting-the-cuff style upjab might prove suprisingly effective for him to just touch and irritate Holloway in his slips and leans.

Fig. 5

That is not to say “eschew the left hook.” One of Holloway’s money strikes—used to punctuate his usual pitter patter volume—is the right uppercut. He used this expertly against shorter opponents like Volkanovski and Edgar, but he threw it just the same at Gaethje. If Topuria can draw Holloway’s uppercut with level changes, the left hook is there. But then that is why Max, even with his iron chin, is especially cautious about picking his moment to throw the right uppercut.

Speaking of level changes: that was Topuria’s bread and butter until just a few fights ago. He is a strong wrestler with an excellent front headlock and top game. Rewatching his fight with Zalal it is notable that he used Anthony Hernandez’s seated arm triangle to attack the neck and then recover to top position over and over. He has had success with anacondas and guillotines and back takes, and he can also just beat a man senseless from top position. The shot that knocked out Ryan Hall was a tight right hook as Hall tried a neat turn-away to sit-up side control escape that had worked perfectly moments before.

Whenever we talk about wrestling Max Holloway we are confronted with the facts that 1) he generally stays away from the cage and 2) he still maintains a ludicrous >80% rate of takedown defence. But that does not undermine the value of showing takedown attempts and making them a part of the fight. Whether that is to draw the uppercut with hopes of landing the left hook, or to set up a big overhand, or just to break him off mid combination if he is starting to build up a head of steam.

On top of all of that there are the usual questions about intangibles when two fighters at the top of the game meet. Holloway has absorbed the best shots from everyone who has ever been anyone in the featherweight division: how long can one man’s chin hold up? Topuria has gone the full five rounds once, but was dictating the tempo of that fight against old “one-swing-at-a-time” Josh Emmett—what happens if he is forced to work at Holloway’s torrid pace?

The great match ups have you second guessing every angle, and it is rarely just one element that creates the outcome. In a relatively slow year of fights, this match up provides enough questions and possibilities that you can lose whole afternoons of work daydreaming about it.