Fight Study 156: Joshua x Ngannou, All-Women ONE, and UFC 299 (Plus Transcript) (Patreon)

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This is Sam, and I am back with Fight Study. What a week of fights! It kicked off on Friday. The most anticipated fight was Anthony Joshua vs. Francis Ngannou, and that's probably the least interesting fight of the weekend. There was also ONE Fight Night 20, an all-women's card, and probably their best card ever. Then, on Saturday, it was UFC 299, headlined by Sean O'Malley vs. Marlon Vera 2. All around really solid cards.

Let's start with Joshua vs. Ngannou in a heavyweight boxing fight. Ngannou's success against Tyson Fury really set up anticipation for this fight because many people believe Fury to be better than Joshua. So the question was, could Ngannou replicate his success? Especially since Joshua has had several trainer changes and has lost to Oleksandr Usyk twice and to Andy Ruiz Jr. once.

Ngannou is 37. Joshua is 34. Ngannou also started MMA late and boxing even later. There are many reasons why MMA fighters won't do well in boxing. Number one is that boxing is not their primary sport. Number two is that they're already weathered and old by the time they go to boxing. Number three is that the conditions and environment for boxing and MMA are different.

For the most part, boxers start young. MMA fighters begin much later. It's early if you start MMA training at 17, whereas in boxing, you might begin at five. So you're learning a lot of skills later, not just punching. You're also often learning to do everything from both stances.

Proficiency takes time, which MMA fighters don't have a lot of. They all want to get to the UFC, and that takes a long time. Furthermore, MMA careers are short, and the period in which they can earn some money is even shorter. So they all try to get their first fights as soon as possible.

That's a very short development period. MMA trainers also want to make money off of their fighters right away because they don't have boxers making millions every fight that can allow them to invest in young fighters. So, they're also incentivized to shorten the development period.

All the technical breakdowns go out the window because MMA fighters often don't develop enough to move that skillfully. If you, as a coach, get someone in their late 20s or even early 30s, you don't have time to build them up from scratch. Instead, you work with what you got and redirect habits they already have to become useful habits. In boxing, parries might be the last defensive movement you learn, along with the right overhand. This is also true for Thai-boxing. However, in the West, they might teach those things right away because their student base is much older than Thailand, so they cater to converting adults rather than developing young people.

Parries are the primary defense in MMA, just as the overhand is the primary offense. Why? Because with no training they walk in the door with them. They can throw a haymaker, and they naturally try to swat away any attacks that come to their face. Look at children play fighting; anything that comes near their faces, they try to swat away up and down. It's basically flapping your hands as defense, people already do that.

Look at every knockout in MMA, and I bet 99% of it is someone parrying something that isn't there. It's not ideal because you're not blocking or evading with your entire body where you can still maintain structural integrity, but just with your arms. It's best to move all together rather than extending your limbs away from your trunk and exposing yourself and creating instability. That defeats the purpose of defense. But realistically, if you have the older demographic that MMA has, is it better to have them completely abandon that and learn better defensive movements? If you do, they may never get to the UFC or to Ngannou's position because they might be 40 by the time they have all that down.

Adults who start in combat sports think parrying and overhands are superior when, in reality, you're learning that because you're old and you have limited time to improve if you want to be a fighter. MMA coaches don't really develop fighters. They don't have that time. Instead, they try to hone the things you already have. That's why, in a camp, every fighter can be unorthodox in a completely different way because the trainer just tried to hone what they already had.

Look at what Edmond Tarverdyan did to Travis Browne's career when he tried to rebuild him from scratch. Not only was Browne too self-conscious and second-guessing himself, but he also lost all his confidence. He was also fighting in the UFC while trying to redevelop from scratch. That's something you do with a kid years before a contract.

People emulate what they see in UFC, like parries and overhands, because the quote-unquote best in the world do it when they are just things people already do. So, of course, it feels natural to you.

Everyone is trying to be a breakdown wizard about the Joshua KO when, literally 30 seconds into round one, one of the commentators says, "Ngannou likes to parry, which does leave him vulnerable." Nothing significant happened yet, and Ngannou actually landed some left hooks, but the commentator pointed that out because that behavior might be normal in MMA because everyone starts old, but in boxing, where people start as kids, it's not as common, so it stands out.

It does not stand out for MMA fans who are now watching boxing. They don't even register it as a parry or possibly a bad move because it's just air. It's everywhere, so you don't see it. Why would what's normal stand out?

Joshua was fighting Ngannou after the Fury fight. If he had fought him first, who knows. But now Joshua took this fight seriously, and Ngannou was possibly overconfident. Fury didn't take the fight seriously, but also there's a lot about his style that is similar to how MMA fighters fight, so Ngannou was more comfortable and familiar.

This fight with Joshua was more like a traditional boxing fight, and in round one, with a minute left, Ngannou switched stances, and again, the commentators talked about the confidence of doing that this early in a fight against one of the best at heavyweight. What they're tacitly saying is, again, that this can leave you vulnerable.

It's like driving on the right side of the road and then switching to driving on the left. It's going to take a while to adjust, and a minute isn't that long to adjust. Throughout the first minute, Joshua punched Ngannou's glove so he would parry and feel like the parries were working. Joshua hit the lead glove. Ngannou parried it, giving that parrying hand an automatic task. Then Joshua threw the right straight, and Ngannou parried nothing and got dropped.

I don't know if Ngannou ever recovered from that knockdown, but it really doesn't matter. You won't teach Ngannou a new way to defend himself in the middle of a fight. Also, how many new behaviors will he learn this late in age? He can definitely learn, but not as much as nine-year-olds in boxing.

If you're a competent boxer and you see that your opponent's primary defense is to parry and they like to switch stances, there's a lot you can do. If Ngannou boxes again, he can still do well with this style. It's just about the right matchmaking, highlighting his strengths and hiding his weaknesses. With only two pro boxing fights, even his trainers are learning his shortcomings and about the level of competition. Especially since they, too, are coming from MMA.

In round two, Ngannou began closing his eyes. His parrying got worse. He was there but not really there. Whether he was concussed or was worried about the right straight or both, his mind wasn't on the task before him. He threw a jab, but as he threw it, he stumbled forward because he was off balance. He then got hit with a right straight again. The commentators said he walked right into it, which he did. He landed the jab, stumbled forward into a right straight, then a left hook, and was dropped again.

Charging into a clinch or collapsing your own space is another MMA habit. Maybe he was stepping in with a double jab and was expecting Joshua to jump backward like everyone did against him in the UFC. That's another MMA habit, jumping back and resetting your feet, which is again taking something people already do and redirecting it. Everything MMA fighters do, other strikers also do; it's just that MMA fighters do it way more because their natural behaviors are reinforced to get them ready to fight right away. Ngannou has had years getting habituated to certain responses. Boxers who started training young won't respond in those ways.

Anyone who starts in any combat sport as an adult will have different behaviors than those who started young. It's not the so-called basics but rather redirections of things they already did before they were fighters.

So, did Ngannou stumble forward, lose his balance, step into clinch, or expect a different response? I don't know. Joshua didn't give us enough time to allow it to play out. Ngannou came in with his hands down, and Joshua hit him twice. He didn't back up, he just moved his head and fired.

I don't know if Ngannou was there at all when he got up. But when he got up, Joshua came in, this time with no craft. He threw the right again, Ngannou parried and closed his eyes and got knocked out for good.

Joshua fought Ngannou exactly as he should have. I don't know if Ngannou made mistakes so much as he just didn't look good, and when it went bad, it stayed bad. It's not like he fought like a different person. He fought like himself, and Joshua capitalized. With some of those MMA shortcomings, it doesn't take all that long to capitalize, especially at heavyweight.

Zhilei Zhang is 40. He lost to Joseph Parker. However, he did drop Parker twice, he just didn't have the gas to capitalize. Since he doesn't have the speed or energy to use dynamic defense, Zhang mostly puts his hands up as his primary defense. That served him a lot better than parries.

Next, let's talk about ONE Fight Night 20, an all-women's event. All the fights were bangers except, of course, the grappling match. The MMA fight between Chihiro Sawada and Jihin Radzuan had more fun grappling exchanges. It was back-and-forth, but eventually, Sawada took control and won the decision.

Yu Yau Pui put a pace on Lara Fernandez in their muay Thai fight that Fernandez couldn't keep up with. It reminded me a bit of Merab Dvalishvili but for muay Thai. Some people have the ability to turn a fight into a CrossFit contest.

Jackie Buntan vs. Martine Michieletto was fun. Michieletto had the reach and height, but Buntan kept beating her to the punch. They mostly exchanged punches and Buntan was the better and faster puncher.

Allycia Rodrigues defended her atomweight muay Thai title against Cristina Morales. You have several multisport and multi-division champions in ONE and constant attempts at it, which means you're basically watching the same few fighters in multiple rulesets without ever building out the sport or divisions because there's not enough room and not enough cards to grow and build them. So they have good fights, but it's not all that impressive to be a champion. It's also mostly mismatches.

However, being able to fight under various rulesets is what Liberation Martial Arts is about. There is no style or technique, just rulesets, and equipment to adapt to. If you approach it like that, going from combat sport to combat sport isn't as much of a transition.

Rodriguez didn't put on a fast pace but a consistent one. So much of this event was about pace and how important it is to a fight. Morales had bursts of speed, but this was a five-round fight rather than three. Eventually, Rodriguez began to find her knees from the clinch, and Morales began tiring out in round three. Rodriguez even landed a knee after the bell.

Morales kept fighting hard and tried maintaining the pace, but she looked frail after the third round. All the damage to the body was adding up. She looked compromised and fought like it. When you're hurt, the next thing you know, you're backing up.

I think for fighters getting used to muay Thai with MMA gloves, since you're wearing small gloves, it's so much easier to damage your opponent with punches. Also, ONE incentivizes that. So fighters go to ONE and suddenly don't kick as much and just throw haymakers. This is especially bad for fighters with reach advantages, where then you give up your reach to charge in with hooks, which gives the shorter fighters their opportunity.

Phetjee Jaa fought Janett Todd to unify ONE's atomweight kickboxing title. Phetjee Jaa is 22. Janet Todd is 38. This was kickboxing rules with boxing gloves. Going back to age, right away, you notice how much more tense Todd is compared to Phetjee Jaa. It's hard for adults to learn ease later in life. It also probably speaks to the US muay Thai scene when Todd was coming up, where they would go to Thailand, and all the camps would bring up how tense they are.

I've mentioned this before, but all physical activities in the US become American football. However, now that more people are competing in muay Thai and traveling to Thailand, you're seeing that ease more with younger American Thai-boxing fighters.

Todd fought much of the fight backing up, which was probably the plan, to draw Phetjee Jaa onto her attacks. However, this is also why she kept losing her balance or getting bullied in close. She was already falling backward.

You lose a lot of power on the backfoot, and if you don't hit your opponent hard, nothing will stop them from coming after you. It backfires.

Phetjee Jaa fought with clearer eyes and better balance. It was competitive, but Phetjee Jaa won every round. Overall, it was a great unification bout and an excellent performance for Todd to retire on.

If you have Prime, find this card and watch it. Make note of the use of pace, the effect of the small gloves and ONE scoring for damage, but also with Phetjee Jaa and Buntan, how they don't take turns trading, you go and then I go, but simultaneous exchange and get the better of it by looking while attacking and defending. Phetjee Jaa did this extremely well. Either I go, or I go while you go, but I will still win those as well.

Now, let's talk about UFC 299. I can't even say it's reactionary because all the UFC cards lately have been reactionary, and if you assume good politics for any fighter, they've all been exposing themselves. I might be one of those weird few who watch combat sports not because of fandom but because of seeing how styles match up and the problem-solving aspects of combat sports. This is why I'll watch early prelims because I just care about the fights rather than whether the fighters are famous or not. It also gives me a better sense of the divisions. 99% of MMA fans only know middleweight and above because that's all they're shown, so they assume those must be the most stacked divisions, but they're pretty awful. This happens with boxing, where people think pound for pound means heavyweight. If you want to see MMA at the highest level, you have to watch the fighters people don't know and the early fights because that's where they put most of the good fighters and the bad fighters they put on the main card or Fight Night main events. However, this card had bantamweight as the main event, which is the best division in the UFC.

Sean O'Malley shut Marlon Vera out this time in this rematch. Regarding the normalcy of parries and parrying nothing, look at Vera's defense against O'Malley.

I don't think Vera is a slow starter because he's downloading information. I've always thought he starts slow and fights passively because he has a hard time seeing openings. So he just waits. It just so happens he is super durable, and since people begin feeling themselves against him because he is so passive, they sometimes make mistakes. Vera can hit hard but also submit you if you try to finish him on the ground.

The thing is, openings won't just appear. He has to make them appear either with misdirections or throwaway attacks. Vera doesn't really do that. He doesn't really set up.

O'Malley kept switching directions, going forward or back, stutter-stepping, and switching stances, which made it harder for Vera to see openings. Then he felt O'Malley's power and accuracy, which make it even harder to press forward because you have that to worry about. O'Malley is one of the tallest in the division, probably with the longest reach, and he knows how to use it. He doesn't collapse his own reach advantage by charging with haymakers.

Vera is also not a takedown threat, which plays into O'Malley's strength. O'Malley is really good at moving while staying balanced. People move all the time in MMA, but they're often off balance and out of position. O'Malley sort of glides around.

There were times when O'Malley was uprooted and going backward, which is when Vera charged him. But after O'Malley bounced off the cage and circled out, Vera didn't have a follow-up. Vera can't go fast and with volume for long. He's shown that consistently throughout his career. I can't tell you why, just that he does.

We know Vera has incredible gas when he goes at his pace, which is slow. What's his gas tank like when he goes fast? We don't know because he won't do it, but maybe the fact that he never does it is telling.

Specifically with O'Malley, the power also kept Vera at bay. We saw with Todd what happens when you lack that power. When you hit hard, it makes it easier to fight on the outside because it makes people hesitant to come forward. Power maintains reach.

The other thing O'Malley has is a chin. So it's hard to keep him at bay because he can take it. I'm sure part of the plan for Vera was leg kicks, but getting hurt and all the direction changes made that hard to implement. O'Malley hit Vera before Vera had a chance to kick. Getting your offense off first really throws people off their game plans.

At the very end, because of his durability and O'Malley getting sloppy, Vera found his opening with a punch to the liver followed by a knee, but then the bell ended the fight. Surviving and waiting for your opponent to fuck up to find an opening to finish isn't a reliable way to win a fight.

Vera got his title shot, and it's hard to imagine he gets another one with how deep this division is.

Dustin Poirier fought Benoît Saint-Denis in a lightweight bout in the co-main event. Poirier was clearly the better striker, but every time he hurt Saint-Denis, he would jump on a guillotine and then begin losing. Saint-Denis is another guy who started MMA late, which is a taller task at lightweight. He's strong. He can grapple. But he's not a great grappler, he's not a great striker, and he doesn't even seem to have the best cardio. He just seems incredibly strong at lightweight and plays to his strength, which is to turn the fight into a strength contest. I should also mention BSD is a christonationalist French mercenary who oppressed people in Africa.

Poirier also took time after the fight to suck up to Donald Trump and thank BSD for his service.

Poirier is still dangerous standing, but he can't scramble in grappling exchanges like he used to. He's real stiff. Also, wanting to end the fight right away with guillotines means he's super eager to end the fight. He's chasing a finish. Why is a vet like him acting like that? Why is his want to end the fight overriding his coaches and the risks of failed guillotines and having never finished a fight with a guillotine? It makes me wonder if he just doesn't want to be there.

Michael Page, at 36, had his debut in the UFC in the welterweight division. He fought Kevin Holland. You're going to have a hard time preparing for Page, more so than preparing for Stephen Thompson. You can find kickers to spar with but it's going to be hard to find someone who stands in a sideways karate/taekwondo stance who mostly punches. The times he has lost, he got taken down, and he did get taken down by Holland, which is a bad sign because Holland is a notoriously bad wrestler. However, when they were standing, Page won.

The plan would be to kick his legs since he's so sideways, but that's not easy because he can punch you before you get close enough to kick him. His best kick defense isn't checking kicks but his control of space. His punching range is longer than his opponent's kicking range. For example, if you need to be within six feet to kick him, but he can punch you from 12 feet away, then what do you do?

It was really impressive to see, and it's a really unique style in MMA, even compared to other karate fighters.

One of the things I enjoy about the MMA ruleset is all the various styles it allows for. Forget combat sports, I don't know of any sport that allows for so many variations. There are many things to dislike about MMA culture, but it's actually very telling that the variability of MMA bothers so many other martial artists. It bothers them that MMA isn't top-down enough and too diverse rather than their homogenous arts.

From a problem-solving perspective, I like watching Page's style because, yes, you solve it by wrestling, but in MMA, can anyone solve it just by striking? However, the style relies heavily on speed, so the passage of time might solve it for everyone.

Jack Della Maddalena had a fun welterweight scrap with Gilbert Burns. You know how in sparring, you're told not to catch head kicks because if they kick hard, you'll be knocked out? Well, JDM showed that so long as you're not KOed, you can catch the kick and counter with your own punches, which is what he did against Burns. He hurt Burns off that sequence, which initiated a takedown from Burns. Burns got JDM to the mat and was ready to coast to a decision victory, but JDM got out and used survival again as an opportunity for offense.

Just as you don't normally expect to get rocked after landing a head kick, you also don't expect to be beating someone on the ground just to be rocked again as you're both getting up. That's what JDM did, and then he finished Burns on the ground. I talked about clear eyes and JDM saw with clear eyes opportunities for offense that normally other fighters miss. The other thing JDM did well was to attack Burns as he moved laterally, which is something Vera couldn't do to O'Malley. Part of that is because JDM sticks close to his opponents.

Petr Yan and Yadong Song fought back and forth at bantamweight, showing how good you have to be in that division. Yan ultimately got the win with his superior wrestling, which is something other fighters have been able to exploit against Song. However, Yan is no longer the dangerous striker he once was. Now he's a crafty veteran who can mix it up to get wins. This breaks Yan's three-fight losing streak. Before losing on the ground, Song was piecing him up with jabs and head movement.

Curtis Blaydes beat Jailton Almeida. You compare this fight to Yan and Song, and you see how different the divisions are as far as depth. Almeida kept spamming takedowns until he got hurt and finished by Blaydes, who's notorious for getting finished while spamming takedowns.

Maycee Barber beat Katlyn Cerminara in a surprisingly good fight between two chuds. Cerminara, formerly Chookagian, is a hard fighter to beat at women's flyweight. She has reach and picks you apart from the outside. Barber is not all that great at striking, but she turned this fight into a CrossFit contest also. It's a good strategy. It's almost like a street fight, but street fights last seconds for a reason, because you expend so much energy. But Barber was able to keep that up for 15 minutes, and Cerminara couldn't keep up. Cerminara is also 10 years older than Barber.

Mateusz Gamrot got rocked and dropped again when he fought Rafael dos Anjos, but this time, he was able to use his wrestling to win by decision. He doesn't have the best chin, he leaves himself exposed, but he recovers fast, has great cardio and wrestling. However, his ability to recover will go away. Gamrot is 33, but RDA is 39. Gamrot's ability to consistently weather the storm is impressive to watch, but again, it's not a reliable way to win. RDA is still very good, which is a testament to how good he was in his prime. However, he's now slow and the division has much deeper wrestling than when he was champion.

There was one more bantamweight fight. Kyler Phillips vs. Pedro Munhoz. Munhoz is really small for the division. Phillips is long for the divison. They fought a lot of the fight from the outside, which had both missing. However, if it's fought from that distance, Phillips will still land, whereas Munhoz will miss most of his shots.

The division has gotten a lot longer than when Munhoz first started in it. Cruz was on the shelf so you had Justin Scoggins, John Dodson, Brett Johns, Cody Garbrandt, Jimmie Rivera, and Frankie Edgar. Nowadays, Munhoz can't reach his opponents.

See ya.