Best at getting back to their feet?

MilesP4P

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With the dominant performances and success of Khabib it made me wonder why people don’t focus more on getting back to their feet as much as they do fighting the takedown.
We see fighters like Pettis and Aldo who are good at getting back to their feet.

Aldo uses his butterfly guard to often create technical stand ups.

Who are some fighters that are good at using sweeps, technical stand ups or submissions to create scrambles and get back to their feet?
 
I really don't know how I would be able to do much of my sweeps while getting punched in the face. Most sweeps and technical stand ups needs 2 or 3 limbs, which gives huge openings for GnP.

I did about 2 or 3 rounds of MMA sparring recently and I was basically pulling guard to try my BJJ skills. Protecting yourself is pretty much the complete opposite of trying to sweep or standing up. Your normal reaction is to cover yourself and to go somehow flat on your back. If you try to underhook, to sit or butterfly you have to get ready to eat some punches. The only viable way is to control the arms and to try to butterfly them off of you.

In BJJ I use belly down side control escapes and then I'm pretty confident about my turtle. In MMA you just don't give them your back that way.
 
Agreed. Although staying up is easier than getting up. I didn't like Chuck Liddell when I was younger but looking back he was great at getting up. Not many people held him down.
 
With the dominant performances and success of Khabib it made me wonder why people don’t focus more on getting back to their feet as much as they do fighting the takedown.
We see fighters like Pettis and Aldo who are good at getting back to their feet.

Aldo uses his butterfly guard to often create technical stand ups.

Who are some fighters that are good at using sweeps, technical stand ups or submissions to create scrambles and get back to their feet?

Most of the guys who are really good at getting it back to the feet do it more with wrestling than BJJ, which is not surprising since this is a core skill of wrestling (especially American folkstyle) but not BJJ. Aside from people already mentioned like Aldo, Robert Whitaker is extremely good at this. Watch his Romero and Jacare fights if you want to see how he does it.
 
I really don't know how I would be able to do much of my sweeps while getting punched in the face. Most sweeps and technical stand ups needs 2 or 3 limbs, which gives huge openings for GnP.

I did about 2 or 3 rounds of MMA sparring recently and I was basically pulling guard to try my BJJ skills. Protecting yourself is pretty much the complete opposite of trying to sweep or standing up. Your normal reaction is to cover yourself and to go somehow flat on your back. If you try to underhook, to sit or butterfly you have to get ready to eat some punches. The only viable way is to control the arms and to try to butterfly them off of you.

In BJJ I use belly down side control escapes and then I'm pretty confident about my turtle. In MMA you just don't give them your back that way.

I don't really agree with that. It's true that the way you play guard changes a lot in MMA, but the goals aren't that different. You have to use a lot more hand trapping and posting on shoulders to avoid getting punched, but the basic goals like getting an underhook still apply. What you can't do is hang out in mid range, you have to be all the way in or all the way out. And if the top guy disengages, you better get back on your feet fast. But butterfly, Z, and most of the other reliable no-gi guards still work. After all, it's pretty hard for someone to punch you with any force if you have an overhook, deep underhook, are controlling their wrists, pushing on their head, etc.

Also disagree on the turtle. You can't sit there and try to pull off Telles style reversals because you'll just get beat up, but if you're exploding to your feet wrestling style it generally requires both hands for your opponent to stay on you and you shouldn't take a lot of damage. Using the cage really helps too because then you can not only use it to help support you, but it cuts off many angles of attack and makes it harder for him to return you to the mat.
 
Taken across MMA as a whole, and not just main card fighters in the UFC, I don't think we can plausibly say fighters are not training getting back up (particularly against the cage) extensively.
 
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