- Joined
- Apr 27, 2015
- Messages
- 767
- Reaction score
- 414
I wrote something about how Martinez dismantled Adrian Yanez with leg kicks:
This weekend we were treated to two classy leg kicking performances, both by Factory X fighters in Jonathan Martinez and Chris Gutiérrez. The Colorado gym, lead by head coach Marc Montoya is quickly become known for the skill of its fighters in disabling their opponent’s legs. But the leg kicks Martinez and Gutiérrez demonstrated were not a brute force tactic smashed in without thought - instead they both revealed a system that integrated leg kicks with their footwork and defensive movement. Let’s look at how Martinez used his.
In the first few minutes of their fight, Adrian Yanez’s strategy was simple. He looked to bounce in and out at long range to disguise his entries, before taking a deep step outside Martinez’s lead foot and attacking with heavy rear hooks and lead body shots. As we look at Martinez’s response to this tactic, we’ll see how Yanez’s attack exposed him to the leg kicks.
The first thing that went wrong for Yanez is that his bouncy movement ensured that he spent most of his time at range without his weight set properly to block the kicks. To check a kick coming at your lead leg, you need to be able to lift it up quickly. This means having your weight already loaded on the rear leg, or at least a balanced stance that allows you to quickly shift weight to the rear leg, so that the lead leg can lift at a moment’s notice.
But Yanez primarily advanced with bounces rather than steps. When he bounced in and out, both feet briefly left the canvas and allowed a free leg kick to be timed when he was unprepared to shift his weight to the rear foot in order to check.
Fighters that excel with that type of bouncy movement (like Stephen Thompson) usually set up outside kicking range and use their bouncing to draw out the leg kicks, before bouncing back out of range. They often attack in leaping or shifting blitzes that cover distance right from outside kicking range into the pocket without having to walk through kicking range with a vulnerable stance. With opponents left biting on the entry feints and kicking at air, as well as eating the quick blitzing entries, they tend to start stepping in deep and covering more distance on their kicks. This is when the bouncy fighter can start sitting down on hard counters, when the opponent expects them to back up and steps right into punching range to make up the extra distance. But by employing that type of footwork with a more boxing-centric attack and distance, Yanez gave himself all of its defensive downsides without the tools to compensate for it.
But when Yanez did get the angle he was looking for, Martinez made him pay for it. When you listen to commentators talk about southpaw vs orthodox matchups, they’ll often frame the whole thing around stepping outside the lead leg. A step outside the lead leg shortens the path of the rear straight, which is easier to land in an open stance (southpaw vs orthodox) matchup as the lead shoulder is out of the way. But against a smart opponent it’s not that simple.
A simple step outside is what I like to call a “weak angle”. It opens up your rear hand, but it also shortens the path of the opponent’s lead hand, so both fighters have options. A true dominant angle involves facing the opponent while he’s facing away from you - this type of angle does produce a large disparity in options, opening up everything for you and little for the opponent aside from some spinning attacks. But to take a “strong angle” a simple outside step isn’t enough, it needs to be combined with a pivot. Rarely will an opponent let you both step outside and pivot without responding, so it’s very difficult to achieve that position. An easier way to get a strong angle, and one employed by many skilled southpaws, is to let the opponent step outside and pivot inside their stance as they step, so that you end up facing their centerline.
For a more thorough exploration of this dynamic, check out this video I made a while back:
This brings us back to Jonathan Martinez, who consistently exploited Yanez’s outside steps. At first, Martinez would throw up a high guard and circle out when Yanez stepped deep outside, denying him the distance to land his rear hand. But as he became more comfortable, he began to time the outside steps by circling diagonally to the inside and timing the leg kick:
By circling diagonally toward Yanez’s rear hand, Martinez lengthened the distance and ensured Yanez wasn’t in position to land it. But he was also able to get himself a strong angle facing Yanez’s center line. The angle opened up a clean shot at Martinez’s primary target on his leg kicks - the inside of the knee. When kicking the leg of an opposite-stance fighter whose lead foot is in line with yours, he can more easily turn the knee into the kick to check it. But if you’ve maneuvered inside of his stance, turning the knee that far becomes difficult to impossible.
Martinez spent all fight aiming kicks at the inside of the knee, which is a devastating place to take kicks. Often inside leg kicks are targeted at the thigh, which still does considerable damage, but the thigh has more muscle and fat to protect the squishy bits. The inside and back of the knee has the same arteries and nerves running through it, but with less muscle and fat to absorb the blow. These kicks also have less chance of running up and catching the groin as the opponent steps in. Just a few hard, well-timed kicks in that location can severely compromise a fighter for the rest of the contest (see Moicano landing these kicks on Calvin Kattar).
Yanez tried to adjust to the kicks, but by the time he started making adjustments he was already hurt, and Martinez was able to adjust back in every case. Yanez started pulling back from the kicks, but he wasn’t able to do it consistently and his offensive patterns necessitated putting himself in harm’s way to land his own strikes. He also tried to enter in a southpaw stance or shift to southpaw mid-combination to swarm Martinez without offering his left leg as a target, but Martinez found it anyway:
When Yanez stepped in deep in southpaw or squared up rattling off hooks, Martinez would catch the shots on his high guard and sidestep in the opposite direction, nailing Yanez with a heavy kick as he exited. This was a lovely bit of craft from Martinez - if he was only comfortable circling toward his rear side, Yanez’s tactic of jamming his rear kick in southpaw could have shut down the leg kicks, but he quickly adjusted to create a new opening. He also landed a heavy kick by shoving Yanez back with his high guard, before booting the inside of the thigh that opened up as Yanez squared his stance.
Yanez’s stance and footwork didn’t leave him much room to check the kicks, but he tried to bring the leg up at one point and Martinez proved he can deal with that as well:
Continued Here...
This weekend we were treated to two classy leg kicking performances, both by Factory X fighters in Jonathan Martinez and Chris Gutiérrez. The Colorado gym, lead by head coach Marc Montoya is quickly become known for the skill of its fighters in disabling their opponent’s legs. But the leg kicks Martinez and Gutiérrez demonstrated were not a brute force tactic smashed in without thought - instead they both revealed a system that integrated leg kicks with their footwork and defensive movement. Let’s look at how Martinez used his.
In the first few minutes of their fight, Adrian Yanez’s strategy was simple. He looked to bounce in and out at long range to disguise his entries, before taking a deep step outside Martinez’s lead foot and attacking with heavy rear hooks and lead body shots. As we look at Martinez’s response to this tactic, we’ll see how Yanez’s attack exposed him to the leg kicks.
The first thing that went wrong for Yanez is that his bouncy movement ensured that he spent most of his time at range without his weight set properly to block the kicks. To check a kick coming at your lead leg, you need to be able to lift it up quickly. This means having your weight already loaded on the rear leg, or at least a balanced stance that allows you to quickly shift weight to the rear leg, so that the lead leg can lift at a moment’s notice.
But Yanez primarily advanced with bounces rather than steps. When he bounced in and out, both feet briefly left the canvas and allowed a free leg kick to be timed when he was unprepared to shift his weight to the rear foot in order to check.
Fighters that excel with that type of bouncy movement (like Stephen Thompson) usually set up outside kicking range and use their bouncing to draw out the leg kicks, before bouncing back out of range. They often attack in leaping or shifting blitzes that cover distance right from outside kicking range into the pocket without having to walk through kicking range with a vulnerable stance. With opponents left biting on the entry feints and kicking at air, as well as eating the quick blitzing entries, they tend to start stepping in deep and covering more distance on their kicks. This is when the bouncy fighter can start sitting down on hard counters, when the opponent expects them to back up and steps right into punching range to make up the extra distance. But by employing that type of footwork with a more boxing-centric attack and distance, Yanez gave himself all of its defensive downsides without the tools to compensate for it.
But when Yanez did get the angle he was looking for, Martinez made him pay for it. When you listen to commentators talk about southpaw vs orthodox matchups, they’ll often frame the whole thing around stepping outside the lead leg. A step outside the lead leg shortens the path of the rear straight, which is easier to land in an open stance (southpaw vs orthodox) matchup as the lead shoulder is out of the way. But against a smart opponent it’s not that simple.
A simple step outside is what I like to call a “weak angle”. It opens up your rear hand, but it also shortens the path of the opponent’s lead hand, so both fighters have options. A true dominant angle involves facing the opponent while he’s facing away from you - this type of angle does produce a large disparity in options, opening up everything for you and little for the opponent aside from some spinning attacks. But to take a “strong angle” a simple outside step isn’t enough, it needs to be combined with a pivot. Rarely will an opponent let you both step outside and pivot without responding, so it’s very difficult to achieve that position. An easier way to get a strong angle, and one employed by many skilled southpaws, is to let the opponent step outside and pivot inside their stance as they step, so that you end up facing their centerline.
For a more thorough exploration of this dynamic, check out this video I made a while back:
This brings us back to Jonathan Martinez, who consistently exploited Yanez’s outside steps. At first, Martinez would throw up a high guard and circle out when Yanez stepped deep outside, denying him the distance to land his rear hand. But as he became more comfortable, he began to time the outside steps by circling diagonally to the inside and timing the leg kick:
By circling diagonally toward Yanez’s rear hand, Martinez lengthened the distance and ensured Yanez wasn’t in position to land it. But he was also able to get himself a strong angle facing Yanez’s center line. The angle opened up a clean shot at Martinez’s primary target on his leg kicks - the inside of the knee. When kicking the leg of an opposite-stance fighter whose lead foot is in line with yours, he can more easily turn the knee into the kick to check it. But if you’ve maneuvered inside of his stance, turning the knee that far becomes difficult to impossible.
Martinez spent all fight aiming kicks at the inside of the knee, which is a devastating place to take kicks. Often inside leg kicks are targeted at the thigh, which still does considerable damage, but the thigh has more muscle and fat to protect the squishy bits. The inside and back of the knee has the same arteries and nerves running through it, but with less muscle and fat to absorb the blow. These kicks also have less chance of running up and catching the groin as the opponent steps in. Just a few hard, well-timed kicks in that location can severely compromise a fighter for the rest of the contest (see Moicano landing these kicks on Calvin Kattar).
Yanez tried to adjust to the kicks, but by the time he started making adjustments he was already hurt, and Martinez was able to adjust back in every case. Yanez started pulling back from the kicks, but he wasn’t able to do it consistently and his offensive patterns necessitated putting himself in harm’s way to land his own strikes. He also tried to enter in a southpaw stance or shift to southpaw mid-combination to swarm Martinez without offering his left leg as a target, but Martinez found it anyway:
When Yanez stepped in deep in southpaw or squared up rattling off hooks, Martinez would catch the shots on his high guard and sidestep in the opposite direction, nailing Yanez with a heavy kick as he exited. This was a lovely bit of craft from Martinez - if he was only comfortable circling toward his rear side, Yanez’s tactic of jamming his rear kick in southpaw could have shut down the leg kicks, but he quickly adjusted to create a new opening. He also landed a heavy kick by shoving Yanez back with his high guard, before booting the inside of the thigh that opened up as Yanez squared his stance.
Yanez’s stance and footwork didn’t leave him much room to check the kicks, but he tried to bring the leg up at one point and Martinez proved he can deal with that as well:
Continued Here...
