Tony Ferguson is my favorite lightweight fighter in the UFC right now, possibly ever, and one of my favorite fighters of any weight class. At face value this probably sounds weird, considering I'm very much a fan of technical fighters who use crisp, reliable technique. Though that describes Ferguson's jiujitsu to an extent, his striking is neither crisp nor reliable in the tradition sense. He leaves his chin up, leans forward with his punches, and doesn't hide his kicks behind punches the way you're supposed to at the highest level.
And yet he has found success at the highest levels, even against Edson Barboza, among the best pure strikers at lightweight, and Rafael Dos Anjos, one of the most well-rounded. So what gives?
Ferguson has many noteworthy techniques in his arsenal, most of them awkward and unconventional, but all effective. At the end of the day, fighting is about dishing out enough damage to stop your opponent while they try to do the same to you. Ferguson has quite the toolbox to accomplish this task, regardless of how well they look by normal fight science standards.
For the sake of time, I'll only describe five of my favorite techniques of his, then briefly pontificate on a hypothetical fight with Khabib Nurmagomedov (I first wrote this article when they were supposed to fight). Enjoy!
1. Reverse Roy Jones Jr Windmill Punch
One of Roy Jones Jr's favorite unconventional attacks is to wind up his right hand as his opponent watches, then unleash it at a random point. He often hits his target despite how obvious the incoming attack is. Jack Slack has a great writeup as to the technical brilliance of the maneuver, which is worth the read for anyone interested either in becoming a fighter or just having a deeper technical understanding of the game.
Tony Ferguson does something a little different, though. He winds up his right hand Roy Jones Jr style, but then uses that as a distraction to throw his jab. This technique was on prominent display against Kevin Lee during their fight for the interim title. It's a great move for making your opponent look foolish when it lands, and since you're throwing your jab, you're throwing your quickest, easiest to land punch at the opponent. It's a great setup for an already high-percentage move.
It landed almost every time against Kevin Lee, as Ferguson kept changing the tempo of when he'd throw the jab. At one point he might throw the jab immediately after starting the wind-up, another time he might throw it after a couple full rotations. This variety is what allowed it to land so often. In fighting, as with almost anything else, variety is the spice of life.
This is extra true at the highest level of MMA, where future opponents and their camps will be studying your past fights to look at what you like to do. Going forward, I'd love to see Ferguson actually throw his right hand like Roy Jones Jr on occasion, rather than always just the jab. Hell, why not mix in some push kicks/teeps, too? It'd be intriguing to see Ferguson continue to delve into making an art of the spinning right hand distraction.
2. Intercepting Elbows
A lot of people say Jon Jones dominated the light heavyweight division because of how long his reach is. That's bullshit. If reach alone determined fights, Stefan Struve would be the UFC heavyweight champion, and betting odds on fighters would always favor the fighter with length. What makes Jones special is that he knows how to use his reach. So do many other fighters from the Jackson-Winkeljohn fight camp, including Cowboy Cerrone and Carlos Condit.
Ferguson, who himself is lanky for his division, must be paying attention to the techniques he's seen these lanky fighters use. He employs a lot of their signature techniques, including holding out his arms to keep distance and even the rare intercepting knee. His favorite lanky person move, however, is by far the intercepting elbow.
What's that? An elbow doesn't seem like a good move to throw for a person with long reach? They'd be better off trying to use their long range to throw punches?
Here's the thing: when you're a fighter with reach, the goal of the opponent is to close the distance and get in your face. Your goal is to do whatever you can to keep that distance. Inevitably, however, your opponent will eventually close the gap every once in a while, no matter how good you are. When your arms are lankier and longer than your opponent's, intercepting elbows are a great way to help against an opponent getting too close for comfort. Especially if punches in the pocket aren't your specialty. Ferguson has always used this attack against fighters closing in on him, but has really sharpened and used it more often in recent fights, particularly against Rafael Dos Anjos and Kevin Lee.
This, incidentally, could be one of the most helpful techniques for Tony in a hypothetical fight against Khabib. It's no coincidence he started using this move more in recent fights, where Khabib has always been the one he'd be expected to fight next. At the end of this post I'll discuss why this could be one of his most valuable moves against Khabib.
3. Triangular Footwork
Something cool that's been popping up more and more in recent years at the highest levels of MMA is changing stances. Until the last few years, the only top level fighter who used to consistently switch stances was Anderson Silva. Now a lot of elite fighters do it. Mighty Mouse Johnson and TJ Dillashaw are two of the best at it. Most fighters who switch stances do so the way those two do it: stepping with a single foot mid-combination. That is, in the middle of attacking their opponent they'll step one foot out in order to attack from different angles. The aforementioned Jack Slack has a excellet video about TJ Dillashaw's ability to change stances mid-combination.
Ferguson does his stance shifting a little differently, however. He uses what in Arnis is called triangular footwork (it also resembles the ginga of Capoeira, aka "that one martial art that looks like breakdance fighting"). The concept is pretty simple. Imagine a triangle under your feet, with two points in front of you and one behind. Triangular footwork has you moving according to this grid at all times, shifting stances by moving your back foot forward and your front foot back.
Ferguson often uses this triangular stance shift from a distance, rather than in the middle of an exchange the way most fighters do. The drawback of this approach is that you're not going to surprise an opponent by your change of stance. They'll see you shift stances right before the attack and know "ahh, okay, they are now fighting as a southpaw."
The advantage, however, is that you don't put yourself at risk the way changing stances during a combination does. No matter how good a fighter is, they're still vulnerable during that split second they change their stance, since they're in a brief moment of transition. Ferguson doesn't have to worry about that at a distance. Also, when mixed in with feints and level changes the way Ferguson does, the predictability of triangular footwork can be lessened.
4. Rubber Guard
One of the things Eddie Bravo has always talked about for jiujitsu-based fighters in MMA is the importance of having a "Carlos Condit guard" on the ground. After all, Carlos Condit off of his back is constantly fighting for either a submission or a sweep. It's easy to forget due to his creative kickboxing style on the feet, but thirteen of Condit's thirty wins are by submission. Even in fights that don't end by submission, his constant activity off of his back helps neutralize the offense of his opponent. In his fight against Johny Hendricks, a close fight many (including myself) scored for Condit, he kept using his guard to make sure that Hendricks could do nothing with the takedowns he landed.
Tony Ferguson, a 10th Planet student who trains jiujitsu with Eddie Bravo, has clearly been listening to his instructor about developing that Condit guard. His is constantly throwing up submission attempts from the bottom, as well as nasty elbows that do considerable amounts of damage (something which Kevin Lee has repeatedly said was the biggest surprise of the fight for him). Only a few people in the UFC have a guard as strong as Ferguson's.
As a 10th Planet jiujitsu practitioner, however, my favorite specific move of Ferguson's from his back is definitely the rubber guard. For those unfamiliar with the position, it's when a fighter swings their leg over the back of their opponent and grabs their ankle with the opposite hand. In the picture above, Ferguson is in rubber guard because his left leg is slung over Kevin Lee while his right hand/wrist traps Kevin Lee. Meanwhile, his left arm is hugging his left knee to make sure Lee can't simply twist out.
The rubber guard is great for a variety of attacks. The omoplata that Ferguson pursued against Lee is one of my favorite moves from the position, though as we saw in the fight, opponents who know how to escape that move make it a dangerous gambit. If they succeed in escaping the submission, they succeed in escaping your guard entirely.
What's actually most important about rubber guard, however, is that it prevents an opponent from posturing up. When you have mission control (the default position in rubber guard shown above) you have total domain over an opponent's posture until they escape (which is hard to do until you start changing position for a submission). Between the creative submission opportunities and strong ability for control, it's an excellent guard for any MMA fighter's arsenal.
5. D'arce Choke
For anyone who knows anything about me as a jiujitsu practitioner, you know my favorite submission is the d'arce. It's a great move, especially for those with long arms. The reason is that longer arms make it easier for someone to snake their hands through in order to secure the choke. It's a great submission, but not as common in MMA as the more traditional triangle, rear naked choke, armbar, etc.
Ferguson has two things going for him when it comes to the d'arce: he has the fundamentals of the choke itself down to a tee and he has incredible setups. When it comes to the fundamentals, the number one mistake most people make when going for the d'arce is not grabbing their outside arm's bicep/tricep area with the arm that sneaks under the neck. Many people will try to go for the d'arce as soon as they poke their fingers through the hole between their opponent's neck and shoulder.
If that sounds confusing, check out 1:29 of the video I posted above. See how his right hand grabs his left bicep? That's exactly what you wanna be doing. Most people get so excited to land the d'arce that they go for the choke as soon as their fingers poke through. When you do that you're only digging your fingers into their neck, rather than your much thicker, much bonier forearm. The choke loses a significant amount of potency.
Ferguson also has incredible setups to get to the d'arce. I won't cover any specific ones here because he has so many. His signature one is from the snap-down, but honestly, I don't know enough about wrestling to talk about the nuances of how it works (for those who don't know my martial arts background, I have a few years each in striking and jiujitsu, but the closest thing I've done to wrestling is eight months of judo). His more jiujitsu-y oriented entries (ie, those starting on the ground) are brilliant, though, and worth paying attention to for any submission grappler out there.
The most recent stats I could find on d'arce chokes say that as of July 30th, 2016, there were only eighteen d'arce choke finishes ever in the history of the UFC. Three of those belong to Tony Ferguson. In other words, in an organization that has had thousands of fights spanning back over twenty years, only eighteen of those fights have ended by d'arce as of 2016, and Ferguson had a sixth of those finishes. That's pretty damn impressive.
The Real (Hypothetical) Challenge: Khabib Nurmagomedov
Let's talk about what to look for in Tony vs Khabib.
A lot of people are saying that Tony Ferguson will need to use his length to keep Khabib away. That is technically true, and his excellent use of the jab-cross will indeed aid him in keeping Khabib away, as well his propensity to extend his arms Jon Jones style to keep distance. Khabib, however, is not someone you can keep on the outside forever. Like his training partners Cain Velasquez and Daniel Cormier, Khabib is an expert at mixing his strikes with his takedowns in order to close distance with relentless pressure. Ferguson, meanwhile, is not exactly someone with what we'd call evasive footwork. Barring a knockout in the early goings of the fight, Khabib will eventually succeed in closing the distance.
This is where Ferguson's use of elbows come in. When Khabib gets up close, Ferguson can use them to intercept Khabib as he comes crashing in. A lot of people say this fight will be at its most interesting on the ground, and I agree, but we can't discount the in-fight or clinch, either. Ferguson's intercepting elbows and wrestling background will give him a solid chance at blocking Khabib's takedown attempts long enough to land some good shots in the pocket.
That said, chances are it'll still get to the ground eventually. This will truly be a treat to watch. As mentioned above, Ferguson has one of the best guards in the UFC. But will it be enough for Khabib? It's hard to know for sure, but what we do know is that Ferguson won't just be laying passively on his back. He'll be throwing elbows, hammer fists, and submission attempts without giving Khabib room to get comfortable, and he'll constantly be trying to break down Khabib's posture to get rubber guard. It'll be a truly special battle.
Ferguson has to be careful, however. Not just for the obvious reason that Khabib is a world class grappler who mauls opponents the way I maul dulce de leche ice cream, but also because Khabib will still have the edge in the judge's eyes even if their skills on the ground are equal. MMA judges are generally wrestling-biased when it comes to scoring fights. They often don't understand that an opponent actively, effectively fighting off of their back is beating someone who has top position but is simply being defensive. Because of that, Ferguson still wants to keep the fight standing regardless of how much legitimate damage he can do off of his back.
It's a bummer we haven't been able to see this fight yet, but hopefully it comes to fruition. For now, hopefully he does well against Anthony Pettis.
