My Five Favorite Moves of Tony Ferguson

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.

Final Fantasy VII: Everything Connected

One of the weirder parts of growing up is seeing which entertainment you loved as a kid holds up to scrutiny as an adult and which doesn't. We've all scrolled by a show or movie we loved as kids on Netflix and clicked it, only to realize halfway through that it's a corny, horrible mess (sorry, Power Rangers).  It's quite a bummer when something that captivated you as a kid loses that spell it used to be able to cast on you.
 
On the other hand, it's pretty cool when  you discover something you used to love as a kid can still work its magic on you as an adult, even when you have your ~critical thinking about storytelling~ hat on.

A couple weeks ago I started replaying Final Fantasy VII, which I call my favorite videogame of all time despite not having played it for almost a decade.  A few days ago I finally beat it.  Fortunately, it held up in every area other than graphics.  I thought the story in particular was well-executed, even if there is the occasional hiccup (why is Cait Sith sacrificing himself at the Temple of the Ancients played like a tragic, heroic redemption when we know he's just a puppet and a new one comes immediately after anyway?).

If it was an attempt to make him seem less useless

or obnoxious, then boy howdy did they fail.

There's a lot I could write about where I think FF VII succeeds, but in order to avoid making this post a novella, I'm gonna narrow it down.  The focus today will be on how well the story connects everything in a well-realized way.  Before I get into that, though, I have a disclaimer of sorts: yes, I believe quality is in the eye of the beholder.  I don't believe there's a such thing as an objective authority on how good any given story is, and even if there were, it certainly wouldn't be me.

However, if all we ever did was shrug and simply say "well, everyone has their own opinion" whenever talking about stories, we'd never be able to talk about what makes them work or not work.  We'd never have interesting dialogue about what different stories do well and don't do well.  We'd never be challenged to articulate why we have the responses we do to stories.  Ultimately, we'd never be able to enrich our understanding of the stories we consume.

Sooo, I'm writing this post not because I think everyone needs to agree FF VII is awesome, but because I think articulating specific things a story does well can help improve our understanding of it.  When multiple people do that, whether they agree or disagree, they can then have a conversation that can help improve everyone's understanding of how storytelling works.

Cool?  Cool.

So, with all of that out of the way, I'll be talking about how well Final Fantasy VII ties all of its main elements, from gameplay to story to characters, together so damn well.  Everything, and I mean everything, ties back to the Lifestream and Shinra's attempt to harvest it for profit even at the expense of the planet.

Luckily, megacorporations that exert an alarming amount of influence over world affairs

and drain the planet of resources are pure works of fiction. I mean, could you imagine?

First, we'll start with how it ties to the technical side of the game.  In may other Final Fantasy games, the gameplay mechanics are not tied to the story of the game.  In Final Fantasy VI, for instance, characters learn skills as they level up.  In Final Fantasy IX, characters learn skills through their equipment.  Both are great games, but their way of learning new skills isn't creatively tied to the world their games inhabit.

Not with VII, though.  Here we have the materia system, which is crystallized energy from the planet's Lifestream.  This energy calls upon the wisdom of the Cetra/Ancients to manipulate nature, which is what this universe refers to as magic.  In the events of the game, most of the materia you use is actually manufactured by Shinra, further illustrating Shinra's willingness to exploit the Lifestream for profit.

In other words, the mechanics of the game are directly connected to its world and story.

Random thought: it would've been nice if the characters wrestled with the fact that

most of the materia they're using is the product of planetary exploitation

This is also the case with the characters.  Every character's story connects to Shinra in one way or another.  Cloud is a former Shinra infantry member.  Both his and Tifa's hometown of Nibelheim were destroyed by Shinra, while Barret's hometown was reduced to a shadow of its former self.  Aerith never knew her parents because of the experiments Shinra conducted on them, and ultimately becomes a target of Shinra herself.  Red XIII is experimented on by Shinra before the group saves him, and his honorary grandfather Bugenhagen helps them understand how the planet works and just what Shinra's exploitation is doing to it.  Cait Sith... well, he's useless trash, but he's useless Shinra trash.

Even our two optional characters are connected to Shinra.  Vincent has his tragic backstory with Lucrecia, who is Sephiroth's mom, which also connects to the Turks and Hojo (honestly, given his backstory, it's a little odd he's just an optional character).  Yuffie, meanwhile, chooses to become a materia thief in the first place to help Wutai after it lost the war to Shinra a few years before the start of the game.  Since then it has become a shell of its former self.  She wants to help it regain some of its former glory.

Compare these to Final Fantasy VI (note: I bring up other games like VI because they are also very good; I don't bring them up to shit on them, but because they offer a handier comparison than a shitty game does).  Many of the best characters of VI's cast have backstories directly tied to the Gestahl Empire, including my two favorite characters, Sabin and Celes.  However, almost as many characters have absolutely nothing to do with the events of the game, such as Shadow and Gau, who just sorta stumble into the party and don't have backstories at all tied into the greater narrative.

Luckily, we have Sabin supplexing a ghost train to make up for the lesser characters.

Finally, we have the big bad of Final Fantasy VII himself, Sephiroth.  We don't need to get into how his story connects to Shinra, as it'd almost be easier to list ways Sephiroth isn't connected to Shinra than ways he is.

However, I do wanna quickly address a complaint some people have given about VII, even from fans of the series, that I think shows a misunderstanding of the game's story.  The complaint is that the beginning quarter or so of the game where your main enemy is Shinra "feels like a waste of time" after it's revealed that Sephiroth is the big bad.  Quite honestly, this is silly.

The Shinra stuff had to happen because Shinra is still the root cause for everything that happens in the game, and even near the end of it, are still a major threat.  Yes, Jenova came well before Shinra to wreck havoc on the planet, but it is Shinra's actions that not only revive her, but use her to create Sephiroth in the first place.

All of the destruction that occurs thereafter, then, is a result of Shinra's exploitation of the planet.

Plus, with hair that luxurious, it's hard to stay mad at Sephiroth.

The events of the plot, then, are caused almost entirely by Shinra.  This is a hallmark of good writing because, ultimately, the plot's connection to Shinra comes from the characters' connections to Shinra.  Good fiction writing places the characters as the drivers of the plot.  Shinra has greatly affected the people of VII's world, including the main cast of characters, and it is their responses to Shinra's effect on the world that drive both their own individual character journey and the plot as a whole.

To speak in more concrete terms, I'll use the model presented in "Creating Character Arcs" by KM Weiland (which is a great book that everyone interested in storytelling should totally read).  Basically, Weiland says that every character begins a story believing a lie.  Their goal is to unlearn and overcome the lie to embrace a new truth.  In doing so, they grow as a character while both driving the plot and reinforcing the theme (which is the truth they learn at the end).  In this way, character, plot, and theme are all intertwined.

Let's take Cloud.  We might be tempted to say that the lie he believes is that he used to be a First Class member of SOLDIER, but really the Weland-type lie Cloud believes is actually deeper than that.  The belief he begins the game with is that nothing and no one, not even himself, truly matter.  So what if the planet is dying?  So what if his childhood friend needs his help?  So what if he can't remember most of his life?  So what if he's living without any sense of his past, present, or future?

According to Weiland, a well-written character also needs a good reason to believe their lie.  Weiland calls this a character's "ghost," which is whatever happened in their past that to lead them to their lie.  In Cloud's case, his ghost is the Nibelheim incident and its aftermath.  Not just the fact that it happened, but also his response to it.  After all, Cloud both (1)was too weak to resist the Jenova cells the way Zack did and (2)later created his persona based on a misunderstanding of Zack, whom he looked up to and wanted to emulate.  In other words, Cloud's response to the Jenova cells was specifically his response to the Jenova cells, as Zack responded differently than he did, and any other number of people would've each had their own unique response.

Now, let's dig a little deeper on that second point of Cloud's response to the cells for a moment.

 I swear this isn't just an excuse to talk about my favorite fictional character of all time.

...okay, maybe it is just a bit.

Cloud spends Crisis Core, the prequel to VII, looking up to Zack.  It makes sense as to why: he's brave, charismatic, and strong enough to make it not only into SOLDIER, but into First Class.  What Cloud ultimately misses, however, is that part of what makes Zack strong is how he cares for other people.  Prequel Cloud doesn't grasp that for whatever reason (honestly, this is another part they could've explored way better in the series).  So, when the mako-poisoning from Shinra's experiments and his own inferiority complex combine to give him partial amnesia and make him adapt Zack's personality, he adapts the persona we see in the early part of VII: a weak person's understanding of what makes a strong person.

The game, then, can be seen as Cloud going from believing the lie that nothing/no one matters, which is something he believes strong people think, to embracing the truth that we're all connected and everyone matters.  This is not only shown in the ending VII, but also explicitly stated in the movie sequel, Advent Children, right before he defeats Sephiroth.  "I pity you, you just don't get it at all.  There's not a thing I don't cherish!"

In learning this new truth, he not only grows as a character and person, but also becomes the true living legacy of Zack.  Zack not only lived his life by this truth, but even died for it.  After all, as a First Class SOLDIER, he could've easily continued evading capture from Shinra if he'd just abandon the comatose Cloud.  But Zack knew better than that.  He understood that abandoning Cloud wasn't the right thing to do.  He chose to keep Cloud safe while fighting the entire Shinra military in order to stand by that truth.

Is someone chopping onions?  What's that?  No one is, and also

it's okay to cry instead of making excuses to avoid expressing genuine emotion?

The game, then, ends with Cloud doing quite a bit: fulfilling a personal arc that sees his growth, becoming the living legacy of Zack, and, as the plot requires, saving the world from both Shinra and Sephiroth.  What makes this an example of good writing, even in the face of all the imperfections one can point out, is that all of these are linked: Cloud's personal journey and the plot requirement of saving the world are interlinked.  Because of the way things have been set up, you can't have one without the other.

And, of course, it all ties back to Shinra's actions.

The same happens with all the other characters, though that's not to say they're on the same character journey that Cloud is.  Tifa, for example, already knows that we're all connected and everyone matters.  However, she is passive to the point of letting bad things fester instead of bringing them into the open.  She is a people-pleaser to a fault.  We can see this with her keeping her trouble with Cloud's recollections of the Nibelhiem incident to herself (though, upon replay, it is very clear she is uncomfortable whenever he talks about it).

Her truth that she learns to embrace over the course of the game is that there's a difference between being facilitating/considerate and being overly passive. We see her become more bold and outspoken throughout the course of the game, but without losing the kindness and diplomatic traits that make her Tifa in the first place.  The pinnacle of this arc comes when she finally speaks up to Cloud about the inconsistencies of his story, launching into a long series of complicated events that ends up with Tifa helping him through his struggle to find out exactly who he is.

Most of the other main characters also go through some form of their own journeys, except for Yuffie and Vincent, since they're optional and therefore can't be too important to the plot, and Cait Sith, who just sucks.

Ugh, just look at this dipshit.

So, in closing, Final Fantasy VII does a great job of connecting everything together.  Despite the occasional odd plot choice or the room for improvement on how certain things are handled, VII does a great job of connecting everything from character arcs to story to gameplay mechanics back to Shinra and its exploitation of the planet.

Again, in writing this, I don't wanna say that this is the only way to look at VII, or say that any criticisms are invalid (I've injected my own critiques throughout the piece, and could bring up plenty more).  I just hope that by posting something like this it can be part of a greater dialogue that helps people think about stories beyond "this part was cool!" and "this part sucked!"  There's nothing wrong with those statements, but for those of us who take stories seriously, I think we can do better.

Thanks for reading!