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 as much damage as you can while trying to minimize the damage you receive in turn.  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 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 just about 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 by far, however, is 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 your opponent is to close the distance and get in your face.  Your goal is to do whatever you can to keep that distance and not let them in.  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 an effective 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 significant potency. Ferguson does not make that mistake.
 

He also has incredible setups to get to the choke.  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.

Martial Arts and Violence

When the media talks about martial arts, the topic of whether or not martial artists are trained to be aggressive is brought up quite often.  Opponents of martial arts will often accuse us of being brutes, especially those who train in arts that involve striking and competition, such as Boxing, Muay Thai, and Mixed Martial Arts.  It is especially bad with MMA, as it is the new kid on the block, and therefore seen as the rowdy, dangerous new combat sport that totally disregards everything civilized and honorable about previous combat sports (despite the fact it is much safer, neurologically speaking, than football, hockey, or boxing).

Perhaps it is needless to say, but I find all of this alarmist and false.  However, I also find the response from certain parts of some martial art communities disingenuous as well.  The typical response to allegations of us being a bunch of meat heads tends to sound like something written by a first year philosophy student.  "Martial arts isn't violence, its about peace and enlightenment!"  You especially see this coming from traditional martial arts communities, where they exoticize the Asian roots of the martial arts they train and think its, like, totally spiritual and zen.

"OMG, are you Asian?  You must be super wise and meditate a lot and know Karate!"

"Ma'am, first of all, Karate is Japanese and I'm of Chinese descent.  Second of all, no, I'm not some Buddhist monk, I'm just a guy who plays basketball."

This is silly, because no matter what semantics game you try to play, at the end of the day a quality martial art is still teaching you how to fight.  No amount of cute sounding tangents will change the fact that you are learning how to effectively harm someone else while minimizing harm to yourself.  Yet children who practice martial arts are far less likely to exhibit bullying behavior.  What gives?

First and foremost, it is important to realize that, child or adult, bullying can be derived from either too little self-confidence or too much.  This distinction is important, because martial arts deals with both of these issues in different ways.

For people who have low self-esteem, the answers are obvious.  When you develop any sort of skill, your self-esteem increases.  Being able to develop and hone a talent gives you a tangible accomplishment that you can be proud of.  When it's gardening, you can eat something you grew and literally enjoy the fruits of your labor.  When you write, you can take pride in all the groupies and extravagant wealth you gain from your moderately interesting Blogger posts.  When you train martial arts, you can feel proud about your ability to Karate the hell out of things.

I'm gonna Karate the shit outta you, persistent self-doubt!

On top of that, martial arts also leads to everything else associated with any other physical activity, too, such as better health and energy levels.  There is also the fact that, hey, you are training with a group of human beings, and that means people you can socialize with!  If its a tight knit enough school, you may even hang out with them outside of class.  Rad, right?

So now we have a pretty good idea of why people with low self-esteem might benefit from martial arts.  But what about jerks with high self-esteem?

The answer to this question is the sense of humbleness that you get from good martial arts.  To reiterate a post from my previous blog, a good martial art is a martial art that trains with aliveness.  Aliveness means that some aspects of your training involve an opponent that is actually offering resistance against you in a way that isn't in a set pattern.

The ultimate form of aliveness is sparring/kumite/randori/rolling/foreplay/whatever your art calls it, where you go against an opponent in a simulated match where both participants are trying to gain the upper hand.  But there are other forms of aliveness, too.  For instance, hitting punching mitts while the holder randomly throws counterattacks you have to block or dodge, or drilling techniques where your partner resists instead of being compliant.

When you consistently go against people like this it is phenomenally humbling, especially when you're first starting out and go against more experienced students.  It is particularly humbling if you're a dude.  You come in with the same programming that every guy between the age of 14 and dead has: a unique, cognitively dissonant bullshit blend of "I'm gonna learn to flying spin kick or rip off the limbs of all the opponents I ever meet!" and "that martial arts stuff won't work on me, bruh, I just see red and hulk out on them for like thirty seconds straight."  Flying spin kicks and thirty seconds of hulking out may describe my love making style, but you quickly come to realize that these lines of reasoning are both utter bullshit when you actually put yourself to the test in a fight.

 I've been in, like, at least a million street fights, man.  I've seriously lost count at this point.

The thing is, when you fight against someone, myths about fighting become dispelled pretty easily.  When you punch someone's nose in Boxing, you learn that anecdotes about killing someone by sending nose cartilage into their brain is bullshit.  When you learn the sciences of fighting for chokes in Jiujitsu, you learn that dorks who think they can break someone's neck by turning it to the side would in reality only be giving you a rough neck massage.

There are many more examples, but the point is there is a reason we don't all die whenever we accidentally bump into things or play a contact sport.  The human body has evolved to be durable.  In learning this, you realize that all the ridiculously superhuman sounding myth in martial arts is a farce, and that you'll never be able to learn the exploding death touch. As Seanbaby once said, " If you could actually kill someone by poking them in the wrong spot, I would have driven home from the prom a murderer."

With all of these wild myths debunked, you realize you won't be able to take out your opponent easily like the badass you thought you were.  You have to actually, like, slowly learn proper technique, put yourself out there, face a lot of defeats, and relish in the small victories.  No matter how good you are, when you step into a martial arts gym, you will be humbled by people who have been training for a while.  Even if you're naturally athletic or quick to pick things up or whatever else, you'll have a lot to learn and be around people who have more experience than you.

When I first started learning martial arts, I certainly had internalized a lot of bullshit.  But as time went on, that broke down and I was forced to face the reality: I wasn't that amazing at it, nor would I learn any sacred mega techniques that could fell any opponent in one easy move.  I ended up sticking with it regardless, and both my ability and my confidence grew.  Each time my head started getting too big, however, I would go against a more experienced student and end up getting my ego deflated quickly.

It may sound discouraging, and it can be.  There were plenty of days I wanted to quit.  But instead, I kept with it and continued making small, incremental improvements that were hard to see.  However, every once in a while something will happen, and you will have an "aha!" moment reminding you that everything has been worth it.  The most recent one for me happened last time I was rolling with members from my Jiujitsu gym, 10th Planet Vista.

I'm the bearded one in the multicolored Bruce Lee shirt sitting down in the front, to the right.

We were doing Jiujitsu on the beach in Oceanside a few weeks ago, and I was going against some of my fellow students.  Now, the people that come to these beach sessions tend to be some of the more skilled/dedicated students in class.  We're talking most of them at least being seasoned blue belts, a rank which is usually earned after a year and a half to two years of intensive training, and a lot of them even being purple belts (the next rank, which is usually earned after about three to four years of intensive training).  As someone who had been training there only during weekends and holidays while at UC Irvine, and then started going consistently only when I finished at UCI back in March of this year, I of course get turned into a pretzel by these more experienced members when rolling.

On this day, however, I actually held my own- relatively speaking, of course.  From the people who were way above me in rank/experience, I was able to last for a lot longer than I usually do.  Even when they would take my back and go for a choke, I would usually be able to defend myself and escape the position.  It sounds like a small thing, and that's because it is.

I was beaming with pride afterward, because I thought of every time I ever got choked out by a higher ranking belt in seconds.  Since I had gone through that so many times, I had gradually learned how to defend myself properly, and was much harder to submit than I was in the past.  Small, incremental progress.

What is important to take away from these small victories is you gain them not by innately being a badass, but by accepting defeat and continuing to work past it.  There is no shortage of people who will quit something because they aren't initially great at it.  I lost count of the times I've seen 200-something pound guys come into different places I've trained, thinking they'll be the next Chuck Liddell or Cain Velasquez, only to get beaten in sparring or submitted in rolling and never come back again.  Its because they're used to being the big kid on the playground, and can't handle having that reality shattered.

Even Georges St Pierre, widely considered the second or third best UFC fighter of all time, almost quit in his early days due to some set backs, but stuck with it and broke records.  

What does this have to do with violence?  Well, when you are consistently testing your fighting skills in an environment with these humbling small victories, you tend to not think of yourselves as "better" than other people in the traditional sense.  After all, your skill wasn't something you initially started out with, it was something you honed through countless defeats.  Even if you're a high level practitioner, there will still be more people around who have more experience and skill than you do.  With what you learn, you realize that the way to surpass people better than you isn't to act like an aggressive asshole, but to keep putting in work and earning those small victories.

Now, with all of this said, there are still plenty of major assholes in martial arts.  There are assholes anywhere.  The key here is there tend to be less, because the benefits from martial arts give you self-esteem boosts while the constant defeats keep your ego from getting too big.  People who stick with it in the long term tend to display less aggression because they find the healthy, constructive type of confidence that let them continue to grow as martial artists.

Speaking of which, here is an old video from a couple years back where my friend David Zafra and I interview 10th Planet Vista's head instructor, Ryan Fortin!  Thanks for reading, everyone.