UFC Orlando Aftermath: Throw the Kitchen Sink At ‘Em | Fight Analysis

If you know, you know. UFC on ESPN 42 absolutely delivered. From the opening bell of the card to the banger of a main event between Stephen Thompson and Kevin Holland, this card did its job: entertain. We had Eryk Anders looking better than ever, Roman Dolidze doing witchcraft on the ground, Sergei Pavlovich out-Tuivasa-ing Tai Tuivasa and Rafael dos Anjos refusing to join the old man circuit against Bryan Barberena. Today is Monday, and it’s the week after the fights. That means we have to do some looking at the main event. It’s time for Aftermath!

Post-“UFC Orlando” Thoughts

Before we dive deeper into the main event, I want to take a moment and talk about some of the cooler moments on the card. We won’t get too in-depth but some of these fights are worth mentioning and touching upon.

Starting off the main card, Eryk Anders looked great. Normally Anders comes out and looks to counter with a left. After two straight losses, Anders came out with some urgency against Kyle Daukaus. He had some great moments standing up and didn’t rush the finish. Anders has struggled to capture the magic that made him so much fun in recent years but this fight showed promise. He was in great shape and should Anders fight like this in the future, he will nab a few more $50k bonuses.

Sergei Pavlovich looked absolutely fantastic against Tai Tuivasa. The Russian fighter now has five straight wins after his only career loss. All five have come in the first round, but that’s nothing new to Pavlovich as he now has 14 first-round finishes in 17 wins.

Lastly I want to talk about that black magic that Roman Dolidze conjured against Jack Hermansson. Hermansson looked good on the feet and was beating Dolidze to the punch—pun intended). Hermansson twice made the mistake of taking Dolidze down. Dolidze managed a beautiful sweep in the first round, sure, but that was overshadowed when Dolidze was taken down again and ended up putting Hermansson in a calf slicer, controlling one wrist, and then pounding out Hermansson to get the fight stopped. That was just pure magic and I need more Dolidze in my life.

Kevin Holland: Grappling? Where we’re going we don’t need grappling.”

Holland retired after being mauled by Khamzat Chimaev at UFC 279 a few months ago. He said he would come out of retirement do “something special.” I laughed when he came out of said retirement for a fight with “Wonderboy.” I was wrong for laughing. The main event of “UFC Orlando” delivered all that and a bag of chips. That was half due to Holland. He managed to make Thompson actually bring out an aggressive fight and when he got “Wonderboy” to the ground, he stood up. As in the words of Dr. Emmett Brown from “Back to the Future”: “Grappling? Where we’re going we don’t need grappling?” At least that’s what I think he said.

In Beforemath, we talked about the importance of the low kick for Holland going into the fight. We pointed out the work to the legs done by Darren Till, Jorge Masvidal and Anthony Pettis as examples of how the low kick can be utilized against Thompson’s side-on, karate stance. Holland beat the legs up better than all three with a 44 of 50 connection rate. The problem is that Holland didn’t utilize the damage done properly. When it came time for the takedown after the accumulation of damage, Holland was too hurt, too tired to take Thompson down.

Ever the stubborn fighter, Holland stuck to what he wanted to do which was to the fans delight and to his undoing this weekend. He was insistent on not grappling and stood up when he did take Thompson down. But, the first two takedowns were quite slick and took advantage of Thompson’s style to get the fight down.

Thompson fights out of both southpaw and orthodox. His blitzing style has him taking both the inside angles and the outside foot advantage while in southpaw. This works to his favor for the most part, but Holland, as clever as he is, used Thompson’s blitz against him. In Figure 1 above, we see how Holland dealt with the step in of Thompson when he was in the southpaw stance. While Holland wouldn’t grapple, the two sweeps like the one above made Thompson respect the grappling of Holland. (1) Out of southpaw, Thompson will step into Holland getting the outside foot advantage. While in boxing the outside foot advantage presents unique opportunities in boxing and striking-only sports (I’ve written about this extensively with my Layers series on Vasyl Lomachenko), in mixed martial arts, the advantage is not as pronounced. As we see, (2) Thompson managed to get a deep outside foot advantage but Holland, being a more complete martial artist, used that step in to turn and use an uchi mata and (3) secure the takedown and still stand up.

Unfortunately for Holland, 39-year-old “Wonderboy” was too fast and he was just a hair behind all night. Thompson manage to break the hand of Kevin Holland and took away the power punch of Holland that hurt him in the first. Holland intended to rely on his straight punching to beat Thompson at UFC Orlando. We saw him use this when he stunned Thompson in the first round. With that taken away, purposeful or not, it handicapped Holland and we saw Holland and his corner throw in the towel at the conclusion of the fourth round; a perfect call by he and his team. Live to fight on another day.

Stephen Thompson threw everything at Holland, including the kitchen sink

This was one of Thompson’s absolute best performances. He is normally a counter fighter that likes walking his opponents onto punches and kicks, but Holland managed to draw a firefight out of him. This was a welcome change in what could have been a boring fight. Instead, we got a “Fight of the Year” candidate and I couldn’t be happier.

Thompson was super smart using Holland’s tendencies against him. While Holland had success hopping in and pressing Thompson, muffling his striking and keeping him on the back foot, Thompson settled in and started to get some work in. Holland loves to use the shoulder roll when he’s on the defensive. Thompson used Holland’s leaning, which had him out of position, and blitzed Holland to push him back and keep him from being in the pocket with the position to strike. With Holland leaning away, Thompson was free to unload strikes that he wouldn’t should Holland be standing in front of him.

With the threat of the takedown presented by Holland on the step in that we talked about earlier, Thompson adjusted on the fly and dealt with the threat well. As he stepped in, Thompson would make sure to pivot away and under the attempt at the collar tie from Holland, or he would switch from southpaw to orthodox off of a kick as to be in the pocket while still having Holland try to defend what was the southpaw attack.

Of course the kicks of Thompson played a huge role in his victory at “UFC Orlando.” To go back to Beforemath for this card, we discussed the front side kick of Stephen Thompson that’s different from his traditional karate style and adopts a point kickboxing/sanda approach by firing in the kick in a pushing motion instead of a snapping motion. (This is like when a woman is dropping you hints that she digs you, fellas. Go read Beforemath.) In that edition, we talked about how Xiaonan Yan uses the technique in a textbook manner.

As you can see, Thompson also utilized the front line side kick with fantastic results. In Figure 2 above, we see how throwing the kick has a defensive element to it as well. First, (1) Thompson steps in with his rear foot to close the distance and be in range to land the kick. If he throws it with out his rear foot inching forward, Thompson will be whiffing at air unless Holland comes forward. Thompson actually will throw the front line side kick as his opponents comes forward. But here he’s on the offensive. With the lead foot forward, (2) Thompson will also use the natural motion of the kick to lean his head back and off the center line, where a Holland can crack him with that massive right. Finally, (3) you can see on the kick that connects, Thompson is not only off the center line, but he has his chin tucked behind his lead shoulder. While this kick is not invincible, all strikes have a risk-benefit assessment and Thompson is a master at picking the right shots.

Thompson also utilized the body work through his kicking game. We saw at the end of the fight that Holland was folding over from the body kick out of the southpaw stance. This slowed Holland down enough for Thompson to keep pouring the offense on Holland as his opponent tired out and Thompson stayed relatively fresh.

Thompson also dealt with the massive amounts of low kicks well. But this isn’t really a purposeful thing as Thompson always switches stances throughout the fight. But by doing so, he splits the damaged received in half.

All in all, Thompson put on a masterclass and reminded everyone that when it comes to striking, there’s not much better out there than Stephen “Wonderboy” Thompson.

Look, I’m just saying, grappling is cool and all. But if we have the opportunity to see Thompson vs. Michael Chiesa/Shavkat Rakhmonov or Thompson vs. Michel Pereira/Muslim Salikhov, I’m picking Pereira/Salikhov.

Be sure to tune back in mid-week as we are going to be diving into Jan Blachowicz vs. Magomed Ankalaev, the headliner of UFC 282.