How Alistair Overeem Dominated Brock Lesnar at UFC 141

In my review of UFC 141 I drew attention to the strategy, and the potentially very significant importance of that strategy, used by Alistair Overeem to defeat Brock Lesnar. During the fight Overeem, a premier striker, did NOT fight in the manner I think most fans were expecting him to. Given his K1 background a viewer might have expected him to 'stand and bang', throwing punches and kicks predominantly in a manner similar to Shane Carwin and Cain Velasquez. Rather, Overeem closed in on Lesnar, purposely moving into a clinch (even away from the cage wall) and delivered knee strikes as his preferred method of attack. The final KO (effectively) was a Muay Thai round kick to the liver that left Lesnar on the ground against the cage wall and vulnerable to punches, giving Overeem the win.

So why was Overeem's strategy so effective and what does it mean for MMA?

We need to go back in time to 1993 and the beginning of the UFC and organized MMA in America (though the term MMA had not at that time been coined). Royce Gracie dominated the early UFC events and he did it by following a simple formula: take the fight to the ground and employ superior submission skills. This was nothing new and was the primary strategy used not only by BJJ experts in Brazil but one that had emerged earlier than that in the formative years of Judo in Japan. The earliest UFC bouts were dominated by grapplers who either went for submissions or, if less skilled in that area, would resort to ground and pound. Strikers (kickboxers, boxers, karate and kung fu men and so on) were having a very hard time. For more information on this check out my Brazilian Jiu Jitsu page which looks at the history of BJJ and has a video on the early days of the UFC (at the bottom of the page). Also take a look at The Ultimate Gracie, a very well made documentary examining the early success of Royce Gracie.

The response to the early dominance of grapplers was fairly simple: the strikers learned how to sprawl and, instead of developing high level grappling skills, relied on escaping from the ground and standing up to return the fight to where they were most comfortable. Since then the simple, direct strategy of shooting, taking the fight to the ground and winning by submission has gone into decline and I have written previously on the death of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu discussing this in more detail.

However, the sprawl is still a defensive measure used to prevent a take down attempt. Far more effective is to use the knee to strike an opponent as he closes in for the single or double leg takedown. The nature of the takedown technique means that the aggressor has to lead with his head leaving him vulnerable to the rising knee. The only problem with this is that it is extraordinarily difficult to pull off. After Frank Mir's win over Big Nog at UFC 140 Ariel Helwani interviewed him and closed by asking Mir for his prediction on Lesnar vs Overeem. Mir went with Lesnar, saying that while Overeem had excellent knee strikes 90% of the time any takedown attempt by Lesnar would be successful. I would agree with this. It is very difficult for a striker to shift his attention from his upper body (while punching) to his lower body sufficiently quickly enough to launch a knee attack as a counter strike to a takedown attempt.

So now we can better understand the genius of Overeem's strategy. By focusing his attention on his lower body and choosing the knee strike as his preferred method of attack he made it very difficult for Lesnar to shoot in for the takedown. There were no gaps in Overeem's defense for Lesnar to penetrate. Overeem significantly raised the potential success rate for delivering a knee strike to the face of an incoming Lesnar.

The implications of this are enormous. Straight grapplers have struggled now for some time in the UFC and MMA in general but Overeem has found a way to further stifle any aggressive tendencies a takedown specialist may have. With a lower success rate for the takedown (and potentially disastrous results if a takedown fails and is met with a knee) the grappler, as we saw with Lesnar, is taken out of his element.

A potential counter to this threat is one that I have seen Shinya Aoki use and also Jon Jones when he came out against Rampage Jackson. The grappler simply starts the fight off bear crawling on the floor to close with his opponent. Rules prevent kicks to an opponent who is considered to be on the ground so the bear crawl allows the grappler to close the distance. I don't know how popular this would be with Dana White if it became prevalent in the UFC though...

Whatever solution the grappling community comes up with, Overeem has introduced a quantum leap in the strategy that can be used by strikers against grapplers. Full credit to him and his team for this brilliant innovation.

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