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The Flawless Ringcraft of Joanna Jedrzejczyk

Against her toughest challenger to date, Joanna Jedrzejczyk looked damn near untouchable. We examine the striking masterclass displayed by the strawweight champion.

At UFC 211, faced with a ferocious challenger, Joanna Jedrzejczyk put on one of the finest performances of her lengthy combat sports career. Over twenty-five minutes Jedrzejczyk proved herself head and shoulders above Jessica Andrade not through any god given talent or magic, but through economical, scientific striking, mastery of distance, and superior ring generalship. Being powerful or fast is impressive, having the smarts and discipline to do the right thing every time for twenty-five minutes takes a level of fight smarts and heart that few appreciate. Every fighter in the world can be taught to circle out when they get near the fence, but most are apt to forget it as soon as they start breathing heavy, eat a good punch, or feel like they can land some heavier shots by standing still. But that is why Joanna Jedrzejczyk is so special; she is a cut above the vast majority of MMA fighters who have ever played the game.

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Master of Range

The story of the fight was Jedrzejczyk's control of range. Just as Angela Hill showed in her barnburner with Andrade earlier in the year, Andrade can be troubled if kept on the end of a lancing jab and long, snappy kicks. Jedrzejczyk got to work with her jab almost immediately and used low kicks from a distance to connect at a reach on Andrade's lead leg. The distancing on the kicks was especially important because stepping in to slam in a power kick with the middle of the shin to the meat of the thigh often gives Andrade her chance to bum rush. Committing to the right hand was what got Hill caught often in that fight, and Jedrzejczyk had brushes with the same issues when she stepped deep to throw her right hand to the body or failed to incorrectly anticipated Andrade's position.

Jedrzejczyk also did great work with her trademark right straight to the body. In previous performances, Jedrzejczyk has often used this when her opponent is against the fence and squared up. Against the square stanced Andrade it worked well as Andrade pursued. It also caused a couple of Andrade rare steps backwards in this fight. Once it has been established that a fighter has a cinderblock for a head, body work is always a good shout.

Breaking the Line

But if this fight were fought on a straight line, regardless of how crisp Jedrzejczyk's jab was, Andrade would have had a field day. Rushing in behind haymakers is Andrade's whole game, after all. It was Jedrzejczyk's work as the ring general that enabled her to keep resetting the distance, pounding in her jab and kicks, and escaping punishment. Ringcraft is often seen as a solution to a problem—you're stuck on the fence, do this—when in fact everything the fighter does in the ring should be done with ringcraft in mind. Junior dos Santos' tendency to only circle out once his buttocks touch the fence saw him catch a couple of Western Lariats against Stipe Miocic at UFC 211. As with most things in fighting, preventing a problem ahead of time is far better than having to answer it.

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Reviewing the fight you will notice that the vast majority of Jedrzejczyk's circling out begins not by the fence, but within the interior octagon made of black lines on the mat. By constantly breaking the line and making Andrade turn, not simply circling out when she needed to, Jedrzejczyk kept Andrade following and playing catch up. Andrade kept moving forward, but moving forward without controlling where the fight takes place, Andrade was only controlling the pace at which she got hit.

The neat jump off line low kick which Jedrzejczyk shows in most of her fights. Not particularly relevant to the current discussion but I wanted to get it into this article somehow.

Readers will also notice that the majority of Jedrzejczyk's side stepping was done in combination with retreat. The standard forty-five on the rear side, this carries the fighter off line but also serves to lengthen the opponent's left hand. Andrade's clothesline left hook fell short over and over again even as Jedrzejczyk was circling to that side because of this.

Jedrzejczyk isn't infallible of course, she did occasionally find herself too close to the fence to simply glide back and circle around. It was then that she demonstrated a nice variation of the classical side step—using a switch step to make the best use of the space underneath her. With no room behind her, Jedrzejczyk could still retreat from her stance and use the space that had been underneath her to cut a cleaner angle.

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Withdrawing her left foot, back and to the left, Jedrzejczyk went into a side step to her right. It's a small move and easy to miss in the midst of a fight, but this method of side stepping has been important to scientific boxer for decades. It is especially useful to the side on boxer with a long stance.

The hilarious carny boxer, Champ Thomas had some interesting thoughts on this technique and it gelled well with his philosophy that once the backfoot hits the bottom rope the stance should be maintained unless the fighter himself collapses it to utilize this escape. Thomas despised fighters going to the ropes, squaring their feet and putting the earmuffs on and believed that all boxing should be done from a wide stance. Thomas insisted that this side step, 'his' sidestep was a lifesaver and in his books recounts narrowly escaping being stabbed with a broken scotch bottle when caught against a wall. All Champ Thomas stories should be taken with a grain of salt, but his boxing advice was always rock solid and his belief in this side step was well founded. Thomas insisted "Both feet move at the same time. If you step back with your left foot, then forward with your right foot, then move your body to the right… your sidestep is worthless."

In addition to her constant lateral movement and leading Andrade all around the cage, Jedrzejczyk made excellent use of head control. At the highest levels boxing becomes a lot more like wrestling—you will notice Floyd Mayweather and Vasyl Lomachenko manipulating their opponent's head constantly. When Andrade lunged in to swing Jedrzejczyk would stiff arm her forehead or face and circle off, or pull down on the back of Andrade's head to throw her past. If Jedrzejczyk didn't feel she could circle out, or felt she could land a good knee, she would slap on the double collar tie and dig a knee before breaking the line once again. Angela Hill showed the double collar tie to be effective against Andrade, but Jedrzejczyk rarely had cause to use it on the fence and instead worked it in brief spurts out in the open.

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Resetting the distance over and over again without getting stuck in trades along the fence meant that Jedrzejczyk could shine a light on the very limited nature of Andrade's striking. It has been refreshing to see Jessica Andrade adding body work over the last couple of years, and doubling up on punches, but in closing the distance she still only has one way of doing the job: run in swinging the left hook. Her head movement is extremely limited, often simply pulling back and leaving her a sitting duck for punches after she has been feinted out of position. Most importantly, Andrade palms for the jab constantly and wildly. Each time her opponent's lead shoulder moves Andrade will perform a lengthy paw at the expected punch. We discussed this being cat nip for a scientific striker in our prefight piece Can Jessica Andrade Kill the Queen ?

As expected, Jedrzejczyk immediately went to work attempting to exploit this. Using the jab throughout the fight as her main offence, Jedrzejczyk look to throw a high kick behind Andrade's right hand as the latter reached to parry punches, real or imagined.

The set ups for the left high kick were varied. Jedrzejczyk attempted to time the crouching Andrade coming in, attempted to flick them in after the jab, and even used the left low kick to step back into a southpaw stance and then attempt a long left high kick from her new stance.

Just as this writer was thinking "it would be nice to see Joanna slot in a long left hook around Andrade's parrying hand", the champion did it.

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What is Next?

Joanna Jedrzejczyk's path is clear from here: Rose Namajunas is next in line after destroying Michelle Waterson with little trouble. Jessica Andrade's next step is a little more complicated. She has been heaped with praise for the fact that she kept walking forward and trying to do all that she knows for five rounds while laughing at the hundreds of strikes the champion tagged her with, but equally there are some major improvements needed in order to avoid the division simply passing her by in the next couple of years. Obviously a much better understanding of ring cutting would be necessary for a rematch with Jedrzejczyk but the ring craft everywhere else in MMA is generally such an afterthought that if she never actually worked on it she might still force the next few top straw weights she fights to the cage.

The next consideration is that when Andrade does move to close the distance, she needs other ways to do it. Ducking in and swinging a straight armed left hook just won't cut it all the time and she had no alternatives against Jedrzejczyk. The one inside low kick she used against Jessica Penne put her in perfect position to land her blows, a la Dan Henderson, but seemed to completely surprise even Andrade. Andrade's attempts to kick with Jedrzejczyk looked awkward and unpractised. But the thing about low kicks is that even if you are fighting someone with much prettier, snappier low kicks, they have to do something about yours—whether that be retract the leg or check—and that can open up the chance to close the distance or move the fighter to the fence.

The inside low kick is especially useful when the opposing fighter is leaving their stance to side step out. Then it can be slammed into the undefended trailing leg, provided the attacking fighter can get close enough to step deep with it. We also mentioned in our pre-fight piece that being the shorter fighter does not mean that the jab is useless, just that it is shorter than the opponent's. Mike Tyson used a dipping jab masterfully to close the distance, bloodying noses and bruising sternums in the process. Roberto Duran also used to get in on larger opponents by flicking out the jab and ducking in, in anticipation of a return. This was also how Duran landed his best body shots, as the opponent opened up their elbows and exposed their ribs to fire back—so the old jab-and-duck is definitely something that Jessica Andrade could learn from.

The ceiling on Jessica Andrade's toughness and strength is a high one: if she can fight her natural inclination to just swing and add some science on top of it—as Cris Cyborg has done in recent years—she could come back as a much more severe threat to Joanna Jedrzejczyk's crown in the future. But that is what makes Joanna Jedrzejczyk one of MMA's most educational fighters to study regardless of weight or gender—she doesn't ask questions of her challengers, she does her homework on each and comes in with a menu of technical and tactical looks tailor made to defuse everything that challenger is offering. UFC 211 was a masterful showing from Jedrzejczyk, and perhaps her best to date.

Pick up Jack's new book, Notorious: The Life and Fights of Conor McGregor .