Drowning Against the Mat: The Relentless Force of Khabib Nurmagomedov

It has been a long and bumpy road but at the time of writing Khabib Nurmagomedov is finally poised to step into the Octagon once more. You should probably touch wood now. Nurmagomedov is perhaps the most interesting talent in the entirety of the overwhelmingly talented lightweight division. A two-time world combat sambo champion, undefeated in twenty-two bouts, and on a six fight winning streak in the UFC. What's more, he has already beaten lightweight champion, Rafael dos Anjos. And this wasn't Rafael dos Anjos before his career renaissance, this was the Dos Anjos who is currently forging what might become the best lightweight title tenure in UFC history. The same pressure cooker that Dos Anjos put Anthony Pettis, Benson Henderson and Donald Cerrone in had zero effect against Nurmagomedov, who bundled the now lightweight champion to the ground with frequency and ease, smothering any hint of a submission attempt.

The clock is ticking, though. Our young prospect is now twenty-seven years old. When (if?) Nurmagomedov returns to the cage this weekend it will be almost two years to the day since his trouncing of Dos Anjos, and Nurmagomedov hasn't fought since. There was a fight on the cards with Donald Cerrone at UFC 178, then again at UFC 187, and then with Tony Ferguson in December of 2015 but repeated knee injuries kept the Dagestani wrestler out of action. Then Tony Ferguson pulled out of this weekend's rebooking, but not before posting a deadlift video that lead to MMA's Internet detectives trying to work out whether terrible lifting form can cause fluid on the lung.

The Cerrone match was briefly teased as a replacement, but the UFC seemed to nix that and have instead brought in 12-1 prospect, Darrel Horcher in what appears to be a tune up.

It's completely forgivable for you to not know much about Nurmagomedov: it's been two years since he even showed up. What you need to know about him from the start is that we're not talking about some kind of all round, complete product. It's tiresome and predictable when a fighter becomes the flavor of the month and fans suggest that he has 'no holes in his game', but no one is even pretending with Khabib Nurmagomedov. His striking is wild and often careless. The confidence he has in being able to wrestle opponents to the floor any time they come close enough means that he spends fights attempting wild flying knees and repeatedly jumping in with left uppercut / left hook hybrids that look like a shoulder injury waiting to happen.

But there's power there and it comes from strange angles and at odd times. Part of what I like about Nurmagomedov is that he takes me back to what I loved about Fedor. Maybe the fundamentals aren't as crisp as the guy who has been hitting the pads since he was eight years old, but the blows land or they serve a purpose. There is good technical striking which is just going through the motions as they have been trained and then there is the ugly striking which is built around sneaking the strikes in. Like Fedor, the wide looping blows of Nurmagomedov often go unpunished because firstly, they're scary, and secondly, no one wants to step inside of the swings of a guy whose sole ambition in the fight is to grab a hold and drag his man to the mat.

More important than fundamentals is Nurmagomedov's ring positioning. It is very noticeable in all three of the UFC's notable Dagestanis: Nurmagomedov, Rustam Khabilov, and Ali Bagautinov. I have no idea if it is something in their training at home or some kind of tactic, but they all stand far too close to the fence and often back straight onto it when attacked.

For Bagautinov and Khabilov it worked until it didn't. They would duck in on guys as they got stuck to the fence and muscle the fight to the floor. Except when they met Demetrious Johnson and Benson Henderson respectively. You will remember that for Henderson, he landed shots along the fence, and scrambled up from the takedowns.

By round three Khabilov was exhausted from muscling these reactionary takedowns from disadvantageous positions and from trying to stay off the fence as he realized that Henderson was trying to hurt him there.

In the first minute of the fourth round, Henderson hammered Khabilov clean against the fence and sent him to the turtle, where Henderson was able to quickly pick up the submission.

While Rafael dos Anjos, the man who traditionally plays the ring cutter, got away from that strategy against Nurmagomdeov because he didn't want to be taken down, it would be interesting to see someone apply this same pace on Khabib. It is worth noting that though he is one of the top lightweights in the world he has never been scheduled for five rounds yet. As four of his six UFC opponents made it to the final bell, the fourth and fifth rounds are going to be something Nurmagomedov has to deal with sooner or later, and those are where the labor intensive wrestling and technically flawed striking and ringcraft of his countrymen let them down.

But let us not under-rate the striking of Nurmagomedov altogether. He still catches guys hard fairly often. In fact, he decked Thiago Tavares with a leaping punch he had thrown him about eight times before he landed it.

The difference was that the time it landed, it came out of a counter combination and a disengagement. Suddenly Nurmagomdov decided he hadn't agreed to disengage and leapt in for the knockout. Notice that the punch enters through the blind angle underneath the guard, but the elbow turns out as if to hook and the blow connects on the side of the jaw. Weird, powerful, but also probably not conducive to a healthy shoulder.

Not to mention that if you have held your opponent on the mat for a round or two, he becomes a lot sloppier at defending your strikes because he's so desperate to not spend another minute and a half on the mat, losing.

Nurmy has also shown a natural intelligence for setting things up. Against Rafael dos Anjos, Nurmagomedov threw a rear uppercut to rear straight twice in a row, then threw a rear uppercut and immediately ducked in on Dos Anjos' hips for an effortless run-through takedown against a guy with top tier counter wrestling. The uppercut can be a lovely set up for shots on the hips for the same reason that it is a lovely set up for body shots, it forces the opponent to stand upright.

The uppercut also makes a nice path through which the fighter can duck. Notice how he engages Abel Trujillo here once Trujillo has realized that he doesn't want to let Nurmagomedov wrestle.

And here we get to the real strength of Nurmagomedov's game: when he has a hold of his man. He is exceptional at shucking his way to a back bodylock and from there he will happily spend a round dragging his man to the mat, allowing them to get back up, and then either falling to the mat with them or tossing them to the mat and landing on them. Round after round in the octagon, Nurmagomedov has shown himself to be a step ahead of everyone who ends up with him around their waist. Abel Trujillo, a very able wrestler, pretty much gave up in the final round of their fight—throwing his arms out with exasperation every time he regained his footing only to be slung back to the mat.

And that is how Nurmagomedov wins bouts, he breaks fighters. He lets them up and he drags them down again. While he convinces opponents that his having a bodylock means the rest of the round is going to be spent on the floor, it's not always true of course. Trujillo had terrific success early in using the momentum of Nurmagomedov dragging him to the mat to roll through into a granby. Unfortunately after it had worked twice, Nurmagomedov was aware of it and stuff subsequent attempts.

And while he does grind out the decisions on top of opponents, he's pretty darn good on his back too. As soon as Abel Trujillo took him down, Nurmagomedov used an overhook to throw up a triangle and progressed to an armbar. The same combination saw Trujilo saved by the bell from deep in a mounted triangle at the end of one round. When Trujilo was able to pass Nurmagomedov's guard, we saw a little bit of octopus guard action as Nurmy passed his arm under Trujilo and over his back, scrambled back to half guard, then used a butterfly hook set up a scramble straight into his favourite back body lock once more.

Nurmagomedov is excactly what everyone hates about the best wrestlers—as the fight progresses he simply builds up more and more of a lead in 'riding time'. In the third round, having been taken down eight times in the previous two rounds, everyone becomes desperate and that just leads into easier takedowns. When Rafael dos Anjos broke free in the third round of their fight, he decided the best course of action would be to get on top of Nurmagomedov, in actuality he gave the Dagestani the opportunity to hit a monstrous throw straight to top position again.

He may not be composed under fire, he may be downright clumsy at times on the feet, but Nurmagomedov is a fighter in the Semmy Schilt mold—he asks the questions here. If you can answer them, good on you, maybe you win, but you're not going to get a word in edgewise to ask your own.

This weekend Khabib Nurmagomedov returns against the rather brave young prospect, Darrel Horcher. If he returns in anything like the form he was last, you're in for a treat.

Pick up Jack's new kindle book, Finding the Art, or find him at his blog, Fights Gone By.