The grand tradition of the heavyweight division is that there are fighters that just appear out of nowhere, blitz through the division to the top and then suffer a catastrophic loss that exposes their technical limitations. Think Brock Lesnar, Shane Carwin, Francis Ngannou, etc. We tend to have so little tape on these guys on the way up because they just blow through everyone. Until they meet that one guy who figures them out. So far, we do not have that guy for Tom Aspinal.
Aspinall - What We Know
We have an extremely small sample size of Aspinall and his work despite him having 9 UFC fights. Aspinall is one of the freakier athletes we've had in the heavyweight division. A 6'5 250lb behemoth of a man with the explosiveness of a man 100lbs lighter. And it has helped him put away basically everyone he has fought inside of two minutes (outside of Andrei Arlovski). So we really have to go over everything with the finest toothed comb.
Tom's game on the feet revolves around two things - kicks at range and being able to explode into that 1-2-3. Aspinall is an incredibly hard kicker. He will throw kicks to the outside leg, body, and rear arm of his opponent - sometimes while floating around at range, sometimes while pressuring.
And he will kick from both legs. He’ll attack the body and rear hand with that lead leg, though he’ll sometimes opt to go for the step up inside kick too. With his rear leg, he favors those powerful outside leg kicks.
We’ve seen him also implement straight kicks to the lead leg as well against the likes of Andrei Arlovski and Alexander Volkov.
The kicks serve as bridges for his entries. They can be good bait for fighters to trail after him in hopes of landing counters or strand them out at range where you can’t force an engagement. The straight kick to the knee help Aspinall to disrupt his opponent’s stance/kicks, forcing them back on to the rear foot. Useful for slowing fights down and putting people on the fence. And if they step back into range with that foot, Aspinall can just chop at that leg as they replant.
Against Pavlovich, the kicks were a good set up for the 1-2 while he was circling along the cage. Pavlovich eats a kick but keeps following likely trying to force an engagement after tagging Aspinall early but can’t keep up with the speed of the engagement and gets timed planting down in front of Aspinall as a result.
I think the actual thing that makes Aspinall a potential future HW GOAT conversation fighter is his ability to transition to his grappling. The power hides the fact that Aspinall is actually a decently accomplished BJJ competitor, having won multiple competitions at the colored belt level while a teen. He’s not a big KO guy learning to grapple to stay on the feet - he’s a BJJ guy with striking skills. As such, he’s also shown some fantastic transitional skills. He’s able to use his speed and dexterity to create openings for takedowns.
Here Aspinall switches stances directly in front of Volkov but is able to reposition right as Volkov recognizes and tries to punish with the rear hand. Instead, Aspinall is able to get inside the punch while throwing own left. They both miss but with his head in Volkov’s chest and a deep underhook, Aspinall just locks up Volkov’s body and steps around for the easy trip takedown.
Later in that same fight, Volkov is back in open space and finally attempts to open up against Aspinall. But it ends up biting him. Volkov throws the kick as Aspinall leans back out the way. Volkov tries to make Aspinall pay for leaning by firing the cross trying to catch him as he comes back to his stance but he ends up stepping in on Aspinall, who slips and shoots a double leg. Who else is able to do that at heavyweight right now? It is a shame that this is just a part of his game we almost never get to see. Nothing here is revolutionary for MMA in general but at heavyweight, no one really fights like this. Similarly, against Arlovski you can see how quickly he transitions from the feet to scoring the takedown and the finish.
Possible Pathways to beat Aspinall
Already way too long a post so click read more
The issue with Aspinall is that he beats everyone fast. Out of his 9 UFC fights, only 1 has gone to the 2nd round. And most last no longer than like 90 seconds. He's incredibly potent and able to overwhelm most of his competition with his physical gifts. That said, more than "weaknesses", the thing that catches up with elite fighters are habits. And despite having a UFC career in-cage time of like 13 minutes, Aspinall has those.
The Pocket:
Tom Aspinall is that rare breed of heavyweight that moves his head. Not always super well, but he will slip punches or try to hide behind his shoulders on shots. As demonstrated in the gif of him slipping Volkov’s punch and then shooting underneath for the takedown, it is something in his arsenal. But he can be caught out of position.
Here Pavlovich tries to collapse the pocket with a big left hook before following it up with a right hand that misses by a hair as Aspinall is able to get his shoulder up as he attempts to exit out the pocket to Pavlovich’s power side. I wouldn’t call these strong positions from Aspinall, though I applaud his instincts here. A more daft and creative combination puncher might have been able to bait these movements out and punish them instead of trying to go for the kill shot with every punch. So why is this important?
The one place I think Aspinall can be caught unawares is in pocket exchanges. He is a big powerful dude who is used to his opponents crumbling when they feel his power and shrinking as they deal with his speed. The few times we have seen him clipped clean is when he is the result of him overstaying his welcome in front of his opponent or when he or his opponent try to push exchanges longer.
Scraping the bottom here for “bad” moments for Aspinall here but should be noted Tybura is his only southpaw opponent. Aspinall gets to his much loved 1-2-3, tagging Tybura with the last two shots. He exits the exchange at an angle but Tybura switches stances and follows him out. Aspinall goes back to the well with another 1-2-3 but Tybura throws the right hand over the jab while dipping to his left and tags Aspinall clean. Not exactly a huge shot or something that would benefit Tybura in the end but there’s a nucleus of an idea – punching with Aspinall as he tries to force his way forward isn’t always a bad idea. Especially since he’ll keep his chin up in the air like that.
Aspinall blasts Pavlovich with that crushing kick to the calf as he tepidly steps forward. Instead of backing out of the exchange, Pavlovich pushes forward with a 1-2-3-2. Aspinall, caught out of position as he tries to swing a left hook over the first 2 ends up eating that small left hook that generally affects him and a right hand as he tries to back out. While Pavlovich’s successful comeback against the leg kick might have given the overconfidence that ended the fight 20 seconds later, he did manage to surprise Aspinall by putting punches together directly in front of him. Speaking of punishing kicks.
2. Sometimes he’s on one leg:
When you’re as fast and hit as hard as Aspinall, you get away with a lot. Earlier I mentioned Aspinall’s range game basically boils down to kicks and jab feints/fake blitz entries. While Aspinall is good at timing kicks for when his opponent plants their lead foot or is in the middle of movement, he’ll often just throw. This leaves him open to the most common type of MMA blunder - getting hit clean while kicking. To date the only person I’ve been able to find to make him pay for this specific habit has been 6’7 Alexander Volkov.
Aspinall has Volkov on the fence, looking to put together combos. He whips a leg kick from his power leg to attack Volkov’s lead leg as they settle into a spot. Volkov eats it and tries to create space by jabbing to the body. Volkov backs away but plants to fire a 1-2 as Aspinall goes to throw the switch kick and ends up on his butt. Thanks to Aspinall’s good durability, he manages to recover and get back to work. But another inch or two and that could have been a serious disaster for Aspinall. Someone some day will make Aspinall pay for his comfort of just kicking dudes while standing directly in front of them with little to no set up. It does not matter how good that chin is. You crack a guy with good timing while he’s on one leg, it’s a bad time for him. If I had to guess what will happen the first time we see Aspinall seriously hurt, it’s going to be when someone cracks while he’s kicking.
3. Completely Speculative:
It’s at this point where we have to start speculating on possible weaknesses for Aspinall. There is just not enough tape. You can watch his entire 9 fight UFC career on your 15 minute break at work. So it is at this point we have to start looking at stereotypical holes in MMA fighters and guess from there.
The first and possibly most pressing question is how does Aspinall deal with southpaws? He’s incredibly dependent on his jab to close distance. Does he still have the same level of comfort throwing the jab as an entry against southpaws? We only really have the Marcin Tybura fight to draw from and Tybura is not a striker. What little we saw was promising but it was also typical MMA answers - his first proper strike was an open side head kick that rattled Tyrbua. He did throw the jab a couple of times as a throw away for the rear hand. But it’s not much to go on because it seems pretty clear Aspinall had no respect for Tybura’s striking.
The other big question mark we have on Aspinall is the man is 18 fights deep, he’s never been to a decision. In fact, he’s been to the 2nd round three times in his career - and he lost two of them (1 was a DQ and the other a heel hook). Is this evidence that his game and decision making might become less concentrated as the fight moves deeper? How does he handle resistance? Not just getting hit hard but someone who is actively trying to frustrate him? Think of the first fight between Francis Ngannou and Stipe Miocic. Does he make an adjustment or does he double down until he blows his gas tank? These are questions that Aspinall will eventually have to answer. How soon though? Not sure.
Specific Concerns Against Gane
So the most glaring potential problem for Aspinall in this fight is the obvious - Cyril Gane is a southpaw. Well, Gane will fight out of both southpaw and orthodox, but if memory serves Gane's most consistent offense comes from southpaw. The only southpaw Aspinall has faced in the UFC thus far has been Marcin Tybura. Not exactly a comparable match up to the fleet-footed Frenchman. And in that fight, when Tybura did manage to draw Aspinall into an extended exchange, he clipped him. Didn't seem to bother Aspinall at all but worth noting.
But Gane is not a pocket fighter. He doesn’t look good throwing more than 1 strike at a time and when he is forced to, his technique breaks down to a near comical extent. And while Gane hits hard, he does not have the one punch power. Not in the way most heavyweights do. In part because he has some of the worst punch mechanics on his rear hand that I’ve ever seen in a striker who has climbed up to title contention.
Gane will often just take his back foot off the ground with his chin in the air as he tries to land the cross. If Aspinall has papered over his game with his athletic gifts, then Gane is on a whole other level. Gane’s strengths as a striker come from his speed and size. He’s able to get himself out of these bad situations because opponents tend to be too slow or too far away to react accordingly. Except when he meets someone who uses his strikes as entries to close distance for takedowns.
Over committing on a right hand, dragging the rear foot forward and walking into a takedown? Look familiar?
Gane often ends up on the fence, but because of his size and habit of switching stances is only rarely punished. But with someone just as fast, long and powerful who is willing to throw away strikes and kick the legs to get what he wants like Aspinall I see that being a problem. We’ve seen that Aspinall will punish kicks with takedowns and kicks of his own as well. He used those push kicks to the leg to counter kicks from Volkov and Arlovski.
So what is Gane’s path to victory? I think Gane can win this fight by keeping it in the center of the cage. Keep moving and use the jab to break Aspinall’s rhythm so he never gets the entries. Gane’s strengths as a fighter are to not stand directly in front of his opposition. He understands that exchanges are about angles and that he should be trying to find exit angles after he attacks. If he can use his own power kicks in this open guard (southpaw vs orthodox) match up to attack Aspinall’s power hand and force him to keep it chambered, he could theoretically slow down Tom and carry him deep into the 3rd round and beyond in this fight. Attack all three levels (head, body, and legs). Wait out all that explosiveness early and see if Tom can make adjustments as he gets tired out late while dealing with kicks and resets. And if Aspinall isn’t pressuring, that makes it all the easier for Gane to just float about picking off shots.
But I do not trust Gane to do it. Gane would need to fight the perfect fight. He’s got the physical tools, but every time he’s been at this level he comes up short. While we’ve never seen Aspinall in there in his physical/athletic equal, we’ve seen Gane. And it’s not gone well. I predict Aspinall will find a takedown early and just punish Gane from that position.
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Was just looking at a bunch of wrestling videos and was reminded of Tsugumi Sakurai's performance at the 2024 Olympics. Some amazing two-on-one action. She's incredibly versatile from that Russian Tie position (see picture below). Was going to cut a bunch of her footage together but seems someone beat me to it.
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Rewatching Merab Dvalishvili vs Sean O'Malley 2 and thinking back to the endless promo videos we got before the fight. It's not bad that O'Malley and team were working a lot on breaking grips and trying to use lateral movement and O'Malley's reach to try to circle around to the center, but they probably should have focused more on keeping O'Malley from getting down hill at all.
The heart of this match-up has always been 'Can O'Malley KO Merab before the fight gets out of control and he gets crushed?' As dumb as his "I'll make it look easy" quote was, it was the thing he needed to do if he wanted to beat Merab. Much of O'Malley's success at 135lbs has come because he's been able to punish guys from closing range with that right hand because he is so long and fast. And he has success cause most of these guys just don't have range games like that (Yan and Aljo) or are so inactive it doesn't matter. One of the frustrating things from the first fight was how much Dvalishvili was willing to chill at range until he built up the confidence to shoot, giving O'Malley avenues to score and hold initiative.
Dvalishvili did not do that in the rematch. Forward pressure most of the night. Kind of feel dumb for not realizing how much O'Malley will concede to a guy pressing forward. He is always trying to reposition himself so that he can land a clean counter as the opponent comes forward. A lot of people will just let O'Malley off the hook though, for fear of the KO. Merab was able to use that to his advantage, feinting to get O'Malley to retreat/move before delivering something meaningful. That's how he got to his first takedown here.
Feints with the lead hand and cuts off the cage with the left hook as soon as O'Malley hits the fence. O'Malley tries to turn to run and ends up giving up his back and the takedown. O'Malley gets up a couple seconds later but obviously it's exhausting and it highlights that Merab came in prepared to make O'Malley pay for trying to escape.
Moments later, similar dilemma. O'Malley is not threatening anything, he's in pure reaction mode. He's skirting along the cage. Merab had just landed a nice counter left hook in the center of the cage so O'Malley tries to create space. Instead, he bites on a feint upstairs and allows Merab to pin him on the fence on the double leg attempt. Cut the gif off cause it was too long but Merab is able to drag O'Malley down from here and hold him there for the rest of the round.
Side note: do not like O'Malley's corner advice. They're telling him to get lower and in a more athletic stance when Merab shoots and the idea should be to keep off the cage and take the initiative back. Think long straight kicks up the middle, jabs, and circling back to open space when you get behind the black line. Establish a threat that Merab has to work around. If you know a guy is trying to drown you, don't throw your guy some water wings. Tell him don't let the other guy drag you in the pool.
O'Malley looked better in round 2. Staying with one foot inside the black lines. Moving well and throwing in combos when he can, but was just running into different problems. First off, Merab is just a better striker than he was like 9 months ago. More confident in the pocket and less likely to just completely reset should O'Malley come forward with an attack.
O'Malley sells out on a big right hand to the body but gets caught with his head in front of his feet. Merab is easily able to fire back 3 punches and 2 of them land hard. And now O'Malley is back on the fence.
The reset problem keeps happening, whenever O'Malley tries to reset and create some space, Merab is just tagging him with a punch. He tries to go square so he can circle out to his right and Merab just comes over the top with a right hand. And when O'Malley does try to come forward, he it's like the last gif. He's selling out on a big punch and eating a flurry of counters from Merab.
Twice in the span of 30 seconds. We're back to fight 1 where Sean is trying to time and sell out on one big move. And while Merab doesn't complete the takedown, he's back to pushing O'Malley into the fence after punching him up on the feet.
This culminates in the 3rd. The legs are dead. Dude is not really moving laterally anymore and is biting on all the feints. He can't really distinguish shot attempts from the overhand on the level change.
Basically the end of the fight those there's still a few minutes left before Merab subs him.
Just nasty work from Merab throughout. Man has really built on his game in the last year. The sharp boxing and improved footwork to more reliably pressure, counter and close range is going to make him even more of a nightmare than I think people realize. Not sure how much longer he can fight like *this* seeing as he's 34 at 135lbs but it'll be a treat seeing him in there if he continues to make adjustments like this.
Alexandre Pantoja terrorizing people from the rear body lock (and the hip) for like 5 minutes.
Watched a bunch of Pantoja fights yesterday and want to look at how he attacks his opponent's back. Flyweight has been home to some of the best scramblers and backtakers MMA has ever seen (Formiga, Moreno, DJ, etc) and Pantoja is right up there with the best of them. I once said if you're a BJJ guy/gal trying to make the transfer over to MMA, Maia is the guy to study. I feel similarly with Pantoja, though part of what makes him brilliant is his insane durability.
While Pantoja's striking isn't particularly technically dense or defensively sound, it is effective at it's purpose - pushing opponents back into the cage. From there, he's working for the takedown. While not a sophisticated or dynamic shot wrestler, Pantoja is able to use double and single attempts to get to his real goal - the back. Opponents like Royval will often go to their hands in an effort to build back up to their base. Instead of fighting to keep the opponent grounded, Pantoja will instead move to the back and allow them to get to their feet. Once there, Pantoja has options. His favorite which he hits in basically every fight is to lock his hands and sit to his butt while using one or both of his knees/feet to kick at the back of his opponent's knees or ankles. This is called a crab ride. It's used in BJJ and wrestling to destabilize an opponent, but I've only ever seen it used on grounded opponents. Using it for takedowns is new (to me anyway).
Another option Pantoja likes if he can't get his opponent moving backwards is to seat belt his hands around their torso and lace his leg through so that his leg is behind their opposite knee. Then he'll throw his weight backwards, elevating the opponent's leg and dragging them to the ground. He doesn't hit it a ton, though he hits it in the video against KKF and Moreno. More often than not it just throws the opponent off balance just enough for him to turn them for a trip or if you're Kai Asakura, it lets him hop straight on your back. I think most MMA fighters and wrestlers are so used to thinking standing back body lock means I can fight the hands and escape out, they're willing to give Pantoja their back when he attempts to take them down. When they do go for the whizzar though, Pantoja's shown he's still able to work from off the hip as long as he can hold the body lock.
