This semester many students have the opportunity/requirement of a kick-butt writing assignment. For those whom it is required, you know who you are.

Anyway, here are the ground rules.

You need to watch one of the fights from the TV show, The Ultimate Fighter (fights can be seen here). You could arbitrarily pick one or select one of the top ten fights from TUF – video above has snippets from each fight.

After watching, I want you to write a brief analysis (at least 200 words but no more than 400).  The analysis should have a summary of what happened (only a few sentences),  analysis of key elements that determined victory and your favorite moments with your explanation of why you liked those parts.

The main focus should be the various elements that you believe determined the fight.  What techniques seemed to be most dominant? Striking? Grappling? Conditioning? How might the loser have improved his performance?  What made this fight interesting to you?

Draw on your own experience with various techniques while you comment. Don’t fuss about being technical or ultra-knowledgeable. Speak from the heart with and edit once for grammar. Limited usage of slang and industry-standard terms is okay, but if your response reads like a comment on Youtube, I will likely stalk you down and beat you with a rubber hose.  (Flexibility will be provided for non-native-English speaking students).

Post your assignment below, using your first name and last initial, listing the fight you watched before the body of your work. This is to be finished before 12/12/11.

Ex:

BartB

Roland Delorme vs. TJ Dillashaw

This fight was ……….

I look forward to your work!

I’ve been watching The Ultimate Fighter on Spike and Cody McKenzine’s guillotine choke has been on my brain.  Cody hits the choke with a different grip and elbow position; it’s made me curious to know more.  Since Cody’s explanation of how he does the choke was two-seconds long, I’ve had to look elsewhere. Below, a video from Precision Martial Arts down in Texas, showing the basics of this variation.

The cool thing about this choke is that it just *hits* differently than a normal guillotine.  The top pressure a guy uses to try to escape interacts differently with your grip, you can finish the choke from unusual angles, etc.  One thing I like about it is that you don’t have to have the same hip control to tighten it.

As you can see on the left, Marc Stevens has passed Cody’s guard – and Cody has only partially kept Steven’s hips from swinging around by getting a hook on the outer leg (I think this is what’s called empty half guard). I’ve even seen guys tapped from clean side control, no hooks attached – although that’s uncommon.  On the right, you can see how a lot of guillotine’s from the guard get finished; by compressing the choke-arm’s elbow towards your own hip.

Another detail – the position of the supporting arm in the choke is varied.  On the right, you see how the elbow flares up and comes off the body while on the left (it’s sort of hidden) the supporting elbow can stay down and still provide leverage for the choke, as well as keeping the head caged up. From my experience, if the guy on the right sucked in his elbow towards his hips, it’d be easier to wriggle the head free.

I’ve heard some guys call this the prayer choke, palm to palm guillotine, or now – in Cody’s honor – some suggest we call it “the fisherman”.   McKenzine has a nice body for the choke – long, thin arms ; slender core and slightly concaved chest. The Diaz brothers have such frames too.

As I’ve been playing around with it, the grip has intrigued me.  Like Josh Koscheck points out, you’ve got to attack the grip to stop the choke, because hip position won’t necessarily do it.

Anywho, I’d like to know your thoughts and experiences – have you choked or been choked with this? How does it stack up to the regular guillotine? What name would you give this variation?

Current Throwdown ETC welter-weight champ, DaMarques Johnson will be representing for Utah on UFC’s reality show, The Ultimate Fighter season 9 tonight on Spike, 8 pm.

Johnson has been waiting for his shot, and it looks like it’s finally come. Fighting out of Jeremy Horn’s gym, Elite Performance, DarMarques has been training in Jiu-jitsu since 2001 and has developed into a fairly well-rounded striker.

As you many know, this season’s TUF is like the Revolutionary War, the British vs the Americans. The Brit team appears to be pretty stacked, so Johnson will have his work cut out for him if he’s going put the beatdown on the redcoats. Oooohhh, and I hate them redcoats, with all their taxes without representation.

Good luck DaMarques!