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Working Strikes From The Wrestling/Thai ClinchFiled Under: Instruction

I was pondering something James Irvin said prior to his fight with Anderson “The Spider” Silva, talking about a wrestling clinch and a Muay Thai clinch:

Against Franklin and Henderson, it’s not that his clinch was so good. The clinch definitely favors the taller, stronger guy with more leverage. But in the Thai clinch, aggressiveness goes a long way. He just seemed so much bigger against Dan and Rich. I’m not taking anything away from him. He really bullied those guys around and was able to just reach out and grab them …There’s a big difference between the wrestling clinch and the Muay Thai clinch, and it looked like Dan and Rich didn’t know how to Muay Thai clinch. I know we didn’t see the best of Rich.

I’ve seen several flavors of clinching, and I usually just lump them into two camps – the Greco Wrestling style clinch and the south-east Asia “plum” clinch. (If someone can definitively say more than Irvin did, please enlighten me!). Since I’ve posted a more Thai-Style clinch article (link above), I wanted to show a couple of videos from more wrestling based fighters showing off striking from the clinch.

Here’s Chuck Liddell’s take on the Thai clinch and he shows off how one might sneak in a few elbows while pummeling for hooks – among other things. It’s pretty cool, and it’s about 3 minutes long.

Something that’s interesting to me is that at about 2:30 in the above vid, Chuck shows how he’d escape the clinch by controlling one arm down and then lifting the other elbow and “throw it by”. The “throw-by”, or to “throw them by” is common wrestling nomenclature; so it’s nice to see Liddell bring his wrestling background into a Muay Thai style move.

Now, for the video below, Tito Ortiz, who also has a crazy-deep wrestling background, shows off some striking from the double under hooks, single under hook. At one brief moment, Tito also shows how to fire off a head butt, assuming you’re in a NHB fight that allows it. He mentions that ” I wanna use the top of the crown of my head, … it’s the strongest part of my body probably.” With the gargantuan dome that Tito sports, no doubt its true. Anyway…

One place where I know you can get GREAT training on striking from the Greco – style clinch is the train to fight and win, with Randy Couture. It’s a cheap download. Randy goes over a lot of stuff – one of my favorites is how he angles off and strikes with a single collar tie. Here’s a clip from Randy’s DVD download, linked above.

BTW, Randy’s Book, Wrestling for fighting, is great BUT if you’re looking for striking mixed with your wrestling, I might look else where. It’s a great book and focuses a lot on the stand up game in terms of locks and take downs (not submissions though).

One last fighter who has a strong background in wrestling is Jens Pulver. He shows off how to use strikes to set up the under hooks, punching a guy up cage, etc. Little Evil calls his instructions dirty boxing, and you can see how his wrestling comes through. Notice how he engages into the clinch, fires off some shots, and then squeezes up into a body lock, maybe to continue with a Heimlich drop takedown.

Other posts you may enjoy:

• Learning Basic Pummeling
• Seminar Recap: Brandon Ruiz
• Sat. Dec. 5th Seminar With World Champion Brandon Ruiz

Tags: clinch, dirty boxing, greco roman, muay thai, wrestling