The mount is probably the most static position in mixed martial arts. It’s rare to see a fighter move past a position he can hit hard from, and there’s no where you can hit harder from than the mount.
Every fighter in the sport is willing to admit that if you’re in the mount, you’re in about the best shape you can be. There’s no way that the judges are going to look the other way about a position like that, and the chances that the fight is even going to go to the judges are slim to none.
Fighters look for the mount to finish, but there’s a way that they finish way more than any other, and it’s something that’s strange, given the number of grapplers in MMA.
The viceral nature of the sport makes everyone feel like strikes are the be all and the end all, especially from a position where you have some much control over them. That’s why even the top Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu fighters don’t finish with submissions from the mount, even when an opponent throws their arms up to protect them from strikes.
The sport has come a long way from Rickson Gracie, and it seems that the sport has left behind that go to submission from the mount.
What you should watch for in the next few years is for that game to evolve, not because of the number Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu based fighters who have been taught to attack that way, but because of the only real exception to the rule, and the only situations where BJJ guys have resorted to it: fighting opponents with freakish strength.
It’s not that we’re going to see fighters start getting unmounted constantly by opponents with freakish strength. In fact, because of weight classes, that’ll probably never happen (though, there are bizarre exceptions like Sean Sherk where that might be possible). Still, it won’t become a staple in the game for that reason.
There’s been a long hard failure to adopt on the great dictums in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, in terms of mainstream MMA. Most fighters can’t escape from positions and, honestly, that’s going to be the next big change in MMA, out of necessity.
As soon as fighters start figuring out how to escape an opponent with a crazy, strike-based mount, you’re gonna start seeing that mount get more solid, get heavier and not behave so vicerally. Realistically, that’s where the armbars and keylocks off of that position come in. There’ll be strikes used to set it up, but that’s what they’ll be for, setups, just as they were when Rickson was fighting.
Using those strikes to create openings will be a serious development in the ground game, and while the grapplers in MMA are still behind the guys in submission grapping and BJJ, in terms of their actual ground game, that change will have a serious effect on the way that they play the game, and the respect they get from pure grapplers.
Whether you care about the respect MMA fighters get in the grappling world or not, the development is something you’ll see on every UFC card, and it’ll seep in smaller venues as those developments usually do, and it’ll change the way the position is played.
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May 12th, 2008 at 6:52 pm
Nice write-up! I for one love it when you see a fighter use the mount as a transition to a nice sub…
May 12th, 2008 at 8:36 pm
Could you please provide a credit when using my copyrighted photography on your site?
Thank you
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hywelteague/1469017675/in/set-72157594291092498/
May 13th, 2008 at 2:14 am
Good god man. You may have a point here and I think I get it but shouldn’t you learn how to construct a sentence??? I had to read everything twice to get the gist of what you are saying. I mean, this is a sentence (for you) and it’s even its own paragraph.
“Fighters look for the mount to finish, but there’s a way that they finish way more than any other, and it’s something that’s strange, given the number of grapplers in MMA.”
Another sentence/paragraph:
“Using those strikes to create openings will be a serious development in the ground game, and while the grapplers in MMA are still behind the guys in submission grapping and BJJ, in terms of their actual ground game, that change will have a serious effect on the way that they play the game, and the respect they get from pure grapplers.”
Overall I “think” your article is saying that in future fighters will be develop more skills to escape the mount more easily and top guys will revert to subs set up by strikes. However, maybe that’s not your meaning at all.
Confused,
May 13th, 2008 at 12:22 pm
You’re absolutely right, Hywel. Sorry about that.
You get the point of the article, Nepal. That is, more or less, my point.
Caleb, I’m definitely with you in terms of watching great submission fighters work out of the mount. There are so many good finishes from this position that we just never see in MMA (bicept slicers, gogos and such), but I think that’s going to change. Maybe slowly, but eventually.