Inside the Guard Part One: Take Some Pain Now, Deliver Some Later

It is the staple of the grappling game and without it, a fighter on the bottom would be unable to defend himself. The game is constantly evolving, and the guard has done just as much to keep up as any other. This is part one of a four part segment I’ll be posting on the new innovations in the guard that make it difficult to stay on top.

The first is the most visible, and really the most rudimentary, but when it is used effectively, it works. We’ve seen its effectiveness in the games of the Nogueira brothers and many other top fighters in the upper weight classes. We see it primarily in the upper weight classes because it’s not a finesse game, it’s a strong man’s game.

The sukata guard is still a serious reality in MMA, and it’s been readily visible since about UFC 16, when it was used twice, by the Lion’s Den’s Jerry Bohlander and submission fighting machine Chris Brennan. Still, I think it’s most important to credit the creation of this style of guard fighting to the men really responsible for it: the Gracies. The real first example of it was at UFC 4 when Royce worked it against Kimo Leopoldo, this, however, revealed the greatest weak point in that particular style of grappling.

The power of the sukata comes from the same part that makes it weak: your opponent’s ability to hit you. When the top fighter swings, he creates openings. I call it the sukata guard because the two biggest openings are the triangle and the armbar. When the top fighter swings his arms out, his arms are out, it’s that simple. And the fact that his strikes force him to extend his limbs leaves him open to attack.

The problem, as might be obvious, is that you have to let your opponent swing. When you do that, you’re putting yourself at risk for getting hit in the face. Once you commit to giving your opponent his posture, which allows him to strike, and decide to exploit his breaking it down for you when he attacks, it becomes a game of probability, and each fighter is trying to change the odds so that the fight goes his way.

There was a temporary extinction in the UFC of this style of game, and the man responsible was Tito Ortiz. Tito made it so difficult to submit him from the guard, partially because he dealt alot of damage on the way down and partially because he used his elbows to allow for short, quick strikes, that the groundnpound started to overpower the sukata style guard in America. This was not helped by the great abundance of wrestlers thinking they had a great chance to capitalize on Ortiz’s new innovation in the groundnpound.

On the other side of the world the battle was still going on, until Fedor showed up and taught that the standing groundnpound, realistically, was the way to get rid of even the best sukata style submission grapplers, and he proved it when he beat Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira.

The sukata guard, though, is alive and well among many fighters. Nogueira still uses it, and so does a large portion of the less experienced BJJ fighters, who’s games are trying to catch up with the current level of the guard game. That, though, hardly makes the sukata guard any less obsolete and any less prevalent in the modern sport.