KAMARA Usman and Colby Covington are often lumped into being the same style of fighter by fans and pundits. They are both thought of as tedious, smothering wrestlers who keep a high pace but win by merit of the other guy not being allowed to do anything. The terms “lay ‘n’ pray” and “blanket” are thrown around a lot in the discussion.
Excitement for this fight is hardly at a fever pitch and the UFC themselves have done their best to undermine it by creating a “BMF” title for Jorge Masvidal—another top welterweight who fights in a more fan friendly style. Yet these are two men who have climbed to the peak of one of MMA’s most competitive divisions and who are riding incredible winning streaks.
Usman, the current champion, is a fence wrestler: the style that is currently chewing up the top end of the rankings in the UFC. Usman and Khabib Nurmagomedov are probably the best examples of this principle. Everyone knows that if you are put on your rump, getting to the fence and wall walking is the surest way up.
Yet if they are never able to disengage once they get to their feet they can just be returned to the mat again. This is exactly how Usman’s title shot against long reigning champ, Tyron Woodley turned out. Woodley has always stood with his back foot on the fence and lured opponents onto his punches, but his ring positioning left him just a short push from Usman away from being blanketed along the fence for minutes at a time.
Colby Covington’s wrestling style is equally uncompromising—he grabs a hold of his opponent and hangs onto them until the end of the round, returning them to the mat half a dozen times in between. But Covington’s game is far more dynamic where Usman’s is economical. Usman’s striking serves his purpose and his takedowns often begin with a quick pick-up single leg and pushing the opponent onto the fence. Covington’s method is made up of committed level changes—often right down to his knees on the mat—between flurries of punches and kicks.
Usman’s intention often seems to be simply stifling his opponent, whereas Covington can appear wasteful with his energy in trying to overwhelm them. To put it in perspective, Usman completed two takedowns (threatening many more) and threw about 400 strikes in his championship fight with Tyron Woodley, though many of those strikes were muffled right hands to the body from the over-under clinch.
Covington threw almost 550 strikes and completed ten takedowns against Robbie Lawler in his last fight. Both performances represent a good pace, but Covington’s is almost self destructive. When Usman attempts a takedown it is often inching towards a position where he can hit the classic outside trip along the fence, or ducking onto the hips and threatening to sit the opponent on their butt along the cage, but when Covington attempts a takedown he is often throwing himself into the opponent and driving up from his knees again.
For Covington—the quicker and more active striker—it might be a good idea to try and stay out of the clinch and strike in the early going. For Usman it might be a smart move to stay out in the open and wait on Covington’s shot in order to try and trap him on the bottom of the front headlock, rather than pursue the clinch from the get go.
Whenever two great grapplers meet there is a very real chance of the fight turning into a mediocre kickboxing match, but at least Usman’s performance against Woodley showed that he can be fearless going straight to the clinch against strong wrestlers. The biggest similarity between Usman and Covington is the desire to be on the front foot and pushing the pace on their own terms.
Obviously, even if they both run straight out the middle of the cage and crash into a clinch, someone is going to get pushed to the fence or end up on the defensive. That is when we will get our answers—when we see one man forced to use a B game that has yet to be been seen in the UFC.
Holloway vs Volkanovski
In the co-main event, Max Holloway defends his featherweight title against Alexander Volkanovski. This will be Holloway’s third defence of the featherweight title, and he had already cleared out much of the division on the way to winning the belt—going on a nine-fight winning streak between 2014 and 2017.
He is everything you want to see in a modern mixed martial artist: using his footwork and cage position to deny his opponent offence and then using his feints and jab to begin piling on the strikes as the rounds progress.
Volkanovski had been working his way through the featherweight rankings as a fence wrestler and a solid hitter but in his more recent performances he has shown a sharp, measured kickboxing game built around the jab and inside low kick. Volkanovski was even able to pick apart the great Jose Aldo at range, a considerable feat given the sharpness of Aldo’s own jab and low kicks. Volkanovski is especially good at using his lead leg kicks to aggravate the opponent and then countering them with a good right hand as they return.
Volkanovski has also shown a good degree of discipline and ringcraft—he only attempts his takedowns along the fence and he does his best to get the opponent there with pressure and feints rather than charges.
Things get really interesting when you consider that Max Holloway’s first line of defence against the wrestlers he has faced has been his footwork. Holloway gave Frankie Edgar almost no choice but to reach wildly for him and then tried to intercept the former lightweight champion with uppercuts. While Holloway has a few inches of height on Volkanovski he gives up a couple of inches of reach so combined with Volkanovski’s proven competence in the outfighting game, Holloway’s usual use of the jab and building combinations from it might be made a little more complicated.
Whether Holloway can dance circles around Volkanovski as he has so many others, or he is forced to stand and fight, this match up shines through as the reason to watch the fights this weekend—the other great bouts on the card are just icing on the cake.
