Focus On The Undercard: Round 1, Alcantara v Omigawa. UFC RIO 142

I didn't publish the fight camp rankings yesterday, as I think I'm going to start doing those bi-weekly, or perhaps monthly. The schedule is pretty busy so I'm going to let the fighting play out and analyze it less often.

UFC Rio was such a great event, with incredible story lines and action at the very top of the card, so much so that some of the undercard action maybe wasn't given the attention it should deserve. Gabriel Gonzaga had a very clinical performance in his victory over Edinaldo Oliveira, there are plenty of fights he could win in this division in that style. Perhaps the winner of Barry/Morecraft is in his future?

In other undercard action, the first round of the featherweight bout between Michihiro Omigawa and Yuri Alcantara had some of the best technical fighting of the night and included a spinning back elbow knockdown and a very deep armbar at the buzzer. I thought I'd recap the round, including a couple clips of the most impressive techniques. I'm new at trying to incorporate gifs into posts, so I wasn't able to put in all the clips that I would have liked. In place of clips I noted the time on the UFC round clock, so you can refer to those when watching, or re-watching, this fight.

Bout breakdown after the jump.

Gifs from http://ironforgesiron.com

The fight started off in bit of a strange manner.

Omigawa awaited the start of the bout by standing next to the Octagon, one hand on the fence, his eyes cast downwards. Both Alcantara and referee Leon Roberts seemed visibly unsure of what he was watching. It was no matter as the fight started though. Omigawa continued his odd behavior, walking out to the center of the cage with a zombie like determination, until Alcantara met him with a stiff knee to the body. (4:58) Joe Rogan immediately noted that Omigawa was hurt by the blow, and the Japanese fighter spent the first ten seconds of the fight trying to shake the blow off. Does Omigawa start all his fights like this? I honestly can't recall, but if this was a spur of the moment attempt to make himself one with the cage, it certainly didn't seem like it worked well.

The first minute of the round was spent with Alcantara utilizing his longer reach to score on the shorter Omigawa. Rogan was very on point in this fight and was already stating the need for Omigawa to control the distance better. The Japanese fighter would find a bit of success, jumping inside and scoring a nice left hook. (3:47) In general though, the early part of the bout belonged to Alcantara. He found the most success with a well timed one two combination that he landed cleanly on Omigawa twice. (3:11, 2:16) Other than those two combinations, Omigawa did well to limit the damage to single strikes while he struggled to find the range to land his own strikes.

Shortly after the 2:00 mark, an incredible exchange of techniques occurred between the two fighters. By this point in the round, Alcantara has noticed that Omigawa tends to bob down to his left as he closes the distance and he starts to attack the tendency, first with the one-two combination, then with another one-two and a knee from the thai clinch. He is able to establish the clinch because he cuts Omigawa's movement off with the one two, catching him slightly with the second punch, (the left) and leading Omigawa's head into his waiting right collar tie. Omigawa separates from the knee and backs off as Alcantara throws a front kick and a reaching left hook. As Omigawa steps in again, Alcantara times his tendency to sway down and to the left perfectly and connects with as beautiful a spinning back elbow as we've ever seen in the Octagon. As this was happening, Joe Rogan and Mike Goldberg had gotten into a conversation about the durability of Omigawa, and as if on cue, he is forced to display it following the elbow strike. Alcantara swarms on him with punches and Omigawa does a good job of avoiding any finishing blows as he works to grab a leg. To cap off the exchange, Omigawa briefly grabs hold of a single leg and attempts to spin Alcantara to the mat. He is probably a bit too disoriented to be able to power through the technique, as Alcantar seems to easily slip out of the single leg, take Omigawa's back and drag him to the ground, all the while establishing both hooks. The whole exchange takes place over the course of about 25 seconds, from 2:02 to 1:37 and you can see it all in this gif:

via 1.bp.blogspot.com

The technical wizardry wasn't done with after the fight hit the ground. Omigawa continued to show the durability that Rogan and Goldberg were discussing, absorbing a number of blows from Alcantara as he defended himself from the rear naked choke. Omigawa is a judo champion, which means he has fantastic balance and core strength, also known as "base". He utilizes this to stand up with Alcantara on his back and as the Brazilian pulls him backwards, Omigawa finds a way to twist himself around, winding up on top, inside Alcantara's full guard. (1:25) This move in particular was very impressive to me. To be able to take the amount of punishment Omigawa did during the previous 30 seconds and find away to stand up and twist around with a BJJ black belt on his back was awesome.

Unfortunately for Omigawa though, there would be little time to rest, as Alcantara immediately secured wrist control on Omigawa's left arm. Alcantara thought about attempting an armbar at (0:45) but did not have control of Omigawa's posture and didn't pursue it. Both fighters seemed content to get a little bit of rest, and Omigawa worked some light ground and pound before working a pass into Alcantara's half guard, on Alcantara's right side. (0:34)

The final sequence of the round was started by Alcantara recovering his full guard with a neat technique, shifting Omigawa off balance to his left and pushing his leg that way, back into his waiting guard. From there he showed the ability to learn from past exchanges in real time during a fight, as he secured the posture of Omigawa before working for wrist control. As Omigawa postured up, Alcantara opened his guard and again perfectly timed his technique, locking an armbar on with just 0:05 seconds left on the clock. Here is a look at the lock from multiple angles.

via 2.bp.blogspot.com

Oh my Omigawa! Either he is extremely flexible or he suffered non debilitating damage, or his elbow was dislocated and re-located. On the overhead camera angle it looks like his arm flops down with the joint at a weird angle and then it pops back in when it bumps Alcantara's ankle. It also could be argued that he tapped once, although most accounts I've read do not agree with this theory. In any case, it's a gruesome lock and the fact that he didn't tap out or get hurt bad enough that he couldn't continue is quite stunning. Joe Rogan exclaimed "this fight is over", and Joe Silva nearly entered the cage, adamantly claiming that he saw a tap. Yet Omigawa made it back to his corner, took his minute of rest and continued to fight on.

The second and third rounds of the fight were not nearly as entertaining or violent, but both fighters earned full marks from me for this incredible round of fighting.