Angles in MMA Striking 2: From Below

This is the second part of a three piece series for HeadKickLegend.com; the first part is here.

In continuing to examine the significance of "angles" in striking we turn to look now not at the angle on the clock face from which a fighter strikes at his opponent, but at the arc through which his hands / feet / knees or elbows fly when he throws them. We have switched our focus then from lateral movement (or the horizontal) to vertical blind angles. The blind angle is a term I first saw used by Shotokan Karate legend, Masahiko Tanaka. In explaining the blind angle in his seminal work "Perfecting Kumite", Tanaka used the front snap kick to demonstrate his meaning.

Try this - take up a fighting stance and look ahead at about eye level (for those of you who have access to a sparring partner or sibling, get them to do the same in front of you). You will notice that your peripheral vision picks up a lot of what is going on to either side of you, making it easy for even an amateur to avoid wide swings. What peripheral vision fails to do however, is to pick up on what is happening below or above you. If you are standing opposite a sparring partner or opponent, you naturally gauge your distance with your front foot in relation to them, however at any time you are unlikely to be able to actually see their front foot if you are in fighting range. The point below the focus of your vision in fighting stance is therefore called the blind angle and a great many breath-taking knockouts have come through exploiting it.

Using the example of the front kick as Tanaka did (some thirty years before the UFC's pair of front kick knockouts) we can see the point that he was making even in the slow motion replay of Anderson Silva and Lyoto Machida's front kick knockouts.

Watching this gif of Anderson Silva's front kick knockout of Vitor Belfort it is clear how well Silva exploits the blind angle. With absolutely no set up Silva snaps his kick up through Belfort's blind angle and lands absolutely flush. The most interesting thing to notice is that Vitor sees Anderson's hips moving and begins to move slightly backward, raising his lead leg to check a suspected roundhouse kick, and keeping his hands up to the outside should the roundhouse kick come high. He looks completely stoic even until the foot collides with his chin, showing just how dangerous strikes through the blind angle can be.

Here, against Randy Couture who had seen just about every strike in the game, Lyoto Machida lands a beautiful leaping front kick through the blind angle - and Couture is completely thrown by the movement. Watch as Couture steps away from the faked left kick only to believe a right round kick is coming - drawing his left hand up to his head in order to block it, but only providing a larger hole for Machida's front kick to travel through.

The front kick is a pretty new development in the fighting world however, the uppercut has been around much, much longer. Here is Roy Jones' rematch with Montel Griffin (who had "defeated" him earlier that year by being hit while on one knee):

Notice how Roy Jones immediately comes out with the unusual lead uppercut at 2:27, and again in the form of a hooking uppercut at 2:37. Every time Jones goes to throw his lead hook or uppercut, he drops his left hand low and his left shoulder low, so as to bring his hand into Griffin's blind angle and making it almost a 50/50 guess on Montel's part when defending. At 4:18, just as Jim Lampley is pointing out the timidity which Griffin shows every time Roy fakes a left hook, Roy leaps in and introduces a left body hook, adding another target and making Montel's chances of defending the attacks he can't see even lower. At 4:47 Roy's lead hand is swinging down by his thigh, and as he leaps in with another left uppercut, Montel makes a guess at it being a hook, covering his body and leaning his hand back - but eats the leaping uppercut as a result and is sent to the canvas in a brutal KO.

Here is Prince Naseem Hamed displaying his bizarre yet effective style of "anti-technique". Hamed continually drops his lead hand below his waistline, and it dramatically increases his accuracy it seems, as his unfortunate opponent fails to see most of the punches coming. Hamed lands his brilliant leaping straight uppercut at 4:36 and 5:13. One is replayed at 6:25, and a second replay is shown of Hamed's opponent dropping his hands expecting an uppercut and receiving a straight for his troubles. At 8:55 another huge uppercut lands from down by Hamed's knee, followed by the lead uppercut / straight and the fight is called off. A typically bewildering performance from Hamed's offence.

Here Marlon Sandro stuns his opponent in Sengoku with a right straight before following him across the ring. Sandro ducks and drops his hand so that it is well under Kanehara's line of vision, Kanehara is forced to make a split second decision to duck, expecting an overhand and eats possibly the best uppercut we've seen in the young sport of MMA so far. Most of Marlon's big knockouts have come from this ducked position: in his previous match he had used it to throw an overhand that stunned his opponent and led to a stoppage. Marlon Sandro is not an especially skilled technical striker, but the tricks he uses to land his strikes and the power he brings to them put him ahead of the majority of Featherweights out there.

A final technique which travels through the blind angle and is seen quite commonly in MMA and kickboxing today is the flying knee. Especially useful when an opponent shoots, as it is the only technique (barring an incredibly fast uppercut) which can effectively punish wrestlers who are content to shoot over and over. However it has also been put into use BY wrestlers, as ducking for a shot and loading up for a flying knee are almost identical and, once again, take place in the blind angle. Here is a classic which I'm sure everyone has seen from Norifumi "Kid" Yamamoto; in which he sprints at an Olympic medalist in wrestling - who crouches expecting a shoot and eats a knee for his troubles.

Please feel free to fill the comments section with flying knees and uppercuts!

This is Jack Slack's second article at HeadKickLegend.com, his blog can be found athttp://fightsgoneby.blogspot.com/ for more striking articles.