The Art of Legkicks with Shogun analysis

I've always been thinking about the relative value of leg kicks to MMA, and since Shogun surprised me with his leg kick clinic recently I thought I'd write up my thoughts on a few cases of where leg kicks worked and didn't work and why I think it went down that way. After the jump I'll have specific cases, but here are the general ideas on legkicks offensively or defensively:

Offensively using legkicks:

• legkick offense is ineffective if you just try to walk up to someone and throw a leg kick, unless they have terrible defense
• the best time to leg kick is in a combination, such as backing someone up with jab and then hitting them with a legkick
• If you're going to throw a soft legkick, might as well not throw it unless you're just baiting the counter

Defending the legkick:

• footwork- move away from it, so remarkably simple. It's surprising how many fighters look very "heavy" on their feet
• step into it and counter, or takedown- the power of the kick is at  the end of the fulcrum, IE the shin, if you step in you're taking this away, finish with a punch
• pshychology- make it not worth someone's while to throw leg kicks anymore by combining the two above strategies, I'll get into this more in my examples
• note: it's my personal opinion that checking a leg kick is the worst defense, its much more preferable to use the other strategies since it minimizes damage and is more psychological

Thiago Alves vs Josh Koscheck

Pure leg kick destruction. Why? As a wrestler I believe Koscheck was standing with more weight on his front leg so he could shoot. Combine this with a lack of footwork, and Koscheck was an easy target. Alves really throws power into his legkicks so it was vicious cycle where Koscheck took them, slowed down more and had more trouble dodging the later ones. What could have Koscheck done differently? Lets look at GSP vs Alves...

Thiago Alves vs GSP

The answer is footwork and countering. GSP stays very light on his feet and always either steps away or goes into it and takes you down or punches you. Thiago pretty  much stopped trying throwing leg kicks after awhile...

Forrest vs Rampage

As you know Rampage has bad leg kick defense. Specifically he not only doesn't check it well, he doesn't use footwork to move away, or counter it.

Forrest vs Anderson

This is my favorite example. Anderson is godlike in his footwork and timing. Before they fought I thought Forrest might give him some trouble with legkicks given his length and power. Anderson used footwork to avoid the initial leg kicks. This caused forrest to not throw them as hard. As soon as Anderson saw a soft leg kick coming, he stepped in, caught it, threw a cross counter, and went for the trip. Forrest pretty much gave up on leg kicks after that. Not only was it a strategic success, he won the "psychology" aspect of it.

Shogun vs Machida

I really thought leg kicks wouldn't play a big part in this match since Lyoto has good footwork and I've seen him counter leg kicks with a straight before. But as other's have pointed out his wide stance makes him a good target for legs/body work. Yah Shogun whiffed a bunch of legkicks (when he threw them without setup), but it's the leg kicks he did land that were genius. One thing that stood out: Shogun countering with a legkick. I speculate that Shogun believed Lyoto lacks knockout power and Shogun has a good chin, he was willing in a few exchanges to risk getting hit by Lyoto in exchange for countering with a harder leg kick. A good example is where lyoto threw a body kick, shogun countered with a hard leg kick to his standing leg. All the weight is on that leg, and kicking it takes the edge off Lyoto's initial attack as well. By doing this he was able to get around some of the problems of Lyoto's footwork.

Anyways I really hope to see more people utilizing leg kicks creatively or with better timing. It's a really good technique and pays dividends. On the flip side I also hope to see more fighters take advantage of uncreative use of legkicks...