Bloody Elbow Judo Chop: Cole Miller's Inverted Triangle + Kimura Beats Dan Lauzon at UFC 108

To start:

One of the most basic drills in Jiu-Jitsu is rolling to re-establish guard; typically when you roll to re-establish guard you roll all the way around so you stop again in an orthodox full guard position, the inverted guard is essentially stopping that roll half way through and executing offensive techniques from that upside down position.

Cole Miller executes the triangle by rolling his should and head under and towards the side that he has arm control on, the leg on the outside (not the arm control side) traces up the body and under the armpit (allowing it to force the armpit up and push the shoulder towards the carotid artery, same as a normal triangle but slightly weaker due to a different group of muscles working on clamping the shoulder upwards). The inside leg (arm control side) goes up and around the head (it’s avoid the arm and is above the shoulder of the arm being controlled), this curls over the back and locks under the knee pit of the outside leg creating the figure four lock (pressure from control side directly on the neck, pressure from non control side on the shoulder pushing into the neck).

The ideal inverted triangle uses arm control on the figure four locked side (the arm being pushed up) because you can grab that wrist (or the gi cuff, tricep, whatever) and pull it across, making the lock easier to achieve and pulling the arm further across the throat, making it far worse (imagine the arm triangle for a moment, it’s far worse when the person getting triangled has their arm folded across their chest, rather than having their palm braced against their head, this is because when the arm goes across the shoulder pulls into the neck (try a standing tricep stretch, you’ll see what I mean). Cole can’t get the ideal arm because Dan is hiding it against his leg and not putting it under Cole’s core, so he takes what he can get an controls the other arm so Dan can’t lock his hands and just shoulder out of the triangle or stack Cole on his neck.

Now, understand that even though Cole doesn’t have the ideal arm, his legs are locked correctly and the choke is being executed properly, just without the little touches that make tapping much faster, Dan still isn’t getting all of the blood he needs to go to his brain and the choke eventually will finish him off regardless (this is why it looks like it was the arm that caused the tap, because Dan looked like he was surviving the choke (which was not the case).

Now, onto Cole’s figure four lock, he corrects it twice to get the ideal position, you can see the final position because his foot clears the knee pit (his shin is then under the knee pit) and the toes/foot that clear that knee are pointed straight and flexing (this makes the pressure much more effective than just lazily having your foot at any angle, when you point your toes up and hook your foot up it flexes the calf/hamstring tighter). This is the best way to lock the figure four.

Dan’s mistake was that he was so worried about losing the arm that he wasn’t paying attention to the possibility of the triangle, or he just wasn’t worried about the inverted triangle because they are notoriously hard to finish if you don’t get the steps or locks correct. Once he recognizes the triangle is going up he postures up so he can create space between his neck and shoulder and have the possibility of stacking/surviving for long than if he was postured wrong (in the gif, you can clearly see his recognition “oh f*ck”).