Just my newest piece from HeadKickLegend.com. If you like it, please go over to HKL and check it out!
Cheers,

Jack

Diego Sanchez will forever be remembered as one of the most exciting fighters in early Zuffa years of the UFC, his mix of incredible cardio and borderline fool-hardy grit ensure that almost all of his fights have been a spectacle to behold. Of late though, Sanchez is coming off of two hard losses to John Hathaway and BJ Penn, a journeyman quality win in Paulo Thiago, and an extremely questionable victory over Martin Kampmann which exposed more holes in his game than it did return him to form. So what happened to the Diego Sanchez that swarmed all over Nick Diaz and won our hearts on the Ultimate Fighter with his bizarre personality and real world fighting skills? Diego Sanchez struggles with distance, and it has been picked up on and exploited by three of his last four opponents. Is Jake Ellenberger the kind of fighter to do the same? Probably not, but he has more than enough tools to make Sanchez struggle in other ways.

A quick look through Diego Sanchez's successful fights reveals his modus operandi; the man is an animal, constantly moving forward and swarming on opponents with punches until he gets them to the mat where his effective ground and pound and slick Jiu Jitsu can be utilized. One of Diego's best matches was his defeat of Nick Diaz, in which he would throw some big punches then literally dive at the much taller man's legs. Once he got Diaz to the mat Diego was relentless, stacking Diaz up in guard and dropping from his feet back to his knees with huge elbows. While Diaz was never in danger of being stopped, it is certainly the most ineffectual we have seen his guard look.

However against BJ Penn, Diego Sanchez shot 27 takedowns, succeeded in none, and was pounded on the feet constantly. Now BJ Penn is a marvelous athlete, but to write off his natural abilities as the reason he could do this to Sanchez when other great athletes like Nick Diaz couldn't is just downright moronic. BJ fought the perfect gameplan against Sanchez which from the get go seemed to be about pressure. Throughout the fight BJ Penn backed Diego on to the cage, but instead of leading waited for Diego to charge him. When Diego did charge, BJ would take one or two shuffles back to avoid the first attack, slip the second and counter - and it worked. Every time.

The reason this happened is because Diego relies on swarming opponents to get the takedown, every one of his previous defeated opponents had been distracted by his rushes with his hands and had left their hips exposed for him to shoot on. The thing is that Diego can hit with power, when he's standing still and swinging, but becomes a rigid arm-puncher when he attempts to strike at long distance. Just look at how he pushes his punches at Penn, it's almost Forrest Griffin-esque, and certainly nothing for Penn to worry about. Additionally his straights are slow and predictable - in his fight with BJ, Diego threw the same combination multiple times in every one of the five rounds. BJ continued to either counter it, or move out of the way with ease.

Continue reading this post »