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Pit Master talks strategy for Couture-Liddell II |
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Written by Michael DiSanto
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Tuesday, 03 May 2005 |
From Insidefighting.com
Ever wonder about a fighter’s game plan heading into a fight
– not the lip service media stuff, but his real game plan? What about
the final words of advice or encouragement behind closed doors before
the fighter heads to the ring or Octagon?
Neither fighters nor trainers talk much about their strategy or game
plan heading into a fight. Sure, toss the media a bone with some
obvious generalities. But it doesn’t make sense for a fighter to tip
his hand prior to the fight. So, they often keep their cards close to
the vest until the fight is over.
With Chuck Liddell’s dominant knockout win over Randy Couture at UFC
52, one had to wonder why the result was so different than their first
match up at UFC 43 back in June 2003. What did Liddell work on
differently in training, if anything, to make the action unfold so
differently?
“I’m the strategist for the fights,” John ‘Pit Master’ Hackleman,
Liddell’s chief trainer, told InsideFighting. “That’s what I do. It’s a
tough job, but it’s about one-billionth as tough as Chuck’s job. Before
the fight, Chuck gets me videos from the UFC on who he is going to
fight. I watch the videos over and over until I come up with a game
plan. When we start training, we just train regularly until I come up
with a game plan. Once I come up with the game plan, that’s what we
focus on.”
In visiting Liddell’s training camp about a month prior to the fight,
it was obvious that Liddell was working hard on one thing – firing a
straight right hand right down the middle in search of the knockout.
“I knew Chuck would knock him out with one of two things - either a
straight right hand or a liver shot,” Hackleman revealed. “He got him
with the right hand. But if the fight would have gone past the first
round, you would have seen the liver shot. That was Plan B.”
The plan, however, was more involved than just throwing a straight
right hand. Liddell has always carried that weapon in his repertoire.
Liddell had to set it up, and that is where strategy and forethought
comes in handy.
“In the first fight, Randy came forward with that slow step drag - he
steps forward and then drags his back foot to get into position,” Pit
Master explained. “We knew he would come out like that again. All you
have to do is take one step to the side and that forces him to reset
his feet again. Before he resets, you attack from the angle and then
move again. That is exactly what Chuck did during the fight.”
Work the circle and look to strike after Couture steps forward. That
sounds simple enough, but it actually required a series of unnatural
reactions by Liddell. The natural reaction to pressure, whether it is
pressure generated from an incoming punch or someone stepping forward
to throw a punch, is to pull or step straight backwards. But that is a
recipe for disaster.
“When you step straight back, where do you eventually end up?” he
asked. “You’re going to end up against the fence, and then you have
nowhere to go. That is where Randy is at his best. Think of it like a
snowball at the top of a hill. When it’s coming after you, what do you
do? If you go straight back, it will pick up speed and become a ball
that weighs a ton and it’s going to catch up to you. If you’re moving
backwards, you can’t win a fight. Sure, you can stop and counter. But
99 out of 100 times, the guy moving backwards won’t win the fight.”
When Vitor Belfort faced Couture twice in 2004, he made the mistake of
stepping straight back in reaction to Couture’s pressure. Accordingly,
he quickly found himself trying to outwrestle Couture from the clinch
with his back pressed against the Octagon fence. It was exactly where
Belfort did not want to be against the world class Greco-Roman wrestler
because it guaranteed that he would end up on the ground taking
punishment against the fence - a position Hackleman wanted his guy to
avoid.
“I kept yelling to him in training, ‘Circle lateral, circle laterally,
don’t go straight back,’” he admitted. “I kept saying that until I was
blue in the face. But it worked.”
Another key to Liddell’s victory was his effective jab. In the 2003
fight with Couture, the 41-year-old superstar was able to counter a
pawing, stationary Liddell jab with straight right hands. The right
hands kept Liddell off balance which allowed Couture to take him down
on multiple occasions.
This time, however, Liddell’s jab was crisp and accurate. He pumped the
jab and then circled out. It was enough to keep Couture off balance and
caused him to lunge in with a left hook a few minutes into the round
that opened the door for Liddell to do what he does best – counterpunch.
“The jab is 50 percent defense and 50 percent offense,” the former
kickboxing champion said when describing the importance of the jab at
UFC 52. “He was using a little of both in this fight. There is a time
for a hook like in the (Kevin) Randleman and Tito (Ortiz) fights. Then,
there is a time for straight punches. We used the jab and a few hooks
to set up the right hand. That was the plan the entire time.”
Suffice to
say, the plan worked. After a brief exchange early where Couture landed
a few shots, Liddell basically followed the game plan perfectly. And
when the opportunity presented itself for the “Iceman” to uncork a
bomb, he capitalized on it.
“At the end of the day, a single right hand changes everything,”
Hackleman said pragmatically. “It doesn’t matter how good you are. It
doesn’t matter how fast you are. It doesn’t matter how good you are at
wrestling. At the end of the day, when the right hand separates you
from consciousness, it’s all done.”
Without question, a single right hand brought Couture-Liddell II to
a sudden and violent end. It dethroned one of the greatest champions
that the sport has ever known. And it set up what could turn out to be
the biggest rubber match in UFC history.
More importantly, though, that single right hand crowned a very deserving champion.
“The last thing I said to him before we went out there was,
‘Olympic wrestler, great wrestler, all Randy’s adulations and
everything else, your right hand is going to take all of that away. All
it takes is one right hand. It doesn’t matter how good he is because he
is going to go to sleep,’” Hackleman recalled. “Chuck knew it. He was
confident. He knew he would win by knockout.”
Mission accomplished.
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