Jacare versus Belfort: Hunting an Old Lion

This might just be one of the best events ever put together. There is still every chance that the event turns out to be a steaming pile of boring, boring dung but the card as it stands on paper is the best start you could give an event. I praised this in yesterday's first installment (the one which covered Fabricio Werdum versus Stipe Miocic, read it if you haven't) but the matchmaking on this card is near an art form. There is a Brazilian in every fight to appeal to the rabid patriotism of Brazilian crowds but each fight is a logical, competitive, relevant bout. The sole exception might be Leslie Smith taking the plunge against Cyborg Justino, but every other bout is a compelling use of a star in a fight which is relevant to their current career status.

In part two of our Definitive Guide to UFC 198 we examine Belfort versus Souza.

Ronaldo 'Jacare' Souza versus Vitor Belfort is the big Brazilian versus Brazilian crowd pleaser on the card, it is also one of the most compelling bouts. Souza is coming off of a close split decision loss to Yoel Romero, while Belfort is attempting to make yet another career resurgence in the post Testosterone Replacement Therapy (TRT) era. The bout has immediate ramifications for the middleweight division and continues the beloved fight sports trend of old school (perhaps the oldest of schools in the UFC) and new school.

Ronaldo Souza might be the most dangerous submission artist in the UFC. There are plenty of others to challenge that came but Souza is certainly among the cream of the crop. Not only is he technically one of the best grapplers in the sport, he is huge for his division. He rarely has the trouble over takedowns that plague many other elite jiu jitsu players like Andre Galvao in their transition to MMA, and he can hit as hard as anyone in the division. Certainly as a top player, Souza is among the greats in MMA.

The passing of Souza is beautiful to watch as he stuffs one of his opponent's feet into his crotch to force the half butterfly guard / broken butterfly guard, and drives his way up into half guard by stepping over the knee and occupying the space in the opponent's bottom side hip. Classic low passing stuff but done at such a high level.

Souza then grinds his way up his man, constantly looking to attack the far arm. Most often Souza is looking to get his head into his man's armpit and attack with the katagatame arm triangle choke. This is the choke which he used to finish both Chris Camozi and Matt Lindland.

Though the Camozi arm triangle actually came as Souza threatened to mount and Camozi attempted to turn.

It is interesting to note the differences between Souza—who most often smashes his way to half guard by staying low and climbing into the pocket above the opponent's bottom knee—and Demian Maia and Shinya Aoki, who like using tripoding movements while pinning the upper body. With their hips high and head low, Maia and Aoki force opponents to actively take and settle for half guard rather than lose guard altogether to a knee slide of one kind or another.

And then of course there is the cheeky Maia hip switch and sneaking the knee through to mount. So simple in concept and yet so nuanced. So Maia.

But early in his MMA career Souza found that unlike Maia and many other top grapplers he has hitting power and this has added to his top game in some interesting ways. In the above Matt Lindland gif you will notice that Lindland is flat, having felt Souza attempting to slide underneath his far elbow. A powerful hammer fist to the face and he's immediately sitting up and Souza is in on the arm triangle. Similarly, Souza's powerful hammerfists and elbows have been combined with back stepping passes that allow him to just float into side control as his opponent is stinging from a blow to the head.

On the feet? There's not so much to write about. Jacare can hit with the biggest hitters in the middleweight division, but that is it. He prods with a jab which does nothing, then throws a telegraphed bomb of an overhand right and squares himself up completely. When he throws his left hook there is little on it and it seems only to serve the purpose of a 'reset button' for his right hand. He can be aggressive, and this plays excellently into getting takedowns and hurting opponents in a rush to the fence, but more often than not he will hit nothing but air in these windmilling flurries.

What is particularly concerning is just how one note and inactive Jacare looks against southpaws. This is strange because he has fought so many of them: Rockhold, Lawler, Okami, Camozzi, Romero. Against Romero especially Jacare looked almost completely paralyzed. Throwing the occasional overhand but it was forced to travel so far that he could never get it to the target before Romero moved. Vitor Belfort is another southpaw who, unlike those others, excels with the building blocks of southpaw striking excellence: the straight left and the left high and body kicks. Slightly concerning if Jacare hangs around too long on the feet.

Belfort's game is built around the triple attack which made Mirko 'Cro Cop' Filipovic so successful in his best days. The left straight, the left high kick, and the left body kick. The left straight and the left high kick work in tandem because if the opponent's rear hand comes in to parry the straight, he is susceptible to a high kick through his arm. If the opponent keeps his arm high and wide to deal with the left high kick, he is dulled to quick straights through the middle of his guard. They also stem from similar hip and shoulder motions which means the detection of each is even more difficult. Similarly the left high kick and body kick play off of each other because due to the simple high-low principle. Kick the body a couple of times, the arms come down. Keep kicking high and eventually you'll be able to sneak one in to the liver.

No one can pretend that the loss of Testosterone Replacement Therapy didn't hurt Belfort, who went from looking and moving like a superman to looking and moving like a very athletic but nearly forty year old guy. Even if you weren't particularly concerned with the morality of the TRT era, the obvious and rapid transformation in Belfort since its end is more than enough to suggest that it wasn't altogether fair to ban performance enhancing drugs and then allow a fighter who had already been caught using banned substances a therapeutic use exemption. Against Chris Weidman, Belfort looked deflated and tired quickly, but in the opening moments showed all the hand speed and power that he is famed for. Since then, Belfort's sole fight has been against a considerably past-it Dan Henderson who has also come off of TRT. Henderson was crouching down to his right with his right hand low all fight, and Belfort kicked him in the head yet again because of it. The fight told us absolutely nothing about whether or not the Belfort of today can hang with the best of his division, simply that he can still chuck up a head kick.

Belfort's boxing traditionally has been a method which moves in on a straight line, throwing rapid flurries, but which struggles if the opponent's lateral movement and ring generalship is on point. Jon Jones also had tremendous success by jamming Belfort's advances with side kicks to the lead leg and to the body, but it is hard to see Jacare Souza diversifying his striking game away from the overhand and the occasional round kick this far into his career—if he hasn't added anything by now, it's unlikely he's going to. Dan Henderson landed pretty much every awkward low kick he threw, and he is not a particularly good kicker, so there's a chance Souza can make the best of that.

Ultimately where Belfort flourishes is in trades—when the opponent engages him by either not retreating or circling out, or by stepping in on him. It is then that his sinister left straight and his flurries of punches cause knockouts. Stationary opponents are mainly his mark for sharp shooting single punches and the left kicks. The fights when Belfort has gassed out or given up have not been ones where he has been made to wait for his opportunity, they are the ones where he has been made to work—maybe even had some success—and the opponent is still there after he has thrown his best blows. As much as it is in Jacare's interest to drag this bout into the late going, he should make sure that all fifteen minutes are actively fighting and not simply refusing to engage and circling Belfort. But equally the first time Souza wades in with his overhand and tries to rush Belfort to the fence, there are going to be hands coming back.

The path to victory for Souza is very easy to say: drag him into deep water, gas him out, use the clinch and try to get on top where he can do no damage and showed himself to be unable to escape against Weidman. It is a lot more difficult in practice because that means walking in on a fresh Belfort at some point and an old lion is still, after all, a lion.

Pick up Jack's new kindle book, Finding the Art, or find him at his blog, Fights Gone By.