Sage Northcutt: What We Know So Far

Sage Northcutt has become one of the most talked about fighters in the UFC, largely through the UFC telling us repeatedly about how much everyone is talking about him. From fawning over his bodacious bod and frosted tips to speculating wildly over his father's history with drugs, and from sneering at the level of his competition to begrudging his unusually high starting salary—it seems everyone has an opinion on Northcutt.

But from his actual in-ring performances what can we tell about the young man that the UFC is determined will be a superstar? His introduction to UFC audiences against Francisco Trevino yielded a quick finish but revealed almost nothing of Northcutt's ability as forty seconds in Trevino attempted some mess of a hook / side kick and fell on his face. Northcutt swarmed with punches and elbows and Trevino was quickly TKO'd before he had any chance to recover. Pop a check next to 'opportunism' which I still maintain is one of the single most powerful traits a fighter can have—it is what makes men like Carlos Condit so great after all, the ability to snatch at even the hint of poor positioning or distraction. But there are only two reactions to an opponent literally falling on their face in front of you, standing back and thinking there might be some trick to this, or leaping in and looking for a finish.

So I set out to find all the Northcutt footage I could get which was actually in the Octagon. It wasn't easy. This is all of the material UFC Fight Pass has on Sage Northcutt. One of these things is not like the others:

Despite the talk around Northcutt's karate background, much of what he has done in the cage has come about through his powerful wrestling and ground and pound. Getting in there with guys who clearly aren't on his level and hoisting them skywards, or stepping straight over into mount on this unfortunate guy:

But then, that is how Georges St. Pierre came into the UFC. Billed as a karateka, St. Pierre had been ground and pounding his way through Canada and did more of the same when he got to the sport's premier promotion. Northcutt's karate seems less like St. Pierre's Kyokushin which typically shows a squarer stance and is less evasive. Northcutt's is more like the more side on styles which became popular in America through the seventies and eighties and which produced the great early American kickboxers such as Bill Wallace and Chuck Norris. The stylistic quirks of this are still deep rooted in Northcutt's game. Firstly there is the long and narrow stance. In a sport where you are going to take low kicks, the stance is slightly wider across in order to allow easy picking up of the lead leg for checks. In styles of karate and kickboxing where low kicking aren't permitted (use of low kicks used to be called 'Oriental rules') the lead leg can be placed much further ahead of the fighter, and on a line with the back leg, allowing for the skip up side kicks and hook kicks we are all familiar with.

Northcutt adores that lead leg side kick. He'll use it on offense as a lead, and he'll use it on defense as a check. He does, however, generally throw it to the midsection. Low line side kicks have proven to be tremendously effective as checking kicks at all stages of the fight, halting the advance of even the most aggressive brawler. Mid-level side kicks can work as a check as the opponent steps in, as Holly Holm and Cung Le have often shown, but if it is a fighter's go-to reaction to his opponent stepping in it can become very easy to exploit.

In Northcutt's most recent fight, Cody Pfister immediately put the young Texan on the back foot. Northcutt answered with the classic karate side kick to the body, and Pfister was able to parry one and pick up an easy takedown on Northcutt as the more athletic man was out of position.

This is the danger with linear kicks, it they are knocked slightly off line from the outside they can be made to cross the body and this effectively gives the opponent a dominant angle on the kicker without having to move. The notable examples are ridiculously numerous. There's Alexander Gustafsson's missed kick against Anthony Johnson which left him completely out of position and largely defenceless.

Or Alexander Gustafsson's own parry of a Jon Jones oblique kick which put the far superior wrestler at such a disadvantage positionally that he was taken down for the first time in his MMA career.

Or any number of Buakaw knockdowns as he catches a round kick and drags it across his body.

The danger is far greater in a side kick than in a front kick because the body is already side on, giving the opponent the opportunity to get all the way behind the kick if he parries the kick from the calf side. Often a fighter is at his most vulnerable if he attempts to return to his original stance after having his leg parried across himself. Typically the better side kickers of the world—like Cung Le—learn that turning through and out of this position (particularly with a backfist) can be far more valuable than attempting to fight back to where they began.

Aside from those side kicks and hook kicks, Northcutt will pull out the occasional wheel kick.

The thing about wheel kicks of any type is that they are often so out of left field that the surprise alone is enough to land them. Unfortunately this drops off hard after a couple of attempts, which is why guys like Ricardo Lamas will go to the well time and time again unsuccessfully after landing the strike correctly once. To really pull off the wheel kicks at the highest level of competition a fighter must manufacture unpredictability through technical variety, or force the opponent onto the kicks as Conor McGregor does when his opponent circles past his lead leg along the fence as we discussed in the most recent episode of Ringcraft:

A final neat wrinkle of Northcutt's stand up game is the classic karate sen-no-sen gyaku-zuki or simultaneous counter with a reverse punch. It's a staple of most non-Kyokushin variant tournament karate styles and it carried MMA's most high profile traditional karateka, Lyoto Machida to dozens of knockdowns.

Now reportedly Northcutt will be returning to work with Firas Zahabi at Tristar, so hopefully we'll see him grow into a real prospect on the feet and tighten up his grappling. In the Pfister bout, much of Northcutt's game off of his back consisted of holding onto closed guard like his life depended on it. What I have always liked about Tristar's best products is their ability to combine the kicking games of karate and Muay Thai with an educated, versatile, and fleet footed jab. The two do not normally appear together and yet on both Georges St. Pierre and Rory MacDonald they were very evident.

How excited should you be for Sage Northcutt then? As excited as you are for any other prospect. Once you ignore how desperately the UFC has been shoving him down your throat, he is a real talent. What will be interesting to see will be how effectively his talent can be built with such a shallow curve of opposition so far. No-one really knows what would happen if you found two fighters of equal talent and brought one up the 'easy way' (it's a fist fight, easy doesn't exist) and threw the other in at the deep end. MMA has always had a tendency of throwing its prospects to the lions but perhaps putting young men like Northcutt being put on a very clear developmental path will result in a more experienced fighter come title time and a more saleable product. To put it into perspective, a 5-0 Georges St. Pierre was thrown in with Karo Parisyan in his Octagon debut and two fights later he was in with the 37-4 welterweight champion, Matt Hughes for the title, where he suffered his first loss. You could argue that the loss did more for St. Pierre than any number of wins over middling fighters would, but it's a rough way to treat the newbies.

Make sure to catch Sage Northcutt versus Bryan Barberena at UFC on Fox 18 this Saturday and get back here Monday for the full event recap.