Donald Cerrone will compete inside the Octagon for a record 32nd time when he takes on Tony Ferguson at UFC 238 on Saturday in Chicago, with the winner perhaps putting himself in position to challenge for the undisputed Ultimate Fighting Championship lightweight title. “Cowboy” has rattled off three straight victories since his lopsided decision loss to Leon Edwards a little more than a year ago.
Cerrone provides the building blocks for this installment of The Film Room.
Cerrone’s insane finishing combo against Rick Story may be the highlight of his career, but his sequence against Matt Brown was just as spectacular and showed his trickiness and intelligence. Reading reactions and knowing how to exploit them remains one of the most important aspects of combat sports, and it often goes unnoticed. Against Brown, Cerrone was routinely looking for the lead-leg pendulum kick setup with a jab. Each time, Brown attempted to parry the jab and ate the kick cleanly. Finally, “Cowboy” feinted the jab, caused Brown to throw one of his own and countered with the same kick he had been throwing the entire fight. Throwing the same technique over and over again generally does not work, but when you can set traps for your opponents and manipulate their reactions, you can have success. Something that does not get mentioned enough about “Cerrone” is the overwhelming amount of footage he has on file. With 32 UFC fights under his belt, one can learn nearly everything about his strengths and weaknesses, what he favors and how reacts to certain strikes and positions. This should make it increasingly difficult for him to win, but he constantly adds little tricks and setups to his game that keep him unpredictable.
Cerrone comes from a kickboxing and muay Thai background, and he still relies on the techniques and tactics he learned. His stance and tendencies resemble a classic muay Thai fighter, and he is equally dangerous with his hands and kicks. He prefers to strike in long and varied combos and is comfortable striking in the pocket when he is the leading man. He does struggle with exchanges in the pocket when he is working off of his back foot, but overall, his strikes as well as anyone in the UFC at close range. Although his defense has been exposed many times throughout his career, his ability to stay calm when leading and not overextend or put himself out of position has allowed him to outstrike most opponents while not taking a lot of damage.
Cerrone can also be effective on the counter, and some of his best performances inside the Octagon have come when he was patiently fighting on the outside. His counters are rarely the same. He will use standard counter straight rights down the middle or a counter hook over the top, but overall, he knows how to vary his strikes and remain unpredictable. Cerrone has historically struggled with defending kicks, so he likes to counter with a low kick to the opponents’ post leg to dissuade them from kicking.
“Cowboy” also loves to use a Thai-style intercepting knee against aggressive opponents. Simply lifting his knee and forcing opponents to run into it will stop them in their tracks and dissuade them from coming forward sloppily. He could stand to use his knee to the body on the lead more, but his counter knee may be his best technique.
Since Cerrone is usually the leading man, he struggles with aggressive fighters who will stay in his face for an entire fight. All but two of his UFC losses have resulted from those kinds of encounters, and at this point in his career, it seems doubtful that he will get better at dealing with high-volume opponents. Ferguson is famous for his ridiculous stamina and his ability to force opponents to fight at his pace, so it will be interesting to see what “Cowboy” comes up with to deal with such a strategy.
Cerrone is more than just a striker and has finished many fights on the ground with his submission skills. “Cowboy” actually came into MMA as a submission specialist despite his striking background, as 12 of his first 14 wins resulted in submissions. He quickly transitioned into the striker he is today once he joined the UFC, but he can still rely on his grappling prowess to win fights when the situation calls for him to do so.