UFC Fight Night 216 Beforemath: The 2022 Closer

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The Ultimate Fighting Championship’s year will come to a close with UFC Fight Night 216 on Saturday at the UFC Apex in Las Vegas. It caps its latest campaign with a middleweight headliner that serves as a major pivot point in the careers of Jared Cannonier and Sean Strickland. The winner gets back on track to a possible title shot, while the loser likely drops back to the mid-card. Without further delay and in the words of the dark and evil Emperor Palpatine, “Execute Order UFC Vegas 66”:

CANNONIER: FOLLOW THE PEREIRA BLUEPRINT?

It seems like the logical choice, right? All Cannonier has to do with Strickland is replicate the Alex Pereira gameplan and knock him out. Easier said than done, and that would constitute low-hanging fruit on my part as an analyst. We will look at how Pereira set up that fight-ending strike in a moment, but I feel it’s pertinent to discuss the differences between Pereira and Cannonier, as they are quite vast. While Cannonier has powerful hands, he is nowhere near Pereira as a technician. There will be a lot of this narrative leading into this fight, and I want to make this unequivocally clear: Cannonier is not Pereira by any stretch of the imagination.

With that said, Cannonier will have the opportunity to knock out Strickland in this main event. Strickland does some good things, but he also has some bad habits. It will be up to Cannonier to work around this.

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Let’s start with that low-hanging fruit. Pereira set up Strickland with some basic misdirection and the lead left hook, which has basically made him a champion three times as a kickboxer and mixed martial artist. To set up Strickland, Pereira (1) changed levels and threw a heavy jab to the body. It was enough to get Strickland to react and parry down—a tendency of the former King of the Cage titleholder. He likes to parry away punches to his mid-section. What Pereira does here, however, conditioned Strickland. He wanted Strickland to see the level change and instinctively think, “Oh, the jab to the body is coming. Let’s just slap this down.” It did not take many, (2) as Pereira changed levels after just a handful of body jabs. Strickland saw Pereira change levels and went to parry. (3) Pereira committed to the left hook and, as you can see, Strickland sold out to the body jab. His rear hand, which is the primary defense for the left hook, was down and provided a lane for Pereira’s strike. You know the rest. (4) The hook landed clean, and Strickland was out cold.

While this is not Cannonier’s modus operandi, he can adapt to set up something that is within his skill set. Cannonier is not a narrowly defined power puncher with swang-and-bang mindset. He likes to pick and choose his openings. While that caused him to paralysis by analysis against Israel Adesanya, there will be opportunities for him to get off some meaningful offense against Strickland. The first thing Cannonier will want to deal with is the jab—one of those aforementioned attributes at which Strickland excels. He tends to walk down his opponents and jab them into oblivion, following up with the odd cross. If Cannonier can deal with the jab, he can shut down Strickland’s offense.

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Against Derek Brunson, we saw Cannonier make a conscious attempt at improving his head movement and footwork from the Robert Whittaker fight just over a year earlier. In the figure above, we can see Cannonier (1) slip the cross from Brunson with the strike going just over his right shoulder. With Cannonier being a power puncher, he made it a priority to keep his power base. He hopped around—not a step at a time, but a literal hop—and opened an angle on Brunson. This was something Mike Tyson was big on, a prime example being his finish of Buster Mathis. He kept his stance, and instead of pivoting, he hopped around to keep his power punching available at all times. (2) In the next frame, we can see Cannonier has created the angle and Brunson is facing away. In fact, it is this angle that would likely benefit Cannonier against Strickland in terms of grabbing the high-crotch single for a takedown. With the angle created, (3) Cannonier is free to throw a power shot, which was, in this case, a right hook. Dipping under Strickland’s jab and cross will open up some considerable offense for Cannonier.

Strickland also uses distance well and knows—for the most part—where he can and cannot get hit. Cannonier will want to just eliminate the distance completely. One of the areas where Strickland is quite bad is footwork. Cannonier will want to come forward, slipping his way into range as we just discussed, and press Strickland into the cage, totally eliminating his gauge of distance. There, he can work the body, fire off some elbows and drag Strickland through hell. A traditional takedown will likely not be effective for Cannonier, as Strickland’s takedown defense is stout. However, he may want to look into some cheeky foot sweeps to get the fight to the ground should he see fit.

Finally, there is the low kick. Longtime readers of the “Before/Aftermath” series know that I am a big fan of the low kick to make the takedown easier and to hinder the mobility of an opponent. A naked low kick will only get Cannonier countered against Strickland, as the Californian checks leg kicks almost perfectly if they are not set up on the end of combinations. Cannonier will need to put every single kick at the end of a combo without exception.

With fighting being so nuanced, it can be hard to break down a fighter’s path to victory in its entirety. With Strickland being good at some things and bad at others, Cannonier’s path seems a bit clearer. With that said, Strickland is tough and game. Let us take a look at the psycho on the other side of the cage.

STRICKLAND: THE CULT OF PERSONALITY

Has there ever been a contrast in personality to fighting style like Strickland? However, it is that style that has notched him wins over names like Jack Hermansson and Uriah Hall. Strickland is a bit stubborn simply by his personality alone. He is going to come in and fight how he fights out of pride and pride alone. With that said, he has fought a power puncher in Hall and had success but also had the Pereira knockout. Strickland has some questions to answer against another power puncher in Cannonier, who probably sits dead center between Hall and Pereira as a fighter.

Of course, the jab is going to be his primary point of attack. We saw Cannonier show improvement in his head movement from the Whittaker fight to the Brunson bout. Strickland will likely want to take some notes from the Adesanya fight, but he cannot hang his hat on it because that is not who he is as a fighter. He simply cannot execute Adesanya’s gameplan. Strickland will want to walk Cannonier into that piston jab of his and push back “The Killa Gorilla” with a high pace and forward offense. Unlike Adesanya, Strickland will not enjoy much success on the back foot. Instead, he needs to charge right at Cannonier and keep him backing up to keep him from getting off those big shots.

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Staying away from the center line will be a point of emphasis for Strickland. While he does not move his head, he can be crafty on the feet when he wants to be, especially when opens up the jab and cross offensively. In the figure above, we see how Strickland, too, creates angles but uses them slightly different. Against Hermansson, Strickland (1) opened up the jab the same as always: by stepping in. (2) Once in, he knew Hermansson would not be comfortable in the pocket and would fire back. As a result, Strickland planned on staying in the pocket by utilizing the pivot of his rear foot. He brought his rear foot around and pivoted on his lead foot, which had already carried him in the pocket with Hermansson. (3) Now pivoted, Strickland had the angle and freedom to (4) double up on his jab.

This pivot will be important for Strickland in order to stay away from Cannonier’s power punches. He needs to make sure that when Cannonier throws, he is not there to be hit. There will not be any slipping and dipping from Strickland, but I expect to see him utilize footwork like this to frustrate Cannonier and keep him missing.

You can also expect Strickland come forward and utilize body shots. He takes the Diaz and Colby Covington approach to striking, where he does not necessarily try to knock out someone. Instead, he tries to drown them in cardio. Look for Strickland to walk down Cannonier, who can be unsure of himself when fighting off the back foot and can get lulled to sleep when doing so. Feints will also do Strickland some good, though I do not expect to see many of them from him in this fight.

The body shot, as mentioned earlier, also figures to play a major role. Cannonier is a big middleweight. He has fought at heavyweight and light heavyweight, but he has done his best work at 185 pounds. However, he is cutting a lot of weight to get to the middleweight limit. In addition to keeping him on the back foot and making him miss, both taxing factors on a fighter, Strickland will want to target the body to drain the gas tank even further. With this trinity, Strickland can really run away with the fight, take the power out of Cannonier’s power and put on a good show as the match progresses.

Either Strickland or Cannonier will put himself back in the conversation for a title shot with a win. While the middleweight division is in limbo at the moment due to a potential Pereira-Adesanya rematch, names like Whittaker, Marvin Vettori and the two participants in the UFC Fight Night 216 headliner are waiting to see if they will get another crack at the crown.