earlier article on JDS' striking

We ran this article about a month ago but since people seem to interested with why we're not uber impressed with his striking, here's why.

Junior Dos Santos has come a long way since his first appearance hitting mitts on Dana White’s blog. With stoppage victories over Fabricio Werdum, Stefan Struve, Cro Cop, and Gilbert Yvel he’s reached MMA acronym status.  JDS is now in the mix as a top heavyweight in the UFC.

JDS recently had a brutal finish against an underrated Yvel but simultaneously showed us why he does not have the skill to hang with the top of the division.

In roughly 2 minutes of fighting, JDS made greenhorn level mistakes in his striking.

JDS began 6 striking exchanges by leading off with a punch to the body, 4 of which were jabs. This is a high risk, low reward maneuver in which to complete you have to…

A.)  Drop your level exposing yourself to knees and kicks.

B.) Expose yourself to punches coming from a lower angle.

C.) Or throw your punch at such an angle, that it no longer will protect that side from the counter.

Opening with a body punch, especially a jab, is an effective point scorer in boxing, but carries with it tremendous risk in the arena of mixed martial arts. It does little in the way of damage and provides the opponent with too many ways to counter. In fact, some of the only effective punches Yvel landed were counters to JDS’ exchanges initiated by a body punch.

JDS is also having problems keeping his guard hand up while throwing hard punches.

This same striking exchange could have ended much differently if Werdum had thrown his punch a split second sooner.

Dos Santos opened the fight ending combination against Yvel with a right to the body, followed by a left hook to the head. JDS never brought his right hand up to protect himself when he threw the hook, leaving his right side open to a faster left hook. Much like Badr Hari did vs. Alistair Overeem.

He could have also countered like Quinton Jackson by keeping his arm at a high level to block the punch, despite throwing a slower hook.

Instead we saw this exchange.

JDS left himself open to a strong punch, and his striking defense does not look to have improved since his first fight in the UFC. This is a huge problem in a weight division where everybody has the power and size to end a fight in one punch.

JDS is an exciting fighter who has looked dominant against his opponents. However, he makes many mistakes in his striking, and we have not seen one lick of his ground game. He appears in various top ten rankings, and has fought no one near the top ten (a bloated Fabricio Werdum with a terrible game plan and striking ranks nowhere near my top 10). With holes this big in his game, coupled with how poorly he matches up against other top 10 fighters, look for JDS to lose one of his next two fights. He will be overvalued in the odds books in his next fight and possibly in the one following depending on that performance. Making JDS’ opponent a potentially solid bet provided he isn’t named Cheick Kongo.