Do Leg Locks Work In MMA?
Don't let Michael Bisping and Daniel Cormier fool you.
Cory Sandhagen vs. Deiveson Figueiredo was such a great fight for how little it lasted. That's what I love about the bantamweight division, they're so technical and good everywhere. At this point, those are basically the only fights I'm excited about in the UFC.
I was expecting more of a striking match with Figgy looking for the occasional takedown, but to my surprise it was more grappling than anything else. Obviously Deivenson has really good jiu-jitsu for MMA standards (although he made several mistakes in the leg lock department), and Cory is really good at creating scrambles and trains with 50/50 innovator Ryan Hall, so we were blessed with great grappling exchanges.
In this fight, Figgy was constantly looking for leg entanglements from the bottom, but Cory kept his base and ground and pounded the former champion pretty badly. This made Michael Bisping go crazy about how leg locks don't work in MMA and how it was such an amateur mistake. But was he right?
In the second round, Cory realized that he was actually much more skilled than Figgy in the leg lock department, so he started looking for his own entanglements, specifically the 50/50, and that entanglement gave him the finish (which was caused by the skill difference in the 50/50, not an accident). So that doesn't directly contradict Bisping?
It's funny because even in the post-fight interview, Cory had to confront Bisping about it, telling him that it wasn't an accident, but rather that he was just playing 50/50 and Deivenson didn't know how to react properly, resulting in this catastrophic injury.
However, this is not the first time leg locks have been trashed in MMA by a clearly uneducated commentator. In UFC Fight Night: Lee vs. Oliveira, Kevin Lee won the top position, but Charles (my favorite fighter by the way) attacked submissions from his back and completely outclassed Kevin Lee on the ground, even while on the bottom. At one point Charles even attacked a inside heel hook on Kevin Lee, which destroyed his knee (part of the reason Kevin wasn't the same).
But guess what? Daniel Cormier couldn't help but freak out that Charles was losing because he was on the bottom, even though he was the one getting closer to ending the fight.
Guys, the MMA judging criteria is based on effective striking and effective grappling, which is defined by who makes the most meaningful actions that contribute to the end of the fight. Position does not matter nearly as much (don't believe me? Check this out).
But back to the original question, do leg locks work in MMA? Short answer: yes, but not for everybody. Long answer: Yes, but they require a lot of specific skills that take time to develop, so only really high level jiu-jitsu specialists (or Cory Sandhagen—who's clearly on the spectrum of figthing obsession.) would work on them. You can't attack leg locks if your opponent has a solid base because he's going to punch you in the face, you need to be able to break him to his hip or get him to post hands on the mat. That's destabilization, kuzushi, off-balancing, whatever you want to call it. Deivenson didn't do that, but Cory did. That was the difference.
So…
Leg locks are extremely underdeveloped in MMA, and my prediction is that eventually there will be a group of people who are really good at them and have tons of success in MMA, just like what happened in jiu-jitsu a decade ago.
I'll be doing a post on how to develop leg locks for MMA, so stay tuned. Until then, bye!
The Lee/oliveira is one of my favorite fights to rewatch to study how to use leg entanglements the right way. You get stuck in that web and its game over.