The co-main event of UFC 178 featured an entertaining scrap between Donald “Cowboy” Cerrone and (now former) lineal Bellator lightweight champ Eddie Alvarez. While many analysts expected Alvarez to follow in the footsteps of Rafael Dos Anjos, using his combination punching to push Cerrone around and beat him up, the veteran lightweight ran into some unexpected problems from his usually predictable foe.
An awful lot of post-fight analysis has focused on the fact that Alvarez is a boxer, and Cerrone is a kickboxer. The implication seems to be that Alvarez’s offensive game, consisting mostly of punches, is too limited to beat Cerrone, whose style ostensibly makes use of all eight limbs in the Muay Thai arsenal. This broad summation of styles misses the point, however. The fact of the matter is that there is a very specific gameplan to beating Donald Cerrone–one which both Anthony Pettis and Rafael Dos Anjos used to great effect in 2013–and Eddie Alvarez failed to execute that gameplan.
And let’s not kid ourselves either: Cerrone makes about as effective use of his hands as Alvarez does of his kicks, and both men are fairly matched in the wrestling game. Cerrone may throw punches, but they are an accessory to his kicks and knees, just as Alvarez’s kicks are an accessory to his boxing. Both men have had success–Cerrone knocked out Melvin Guillard with a right hand and Alvarez knocked out Patricky Pitbull with a high kick straight from Croatia–but neither man relies equally on every piece of his toolkit. Despite what you might hear, success in mixed martial arts is not merely a matter of having more tools. Just as in every other combat sport, it is about how well those tools are used.
THE GAMEPLAN
So what is the gameplan to beating Cerrone? It’s really quite simple–at least on paper, anyway.
Step 1: Hit him hard, and hit him early.
Step 2: Pressure him consistently.
Alvarez succeeded in the first department when he blitzed Cerrone with a barrage of punches while Cerrone impotently clung on to the clinch. Unfortunately for the former Bellator lineal champ (a title that Donald Cerrone now holds), he failed spectacularly in the second department. Instead of staying glued to Cerrone every time he took a step back, it was Alvarez who did most of the backpedaling, using excellent angles but ultimately staying in range of Cerrone’s kicks without keeping himself in range for his shorter punches.
CERRONE 2.0?
Credit must be given to Donald Cerrone. Alvarez clearly expected Cowboy to be far more hittable than he was. Typically, Cerrone is a walking invitation for sharp, straight punches to the head and body. He parries and blocks relatively well, but when it comes to actually adjusting his position in reaction to threats, he’s typically lost. So when I saw the sequence below play out live, I’m sure Alvarez was just as surprised as I.
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1. Alvarez walks casually to his right, and Cerrone circles to follow him.
2. Now Alvarez plants his feet . . .
3. . . . and switches directions, driving to his left with his favorite punch, a soft right hand.
4. Cerrone pivots (!) and the punch goes sailing by, off-target.
Before the fight, Cerrone claimed that he had never seen Alvarez fight. That may be true, but his coaches certainly did, and prepared him superbly for one of the most dangerous weapons in Eddie’s arsenal. By pivoting, and therefore taking his entire body off-line, Cerrone dealt with the immediate threat of Alvarez’s right hand, but more importantly established early that even when he had to move to get away from a punch, he wouldn’t move straight back, a far cry from the Cerrone that was stunned by Melvin Guillard, battered by Nate Diaz, and knocked down by Rafael Dos Anjos.
In addition to avoiding Eddie’s strikes, Cowboy also kept him from running away with the fight early by using his length and countering the shorter man repeatedly.
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1. Alvarez drops, feinting a jab to the body, and loading up his right hand.
2. Eddie’s punch swings wide, and Cerrone begins to pull his head back.
3. As Donald’s weight shifts entirely to his rear leg his left shoulder comes up and obstructs Alvarez’s right hand.
4. Cerrone hammers home a left kick to Alvarez’s ribs.
Cerrone did an excellent job of countering Alvarez’s punches with kicks and knees, which is always a risky endeavor. Possessing an excellent left kick, Cerrone would utilize the natural movement of that technique to pull his head out of range, while still guarding his head. And because he chose to counter right with left, Cowboy frequently managed to catch Alvarez in the liver while his elbow wasn’t there to protect it–the second round in particular began with a hard liver shot from Cerrone that seemed to sap the energy from Alvarez and swing the momentum of the fight in Cowboy’s favor.
As the fight wore on, Alvarez began to throw without feinting and setting up his strikes. Instead of jabbing his way in and working off of that jab. he started to commit to every shot he threw. With every movement an actual strike, Cerrone became more and more capable of countering him. Alvarez landed plenty of strikes of his own, but in a battle of attrition, the more durable fighter almost always wins, and there is no question that Cerrone is one of the most durable fighters in the division.
Thanks to his improved footwork and devastating kick counters, Cerrone slowly turned the tide. As Alvarez feinted less and less, he began moving and countering more. And without those feints his counters became mere guesses rather than calculated strikes. In other words, Cerrone seized the initiative from the start of round two, and then refused to let it go. Once he was able to walk Alvarez down and force the smaller man to react to him, it was only a matter of time.
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1. Cerrone leads with a right hand, which Alvarez parries.
2. Next a misplaced left uppercut. Alvarez begins to move to his left . . .
3. . . . counters with a right hand to the body, and pivots away.
4. But not before Cerrone blasts him with a vicious right low kick that buckles Alvarez’s knee.
In the corner, Henri Hooft kept demanding more lateral movement from Alvarez. Unfortunately for him and his fighter, Donald Cerrone possesses the perfect weapon for dealing with that tactic. Boxers understand the importance of circular punches, which is why the old mentality of “straight punches are always better” has more or less died. While a straight punch will usually beat a circular one to the target, it cannot easily catch a man moving side to side, whereas a circular punch can. For Cerrone, this same concept applies to kicks.
Alvarez’s pivot takes him out of the trajectory of any straight punches, and even moves him far enough away that a well-timed looping right would likely miss, but Cerrone’s lanky legs are another matter. As Alvarez pivots, he more or less gives the side of his thigh to Cerrone, allowing the Greg Jackson fighter to crumple his knee with a devastating kick to the thigh.
Eddie Alvarez certainly proved that he’s tough enough, and skilled enough, for the UFC, but there’s no doubt that Donald Cerrone is a very tough matchup for him. As a small lightweight, Alvarez will need to stick more closely to his gameplan to beat tall, kick-heavy opponents in the future. And as for Donald Cerrone, there’s little doubt that he’ll continue to get beat up in the first round of every fight–even the ones he wins. Fans hoping for a Cerrone title run will almost certainly be disappointed, but those hoping for an entertaining–and sometimes surprisingly tactical battle certainly have every reason to watch Cowboy do his thing.