FightNoob is a recurring series on Single Blog Takedown where we help new fans and neophytes understand the sport of mixed martial arts. This is the sixth edition. Previous editions can be found right here.
Volume 6: A Guarded Success
So I'm calling an audible.
Initially, I had intended to write a column about the various positions of MMA. But once I started devoting space to the guard position, it jumped out as one of the things that every beginning MMA fan should understand since it makes up such a huge part of the jiujitsu arsenal. An experienced practitioner of jiujitsu has such an advantage in guard that often those fighters will attempt to induce the position by "pulling guard" through either takedowns/sweeps into guard or by enticing an opponent to come to them on the ground and trapping the legs. (There's even Shinya Aoki's "flying guard pull", or as the snarksmen at CagePotato have dubbed it, the "Japanese backpack".)
If either fighter has a ground game, you can expect a good portion of that fight to take place in a fighter's guard. I'll get to that column on positions in general at a later date, but today let's focus on the guard: what to do in it, and where to go from it.
If I had a bunch of large letters in Impact font, this is where I would write "GUARD FAIL". Sadly, they just weren't in the budget this year. Damn this recession.
The reason the guard is such a strong defensive position is body control. The aim of ground fighting is to reduce the amount of options your opponent has, and a good guard allows you to keep the other fighter's body close enough to restrict freedom of movement and angles of attack, but also far enough that striking becomes a difficult task.
Closed guard is the guard most of us think of and the most common form of guard in MMA: a fighter on his back with the legs wrapped around the opponent. A fighter with a good closed guard stops the opponent from striking or passing by keeping the attacker's torso close using the guarding fighter's legs and hips. From the bottom, arms will generally be used to try and underhook the opponent and wrap around the head, pulling it close to the body. When you're watching a fight, generally the closer the bottom fighter has the top fighter to them, the better a position the bottom fighter is in.
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