While everyone’s focusing on how amazing Conor McGregor looked at UFC 205, Bas Rutten’s trying to work out why Eddie Alvarez looked so off the pace.
On paper the Underground King had all the requisite ingredients to cause the Notorious all sorts of problems. He’s a strong wrestler, has high-level boxing, elite gameness, a deep gas tank and the experience of having fought in multiple world title fights throughout his storied career.
However, fights don’t take place on paper and when the two warriors stepped out into the Octagon on Saturday night, McGregor made Alvarez look like he was in way over his head, knocking him down three times in the opening round alone before landing the coup de grace in the second.
HISTORY!!! #UFC205 #UFCNYC https://t.co/GRrjPNwOna
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McGregor was outstanding, that’s undeniable. However, the question remains did everything just flow perfectly for him to make an opponent of Alvarez’s abilities look so ordinary, did Alvarez not perform at his best or does the truth lie somewhere in between?
Former UFC heavyweight king Bas Rutten believes that Alvarez got his gameplan all wrong. Speaking on his podcast Rutten and Ranallo’s Combat Sports Carousel, he praised McGregor for his stellar showing, but explained that he would have approached the fight very differently if he was facing the Notorious.
“Alvarez, once he was close to McGregor, he backed off again. I would have never done that. I would have stayed on him the whole time like white on rice. Do not give him space, because things like this happen.”
Rutten recognised that McGregor’s game is built around that trusty left hand, the one that Tri Star head coach Firas Zahabi famously said contains the “death touch”. He likened this weapon to Dan Henderson’s H-Bomb or Ronda Rousey’s armbar, because it’s obvious how dangerous it is, but fighters are still unable to avoid getting caught with it.
“If you attack McGregor you know you’re going to get countered, you know you’re getting countered with the left. Since you know you’re going to be countered with the left, still people cannot avoid it. They need to find a weapon.”
“Also his distance. He’s much taller. He’s got great distance. He didn’t even use his legs this time which was a smart thing, because he’s got to stay away from weak kicks because weak kicks can be countered or used to close distance. McGregor followed his gameplan to a T.”
He offered another possible solution to the McGregor puzzle, the use of the low leg kick. This is a technique that Alvarez had some minimal success with early in the fight before abandoning the tactic completely. Although he couldn’t confidently say kicking his lead leg kicks could be McGregor’s kryptonite, he argued that nobody has ever tried to implement them properly against the dual champ.
“What I would do if I faced McGregor was if he switches to southpaw, make sure you’re ready to throw left low kicks. This is very important and since he’s pretty much all the time in southpaw position, start fighting like a southpaw, you have to attack that front leg. Is it going to work? We don’t know, but nobody did it yet. So you might as well try it, you have to slow him down.”
