MMA Terms A Layman”s Guide is a must read if you are new to MMA, you probably heard terms while watching a Mixed Martial Art contest that you are not familiar with. Below are some terms and what they mean to give you a better understanding of the sport.
Arm bar
An arm lock, usually but not exclusively applied on the ground, in which the attacker manipulates his opponent’s arm such that the elbow joint is hype rextended. Although there exists a variety of techniques that are properly classified as arm bars, the term is generally used in mixed martial arts to refer specifically to the technique known to practitioners of judo and Brazilian Jiu jitsu.
Arm triangle
A chokehold often, though not exclusively, executed from top position, in which the attacker positions his arms such that he traps his opponent’s head and a single arm. In the most basic application, the traditional kata gatame (shoulder hold) found in both judo and Brazilian Jiu-jitsu, the attacker generally begins in mount or side control, secures the hold either by clasping his hands together or by gripping the bicep of his supporting arm with the hand of the strangling arm, and completes the technique by shifting his body to the side of the opponent’s trapped arm. The effect is similar to the triangle choke performed with the legs, in that the opponent is strangled, in part, against his own shoulder.
Clinch
The clinch is where grappling and striking meet, a phase of fighting as technically complex and nuanced as any ground fighting position (see positional hierarchy) and just as important. When two fighters are locked together standing— whether in a collar-and-elbow tie-up, a Muay Thai neck clinch, a rear clinch, or in some configuration of overhooked and underhooked arms — the live crowd’s attention sometimes tends to drift, and unless you’re listening to a first-rate announce team, it can be difficult to discern what, exactly, each fighter is working for by slipping an arm here, turning his hips there.
Ezequiel choke
A chokehold often, though not exclusively, executed from the mount, in which the attacker wraps one arm around his opponent’s neck, places the opposite forearm across the throat, and scissors his opponent’s neck between his forearms. Depending on the angle of attack, the Ezequiel can act on either the trachea or the carotid arteries. Although there are a variety of no-gi adaptations, the technique is far more common in gi grappling, where one of the attacker’s hands can be inserted into or otherwise grasp the opening of the opposite sleeve for increased leverage. Known in judo as sode guruma jime (“sleeve wheel choke”) or simply sode jime (“sleeve choke”), Brazilian Jiu-jitsu players renamed the technique in honor of Ezequiel Paraguassu, a former Brazilian judo international, respected in both styles for his proficiency with his signature ne waza (“ground fighting”) technique. Because the gi plays an important role in most applications of the Ezequiel choke, it is rarely seen in mma outside of Japan, where the traditional gi still maintains a presence in competition.
Gogoplata
A chokehold, usually executed from guard, in which the attacker winds his leg around the opponent’s arm and forces the lower shin and instep against the opponent’s throat. Brazilian Jiu-jitsu innovator Eddie Bravo, whose rubber guard system has facilitated and popularized the technique, credits Antonio “Nino” Schembri with discovering the gogoplata; however, the move is recorded much earlier in the judo texts of Mikonosuke Kawaishi (My Method of Judo, 1955), Kyuzo Mifune (The Canon of Judo, 1960), and E.J. Harrison (Judo on the Ground: The Oda Method, 1954). Although the gogoplata lurked in the darker corners of the judo ne waza syllabus for decades as kakato (or kagato) jime (literally “heel strangle”), the technique rose to prominence in the context of mixed martial arts through the efforts of a single judoka turned Brazilian Jiu-jitsu player, Shinya Aoki.
Ground And Pound
The term used when you have your opponent immobilized in various mount positions either in the center of the ring or against the cage and start unleashing blows to your opponent to the point of bringing your opponent helpless to defend themselves and creating a stoppage by the referee or a knockout.
Guard
A grappling position in which a fighter, on his back, uses his legs and hips to control his opponent’s movements and prevent him from gaining a dominant pinning position. Although the list of guard variations is long and ever-expanding — take the rubber guard, spider guard, butterfly guard, half butterfly guard, leg hook guard, high guard, X-guard, and De la Riva guard, for starters we can simplify matters somewhat by distinguishing broadly between two categories. If the fighter has wrapped his legs tightly around his opponent’s body, and locked them together, he’s playing a closed guard; if his legs are not closed, but are used in such a way that his opponent is nevertheless kept in front of him, unable to pass, it’s an open guard.
Guillotine choke
A chokehold in which the attacker, either standing in front of his opponent or in guard, encircles the opponent’s neck and restricts the flow of either blood or oxygen to the brain, depending on which variation of the technique is employed.
The attacker wraps his strangling arm around the opponent’s neck, and grips the wrist of the strangling arm with his free hand. Pulling the strangling arm high towards the sternum while keeping the shoulder of the strangling arm low, the attacker applies pressure to either the trachea or the carotid arteries, depending on the precise placement of the forearm. Relatively simple to apply, but difficult to master, the guillotine is among the most common submission holds in mma. Any time a fighter leaves his head low in the clinch or in a failed takedown attempt, the opportunity is there.
Half-guard (Half-mount)
A grappling position in which the fighter on bottom traps one of his opponent’s legs, preventing him from gaining the more dominant mount or side control positions. Sport Brazilian Jiu-jitsu practitioners in particular have developed what was once a principally defensive position into a potentially dangerous place for the top fighter to be. The fighter on bottom works to stay on his side, rather than flat on his back, so that he can threaten his opponent with a variety of sweeps, escapes to rear mount, and submission holds, including the Kimura, knee bar, omoplata, triangle choke, and guillotine. And for the fighter on bottom looking to scramble back to his feet, half-guard can actually be a much better position than full guard.
Kimura and Americana
Closely related arm locks, usually though not exclusively applied on the ground, in which the attacker controls his opponent’s wrist, and grasps the wrist of his own controlling arm with his free hand such that the opponent’s arm is isolated and entangled. Maintaining a 90-degree angle in the opponent’s elbow, the attacker twists the arm, applying pressure to the elbow, shoulder, or both. If the opponent’s trapped arm is configured such that his hand begins near his head, the hold is referred to in Brazilian Jiu-jitsu as an Americana; if the trapped hand begins near his hip, it’s known as the Kimura. In judo, both techniques are classified as ude garami, literally “arm entanglement,” although occasionally the Kimura variation is referred to as gyaku ude garami, “reverse arm entanglement.” Catch wrestlers sometimes favor the terms key lock, figure four, or double wristlock. Different disciplines, different nomenclature, but in the context of mixed martial arts, it’s the clear and useful Brazilian Jiu-jitsu terminology that dominates.
But it’s fitting that the terms now widely used to describe these techniques— techniques important to several styles — originated in encounters between the Gracie family and practitioners of those other arts. The American after whom the Americana is named is wrestling legend Bob Anderson, who trained with Rolls Gracie in the 1970s. “I didn’t come down there and go, ‘Okay, I’m going to show you the Americana arm bar and I’m the guy that invented it,’” Anderson recalled. “It just grew out of what I knew and what he [Rolls] liked . . . he later — I didn’t even know — he called it the Americana because I was the American wrestler that came down and showed him the move and that’s how the Americana arm bar got started.” The Kimura is named in tribute to Masahiko Kimura, the Japanese judo legend who broke Helio Gracie’s arm with the technique in their famous 1955 bout in Rio’s Estádio do Maracanã, forcing Gracie’s corner to concede the match.
Lay and pray
For whatever reason, the mixed martial arts world loves its rhyming jargon. You’ve got sprawl and brawl, where a fighter uses their wrestling skills defensively in order to stand up and bang. You’ve got ground and pound, where fighters put their opponents on their back and rain down blows from the top.
Those are both terms that fighters embrace to describe their strategies. There’s nothing pejorative about either of them; they’re purely descriptive. The same cannot be said of lay and pray, which is more like a charge leveled against a fighter than an openly discussed strategy.
Leg locks
It’s been a long, hard road back to respectability for leg locks. Although present in the koryu jiu-jitsu schools of feudal Japan, leg locks all but disappeared from the day-to-day, living culture of judo when they were excluded from sparring and tournament competition over safety concerns, and instead confined to formal, rehearsed kata. Brazilian Jiu-jitsu practitioners banned some particularly dangerous leg locks from all but the highest levels of competition, and even when permitted, a kind of gentleman’s agreement discouraged their use, seeing them as cheap.
There’s a pedagogical reason jiu-jitsu players have often discouraged techniques that sacrificed position and could be attempted without working one’s way methodically towards a superior position, given their rigorous belief in positional hierarchy, but however justified, the net result was a hole in the otherwise unassailable jiu-jitsu submission game. As catch wrestling disappeared, the only remaining discipline that both allowed and encouraged at least certain varieties of leg locks was sambo, an art that remains fairly obscure outside of Russia and the former Soviet Republic.
Mount
A dominant ground fighting position in which the attacker straddles his opponent’s torso, anywhere from the hips to the chest, with knees tight against his opponent’s sides. The widely used term “mount” comes to us from Brazilian Jiu-jitsu and the Portuguese montada; the position is classically known as tate-shiho gatame (upright four-quarters hold) in judo. As ne-waza (ground technique) expert Katsuhiko Kashiwazaki notes, “The intrinsic quality of the technique is very high, though it is quite difficult to master.”
North-south
A dominant ground fighting position in which the attacker, kneeling above his opponent’s head, pins his opponent chest to chest. Judo players know the position as kami-shiho gatame (upper four-quarters hold) and consider it a distinct pinning technique, whereas Brazilian Jiu-jitsu practitioners often classify the position as a variation of side control. Under the widely observed Unified Rules of Mixed Martial Arts, in which knees to the head of a downed opponent are illegal, the north-south position is far less dangerous for the pinned opponent than it is under the more relaxed rule sets followed in the JapanesePride, Dream, and Sengoku organizations.
Omoplata
An arm lock, often though not exclusively executed from guard, in which the attacker traps the opponent’s arm between his legs and attacks the elbow, shoulder, or both in a manner similar to the Kimura or ude garami. As the Japanese term for this technique sankaku garami (“triangular entanglement”) implies, the attacker’s legs are often locked into a triangular configuration to secure the hold. A vastly more common attack in Brazilian Jiu-jitsu than judo, the technique is almost universally known by its Portuguese name, literally “shoulder blade.”
Positional hierarchy
Once lightweight champion B.J. Penn had challenger Kenny Florian where he wanted him in the main event of UFC 101 — tired, on his back, holding fast — the Philadelphia crowd snapped to attention. Although Florian is a legitimate Brazilian Jiu-jitsu black belt, he was out of his depth against “The Prodigy,” and the Philly fans knew it. Florian managed to entangle one of Penn’s legs between both of his, offering him some measure of defense, but it was clear Penn wasn’t content to settle into Florian’s half-guard: he wanted to pass to mount and finish the fight. As Penn pushed down on Florian’s thigh, trying to create enough space to swing his trapped leg clear, the crowd responded as though someone had landed a solid one-two combination. They weren’t responding to a successful transition from half-guard to a dominant, potentially fight-ending position — that would come a little later, when Florian’s defenses were broken down even further. At that moment, the Philadelphia fans were responding to Penn’s mere attempt to pass the halfguard. “The audience cheers for that,” color commentator Joe Rogan said with a hint of surprise, “which shows you how educated mixed martial arts fans are now.”
It wasn’t that long ago that any action on the ground more subtle than an elbow to the face or a match-ending choke or joint lock would be met with impatience or, at best, indifference from the live audience. The ground game is at once the heart of mixed martial arts and the most difficult facet of the sport for newcomers to grasp. The first-time viewer sees two fighters entangled on the mat, working tactically, methodically — and, at times, desperately — towards something, but what, exactly? Why, under a torrent of blows, expend so much energy and effort to change slightly the position of a leg, the angle of the hips? Because, in short, it makes all the difference. One minute, with just one of B.J. Penn’s legs held between his ankles, Kenny Florian was in a position of relative safety. The next, with that leg freed, the end was in sight, and inevitable. Position is everything.
Rear mount (Back mount)
A dominant ground fighting position — perhaps the most dominant ground fighting position — in which the attacker straddles his opponent from behind, hooking his feet inside his opponent’s thighs to control the hips. Alternatively, the attacker may choose to triangle his legs around his opponent’s torso, increasing control and restricting his opponent’s breathing. The rear mount can be achieved with the opponent face down and the attacker on top, or with the opponent face up and the attacker beneath. In either case, the attacker is able to threaten with strikes, the rear naked choke, and, if he is willing to sacrifice position to attempt a submission, the arm bar, while his opponent is effectively unable to attack. The defending fighter must work to improve his position, creating enough space to roll into the attacker’s guard or half-guard. Direct escapes to side control are possible, though far more difficult to execute against skilled grapplers.
Rear naked choke
A chokehold in which the attacker, from behind, encircles the opponent’s neck with his arms and restricts the flow of either blood or oxygen, depending on which variation of the technique is employed. The choke is “naked” in the sense that it is performed without the aid of a gi. Known as the mata leão (“lion killer”) in Brazilian Jiu-jitsu and hadaka jime (“naked choke”) in judo, the rear naked choke is among the most frequently applied holds in mixed martial arts. When properly applied, it simply ends fights — by submission, or, failing that, unconsciousness.
Side control (Side mount)
A dominant grappling position in which the attacker lays across his opponent’s body and pins him chest to chest. This elastic term encompasses an unusually broad range of techniques, from a solid, knees-down, squarehipped side pin, through the assorted spread-legged kesa gatame (scarf hold) variations of judo and the powerful, transitional uki gatame (floating hold) or knee-on-belly position prized by Brazilian Jiu-jitsu stylists, to modern no-gi refinements like the iconoclastic Eddie Bravo’s twister side control. The term sometimes stretches so far as include a side control that isn’t really a side control at all — the north-south position. What unites this disparate group of holds and positions is the incredible range of offensive possibilities available to the fighter on top: knees, elbows, punches, hammer fists, and a seemingly endless assortment of submissions attacking either the upper or lower body. The fighter on bottom is limited largely to positional work, compelled to look either for incremental improvements to half-guard and guard, or for sweeps to assume a top position of his own. Although it’s possible for a fighter held in side control to secure and even finish with a Kimura or triangle choke from this disadvantageous position, it’s far from likely against even a moderately skilled top player.
Sprawl and brawl
“Sprawl and brawl” is like the twisted cousin of Mark Coleman’s patented “ground and pound.” Both are styles employed by former collegiate and amateur wrestlers, but that’s where the comparisons end. Sprawl and brawl is like the Bizarro version of ground and pound. Instead of trying to take an opponent to the mat, these fighters use the skills they’ve worked so hard on in the wrestling room to stay on their feet. The idea was to combat strong grapplers, primarily jiu-jitsu artists with strong submissions, by simply staying away from the floor. Since it was the only place the submission artists could ply their trade, the advantage shifted to the wrestler.
TDD
Take down defense, the techniques used to prevent take downs by your opponent. Fighters who have a wrestling background will use a double or single leg take down to get their opponent to the mat to gain control. Fighters like Lyoto Machida have a great TDD and are able to keep the fight on their feet which is their strength.
Triangle choke
A chokehold, often though not exclusively executed from guard, in which the attacker traps the opponent’s neck and one of his arms between his legs. The foot of the attacker’s strangling leg is locked into position underneath the opposite knee, creating a constricting triangular configuration.
Brazilian Jiu-jitsu great Jean Jacques Machado once strangely claimed that the triangle choke was “invented” in the 1970s by Sergio Dorileo, who “had been studying a Japanese book of positions and invented the Triangle.” Romero “Jacare” Cavalcanti clarified this somewhat when he told Martial Arts Illustrated that Dorileo, training at Rolls Gracie’s academy, “showed everyone what he had learned from some old judo book and since then everyone has known the triangle. I mean, all the jiu-jitsu guys.” It’s remarkable that one of mma’s most successful submission holds entered the diverse Brazilian Jiu-jitsu syllabus so late. But the triangle choke is a relatively modern innovation.