A Bangkok ready guide to Tom Aspinall and the fencing shuffle step
Ufc 304 is a card stacked with talent. While English athletes and fans have been royally screwed over by the 3am main card start time, the fairly recent surge in mma talent will make up for an unfortunate schedule. The co main event is the unofficial fight for the people’s undisputed heavyweight champion. While Jon Jones, who has exactly one win since the COVID 19 pandemic began against a fighter allergic to wrestling, has a “legacy fight” against a 41 year old part time firefighter who hasn’t fought anyone on the current ufc roster, the real athletes have to pick up the slack. The current interim heavyweight champion looks to do this, fighting a very dangerous opponent in Curtis Blaydes, a fighter who has ruled the top 5 for years, unfortunately never being able to get an opportunity at ufc gold. While many fans have the fight pegged as a classic Aspinall steamroll, it would be foolish to doubt Blaydes’s chances at the upset.
Aspinall has made a splash in the heavyweight division, holding the record for lowest fight time to 5 wins, he has easily dealt with every opponent that the ufc have put in front of him, apart from an unfortunate knee injury loss to Blaydes himself. The main reason for Aspinall’s success is his blitzing footwork. While heavyweight fighters can usually be recognised by their plodding footwork, Aspinall has displayed a remarkable ability to cover distance, allowing him to enter into boxing range and let loose his powerful punches.
Aspinall’s game is reliant on his blitzing style, utilising footwork to enter into a preferred range and then unloading strikes. The idea of a blitzing style is usually encompassed by the karate boxers. “Karate boxers” often maintain a bladed stance, bouncing in and out of the pocket, and using the improved mobility of their stance to move away. Robert Whittaker has had great success using this bouncing style and Michael Venom Paige has relied extremely heavily on this footwork for his entire career. The issue with this style is that a bladed stance usually leaves you open to leg kicks, the price of improved movement being paid for by the inability to check kicks. Both of MVP’s fights with Douglas Lima have made it clear that this blitzing style can leave a vulnerability to having your legs taken out from underneath you. Another issue is that if your style involves you bouncing constantly it is a lot easier to time you. If your opponent is able to see when your feet have contact with the floor they are able to know when you have the ability to push off of them to move. This is most obvious in Robert Whittaker’s first fight with Adesanya, as Adesanya quickly found the timing on Whittaker's blitzes in their first fight as he bounced around.
Aspinall bypasses these weaknesses by employing more of a fencer’s footwork. Aspinall has a much more square stance, utilising footwork similar to fencers. Aspinall has a world class ability to keep his feet under him as he moves, shuffle stepping perfectly into landing a one two. Aspinall will shoot the jab and subtly move his back leg up, allowing himself to spring forward into combinations without much of a telegraph. The more square stance also helps to prevent the leg kick, allowing Aspinall to check kicks if needed. Aspinall will shuffle his feet under him allowing him to cover great distances, making two shuffle steps mid combination. Against Tybura, Aspinall used his shuffle stepping to great effect, using two shuffle steps to go from kicking range into elbow distance and perfectly planting one right on Tybura’s jaw, using his footwork to maintain his stance and throw a perfect one two immediately. While a karate stance leaves you out of your stance as you leap forward, throwing your centre of gravity in front of you, Aspinall’s footwork allows him to maintain his stance, meaning he can easily follow up a retreating opponent and throw punches with good mechanics as he always maintains his stance. When Aspinall needs to cover distance very quickly he will lunge in like a fencer, as he did against Sergei Pablovich with a powerful jab cross. While this brings him out of his stance and makes following up difficult it allows him to put his whole body into the jab cross, giving him an increase in his already impressive power.
While Aspinall’s offensive footwork is based around maintaining his stance, his defensive tactics are more unorthodox. Instead of utilising traditional slipping and ducking, Aspinall will usually lean backwards with his shoulders up, trying to lean out of the way of shots. In his earlier ufc fights he used to deal with an opponent trying to follow up by running backwards in a straight line, meaning he was at risk of getting clipped, a major risk to take as a heavyweight. After his knee surgery Aspinall has made his defence significantly better, adding lateral movement so the opponent cannot simply chase after him as he moves his head. He will also circle off with a jab if he feels you pressuring him, allowing Aspinall to reset and begin pressuring once again.
Aspinall’s ground game is rarely seen in all of his quick finishes, but is nonetheless impressive. While he doesn’t come from a wrestling background, as a 6”5 English man he has definitely played rugby, something that is very evident in his shot mechanics. While his takedowns resemble a rugby tackle more than a Jordan Burroughs double leg, Aspinall is more reliant on timing to make up for an “inferior” shot. While a traditional shot allows you to get under someone’s hips a lot better, the tackle can still get the job done, although we’ve seen Aspinall have to run down his opponents across the octagon to finish it, as seen in the Andrei Arlovski fight. Most of Aspinall’s takedown abilities rely on his sense of timing. Volkov’s normally impressive takedown defence was rendered useless when Aspinall kept catching him out of position by slipping his punches and then getting onto his hips. Once on the ground Aspinall hunts for the finish just as hard as on the feet, usually chasing submissions as the opponent tries to get up, threatening the kimura as Volkov tried to dig an underhook to get back up and catching the RNC as Arlovski’s hands were occupied trying to build his base and stand up.
While Aspinall is a great talent he has yet to go to a third round in his career nor has he faced a good wrestler. He faces a very tough opponent in Curtis Blaydes, who is a good defensive boxer and one of the best wrestlers heavyweight has ever seen. If he wins this fight only the most die hard Jones apologiser could argue that he is not the best heavyweight in the world.
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