Craig Jones has recently given his thoughts on the upcoming fight between Alexander Volkanovski and Islam Makhachev at UFC 284 on February 11th, 2023. Jones has been worked with Volkanovski to help develop his Jiu-Jitsu skills for quite some time and the two Australians have clearly formed a formidable team together. According to Jones, he thinks there’s an opportunity for Volkanovski to get a submission finish against the Sambo world champion if he’s able to use his heelhooks to full effect:
“A lot of Sambo guys are terrified of heel hooks. In Sambo, you can only kneebar, and I believe you can do it like a straight ankle Achilles lock, no heel hooks. Terrified of it. So, I could definitely see Volk submitting him very quickly with a heel hook.”
This might surprise MMA fans seeing as Makhachev is known as a fearsome grappler. In fact, he has an impressive eleven submission wins on his professional MMA record and only one loss that came by way of knockout. It’s not as if Makhachev has been submitting unranked opponents either as his most recent submission win came against one of the best grapplers to ever set foot in the octagon, Charles Oliveira. Jones addressed this as well though, and why he believes that Makhachev is able to submit so many of his opponents:
“I mean, he’s just good at holding people down. Like, he submits people, but I don’t think he has good submissions. Like, it’s a wrestling culture, and they obviously have some submissions in Sambo and stuff, but Sambo’s pretty bad as a grappling art. Like, a lot of the Sambo guys enter tournaments, they want heel hooks banned. So, it’s not a complete grappling art on the ground. But again, what he does well is his ability to hold people down from half-guard and closed guard especially. And then as they make bad decisions, he’s able to pounce on submissions.”
“But even still, like, obviously it’s hard for me to say this, but even when I looked at him submit Charles Oliveira if you looked at how he submitted him, he grabbed his neck and he squeezed him as hard as he could. To me, I look at that, I see that as an inefficient choke. If he didn’t get that, he’s burning his arms out. Whereas I feel like higher-level technique, he’d be able to hold onto that thing for three, four minutes, if you know what I mean.”
One excellent point that Craig Jones makes during the interview is the comparison between the submission skills of Islam Makhachev and the last fight that Alexander Volkanovski had against Brian Ortega:
“I mean, honestly, Ortega’s more dangerous on the ground. Obviously, Ortega’s taken more losses. His submissions are better than Islam’s. I think Ortega could give Islam a good fight, honestly. So, I mean, I think him escaping Ortega’s submissions will be more impressive than him escaping Islam’s submissions.”
While Craig Jones had plenty to say about the submission skills of Islam Makhachev and how sambo competitors deal with heelhooks, he also had a lot of praise for Makhachev’s takedowns and top-control too. Jones explained why Makhachev finds so much success in MMA, and what made both him and Khabib Nurmagomedov such fearsome competitors:
“I think it’s just a combination of how he uses judo and wrestling. Very rarely do you find someone with both skills. Usually he’s a wrestler, he attacks the legs, but he’s obviously got the upper body attacks too. But I think part of what makes Islam special and Khabib special is they have that Mike Tyson effect. Everyone’s so scared. They’re like, ‘oh s**t if it hits the ground, it’s over.’ You know what I mean? Obviously, no one’s superhuman and no one’s grappling ability is that good, you know? So, I think a lot of people just panic and make bad decisions on the ground.”
The full interview with Craig Jones where he talks about the upcoming fight between Alexander Volkanovski and Islam Makhacev was uploaded to the official YouTube channel of Submission Radio:
