Dominick Cruz Breakdown: Alex Pereira vs. Israel Adesanya | ESPN MMA Dominick Cruz breaks down the upcoming matchup …
I’m Dominic Cruz we got Kellen Park here he’s going to be Alex pajeda for me and I’ll be Israel adesanya now it’s tough to be Israel out of Sanya everybody knows that if you’ve watched him fight but what makes it tough to show his moves is he’s always in a constant state of flow so adesanya is never just in one solid stance at any given time he’s always in a stance and then switching stance and then throwing a combination to land in a regular another stance in order to land another weapon so out of Sunny is a big puzzle to solve he’s always giving you different looks and when he’s in this Southpaw stance he’s so good at keeping your hands and if you try to pressure him up against the wall he’s so good at keeping keeping hold of your hands attacking your legs inside kicks calf kicks and then creating an angle and getting outside so you don’t trap him up against the fence that’s one thing he does so well another thing is when he’s in the Southpaw stance he’s so good at making you think of of different weapons one he’s got this lead hand and he’ll come inside and Jab two if you try to come forward on him he’s got a back step right hook just like that when you try to come in he can backstep right hook you another weapon is he reach reached inside kick after that he goes to the body that sets up although set up the high kick later on thank you as he goes high already some significant swelling under that right eye padetta so he’s always setting something up in a combination you’ll see out of him so throw the inside kick high kick and then when this foot comes down he’ll switch so boom boom this foot comes down and he’ll throw a jab one of the combinations that you can expect to see that’s just so tricky that shows an example of how how in the moment arasania is he’ll stay in this Southpaw stance he’ll fire this inside kick and now you’re biting you want to check and you want to reach and then when you do so he goes to the body and then after he goes to the body he works to the outside and now he’s going to go high to the head and then after that he’s now going to throw the high kick and follow with the Jabs throw it throw the jab right afterwards and it’s so tricky because after you throw the high kick you back up which now sets up my jab from a conventional stance so he’s throwing weapons from a southpaw stance while attacking the lead hand he’s throwing this he’s throwing this and he’s throwing the high kick and all that is a smoke screen so that when he throws this and it comes back down and you back up off this high kick he’s got his Jab and everything flows together for otisanya now another weapon that you can expect is when he’s in his conventional stance he really attacked the legs that they had in this fight any time the hater would come pressure he would grab the hands chop the cap nice leg kick he’s always moving and when the Jabs and the rights would come he’d slip and then when the hooks come he’d lean and when the kicks come he’d lean and when the insides come he was able to check and follow up defense is top-notch best in the division and the way that he flows his offense from conventional to Southpaw stance to knees to elbows in the clinch flawless [Applause] you cannot stand in front of that man can’t play with that dude man I am fire foreign he’s a little bit more of a linear conventional striking style he likes to move forward with power striking anytime you attack his legs he’s so good at not over exaggerating his movement so that’s what makes him so durable and tough is the fact that when when he pressures and he always pressures you up against the fence when you’re when he’s facing out of Sonya but when he pressures and you decide to kick his legs he just eats it and then stays right in front of you know so one of the keys for pajeda in this fight and this worked so well for him in the last fight was keeping Israel on the fence anytime arasanya wants to be in free space open he’s so hard to hit because arasanya is extremely quick so what pajeda did is he turned around and he pressures and he’s heading him off notice out of Sunny is going to want to go left he’s going to create some space and head him off what he’s not going to do is follow him that’s what pajeda doesn’t do is follow the opponent he always heads him off whichever direction he goes and he stays right in your face and he’s trying to wear you out by keeping you in a box steps money I mean he hits so hard you can hear him when he lands and one of his best weapons is this jab left hook he hurt adesanya early in that fight he’ll play this lead hand game and then get right inside of it and then follow around the outside with the left hook so good and then just a mean lead left hook because this hand battle is so much against the southpaw when you’re conventional fighting a southpaw you can go over the top of this from this hand battle and that’s one of potatoes best punches is that left hook and lastly whenever arasania switches to Conventional this is where you’re going to see winnipega’s weapons that he threw in the last fight it’s a spinning heel kick so he’ll throw he’ll fake the left hook and the heel kit comes right around very quickly so keep a lookout for that as well whenever out of town is regular he’ll be moving side to side and potato will wait until he moves this way and look for that spin kick and follow-up so keep a lookout for all these weapons from behita on the feet because he hits hard these are stones in his hands and this man knows how to find your head [Applause] okay so one of the combinations also that you can expect at lasagna and this is from both sides but he tend to do it in the Southpaw stances he’ll stay here he’d play with this lead hand and then once he he gets uh pajeda biting on this lead hand fight he’d step in with the jab now generally when you throw a jab the key that boxers always tell you is bring the hand back to your face right away because if you don’t they can hit you with the hook but arasania really steps in and does a different offbeat Rhythm on his striking and he plays this lead hand and that sets up the jab now when the jab comes he keeps the hand out because he knows paheda is going to step back and so what he does is when pajeda steps back off the jab he keeps the handout and blocks his eyesight to line up the left hand so he plays the lead hand he Jabs and then this hand now he’s going to move his feet forward and block keep the hand out and then the right hand the left hand excuse me comes right through the top so one more time he’s playing lead and he just you’ll see I’m just going to leave the hand out just a little bit and that allows me to move my feet closer and make up the distance that pajeda moved back here here Jeff and then the left hand comes through and he does it on both stances he also does it here he’ll play play Boop [Applause] now what’s so cool about this fight is it’s a different type of matchup where in the past it’s just been pure stand up and kickboxing now we can mix in the grappling and really see where these guys have added their mixed martial arts to their kickboxing well we saw one moment where pajeda landed a good combo and then he chased how to sign you down with the left kick to the body out of Sonya used his kickboxing funimentals to mix it into a grappling scenario that was really nice he catches the kick a pajeda here right here and he pulls it by and then goes straight to the body lock now what pajeda does is he gets put so deep in the body lock off that nice catch of the kick and he tries to lace this outside leg and when he laces it what he really wants to do is pull this leg to the outside of this leg right here that stops kind of stops my throw but since he goes to lace that sets up the throw of our assignments [Applause] then this is where you really see the difference in the grappling potato rolls away gives us back and out of time he just grabs as far wrist just like this and then he stays over the top of this ankle and he just keeps dragging paheda forward and every time pajer gets his head up he drags him back down and keeps this wrist right here so important this wrist control of otisanya kept Tejeda down for up to three minutes in that in that third round and won him the round with the grappling control he just stayed right on top punch punch when potato would try to stand up try to bring this leg up he would throw a hook in get on top try to keep it and then this knee would come back in and you have to stay down again and then he’d try to get up again the leg would come up and you see how does Sonia come over the top and he’d sit back down and this position kept happening for about three minutes and it all is because of this hand control of adasanya he was winning the hand control battle on both sides he grabbed this hand the header would not hand fight with him so that alone is the basics and it shows arasania has a little bit more hours in that grappling area I’m really curious to see does he add more takedowns does he try to out grapple a fajeda or does he keep it a full stand-up match