That’s the thing about MMA. Guys suck at blocking leg kicks. They’re so worried about takedowns that they sometimes forget the leg kicks and when you know that someone likes to throw them a lot, you’re ready for them. In other sports, they’re not as common because people know how to defend them. That’s the one thing I’ll say will definitely affect Aldo’s game. The kicking will be out. I believe Anthony’s faster than him so the hands and other weapons, Anthony won’t be in front of him for his knees and I can just say what Aldo is not going to do to him.
I want to go to somebody else in your stable and that’s Ben Askren. One thing we noticed was there seemed to be a little bit more steam on his punches. It’s one thing to take a guy like Anthony Pettis who’s a better fast twitch athlete than Ben Askren is and someone who has a striking background compared to a guy who almost is the opposite of Anthony Pettis in that regard. Reasonably speaking, what is the ceiling in terms of the striker you can turn Ben Askren into?
Man, he’s gonna be kind of like Michael Chandler up in your grill. A guy like him or Cain Velasquez, if they’re so good at wrestling, if they’re striking isn’t working, they can shoot and that’s the key for wrestlers. Ben is getting a lot more steam on his punches and the next stage we wanted to work on with Ben was his ground and pound striking and that’s a whole ‘nother area of mixed martial arts people don’t understand.
You use a different muscle group to strike on the ground than you do standing and we trained a lot of that. Belcher used it against [Rousimar] Palhares and Jason MacDonald. Ground striking is a whole other level of the game that you have to focus on, too, and Ben, on his feet he’s looking better and better. He’s got Koch, Pettis, Belcher, little Pettis, all the other good strikers in my camp constantly striking at him. His defense is very solid and that’s the reason he’s able to take so many good fighters down easily like strikers like [Douglas] Lima and [Karl] Amoussou. He has a very good defensive base and a hard thing for a lot of wrestlers is their muscles aren’t set up for punching. They’re set up for pulling and pushing and they’re triceps aren’t built. Striking is more about snapping and wrestling is more pushing and dragging so you have to train whole new muscles and that’s why we’re getting loose with our strength and conditioning coach developing the muscles that will help Ben athletically punch better.
