Contributor: Ben Kohn
In the co-main event of UFC 169, Ricardo Lamas, the man the UFC did everything in their power to not give a title shot too, will finally get his wish and fight the destroyer of worlds and his own foot Jose Aldo. As one of the people who have fully supported the fact that Lamas earned the title shot before anyone, and he was spurned with the attempts of matching Aldo up with Pettis and getting passed over by Chang Sung Jung, I am extremely happy they finally gave him the shot. Bad news for him, he seems to have a very small chance of winning this fight. Let’s first talk about their recent paths to the current title fight though and start with the champion himself.
Aldo is basically a little ball of violence and is the stuff a fighter’s nightmare is composed off. He’s a lethal and powerful striker with excellent timing and precision on his strikes who happens to have the best takedown defense around. He also has demonstrated an excellent offensive wrestling game and by the way, he’s a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu blackbelt. Have I covered it all? Yep seems that way, and that’s just bad news for his opponents. The list of names on his resume is pretty insane when you look at them; Frankie Edgar, Chad Mendes, Cub Swanson, Kenny Florian, Chang Sung Jung, Urijah Faber, Mike Brown and the list just goes on and on. He’s successfully defended his title 7 times and has been the champion for over 4 years. He also has not lost since 2005 which was nearly a decade ago. Good grief how can this man be beaten? Well he has shown that there are cracks in the seemingly invincible armor and it all comes down to his cardio. Aldo can get very tired as has been demonstrated in the Hominick and Edgar fights. Hominick was able to damage Aldo badly on the ground from his guard and Edgar was able to take a couple of rounds from Aldo but the problem is this; despite his gas tank being less than stellar, he has enough of a tank to easily last 3 out of the 5 rounds in a championship fight. Once you get him tired, it’s almost impossible to take the decision and a finish is most likely necessary. Considering he has lost once by submission in 2005, that’s a very unlikely scenario. Let’s take a look at what the challenger brings to the table though and see if he will be the unlikely one to dethrone the king of the mountain.
After dropping from Lightweight, Ricardo Lamas has gone on one hell of a tear finishing Matt Grice by TKO (and we have seen how tough Grice is in his fight with Bermudez so that’s no feat to scoff at), Cub Swanson, a BJJ blackbelt, by submission, Hatsu Hioki by Unanimous Decision, and Eric Koch, a former attempted #1 contender, by TKO. Lamas is certainly a well-rounded and violent man, and his most recent performance was a real eye-opener (pun intended). Lamas basically elbowed Koch in the face until his eye went kablooey. It is definitely safe to say that Lamas’ best work is done in the grappling department and while is most definitely a capable wrestler, he is not exactly a top flight takedown artist. Despite that, on top, Lamas is a dangerous fighter who will unleash hellish ground and pound and use his smooth grappling to advance positions and snatch up a submission. He is one of the fighters who’s style I like most, combining a very good ground striking game with a very good submission grappling game. A powerful ground and pound style combined with a BJJ blackbelt can cause some real problems for a guy like Aldo, especially if he is tired in the later rounds. Lamas has a better chance than most people are giving him (that included me before the writing of this article) but it is completely predicated on surviving and getting Aldo tired and to the mat.
This will be a bit different as there are clear skill differences in the individual phases of combat, specifically striking. I will break down what I feel each fighter’s gameplan should be against the other and detail whether or not they have the capability to do so. While I usually start with the higher ranked fighter, I will start with Lamas as Aldo is someone most fight fans are really familiar with (and I’ve already done an extensive breakdown on his standup for his fight with KZ). Because of the work I’ve done on his standup, I will focus more on something he displayed a lot of in his fight with KZ and that’s his offensive wrestling. Anyway, let’s breakdown what Lamas needs to do and see if he can do it.
First let’s discuss Lamas’s striking game which is very serviceable but nothing out of the ordinary. Ricardo comes from a wrestling background and his striking style, for the most part, conveys this. He will throw a nice variety of strikes on the feet alternating 1-2’s, lead left hooks, and some decent leg kicks as well. Overall, as a grappling based fighter, he has clearly improved a lot as a striker. The problem is that he still exhibits tendencies that will get him into serious trouble on the feet against someone like Aldo. He doesn’t do a very good job checking low kicks and in the fights against the two best strikers he’s faced at Featherweight, Cub Swanson and Eric Koch, they landed multiple kicks to the lead leg, especially Swanson. Another big issue that will get him into trouble with Aldo is his tendency to move straight back and cover up when his opponent comes forward. Aldo is incredibly accurate and will punish someone for doing that, either by punching through their guard or by kicking the lead leg as they back up and can’t check. While Lamas has definitely made strides offensively as a striker, unless he shored up his defensive holes, he will have lots of issues on the feet against Aldo. However, there is a silver lining that I think could be a big part of his strategy. But first let’s talk about what Aldo needs to do standing up.
Aldo really is an extremely dangerous standup fighter. I don’t know who at Featherweight can actually pose a serious threat to him on the feet and it’s a scary thought. But against Lamas, what’s the best way for him to apply his prodigious skillset in the most effective way? Oh don’t worry baby birds; I’ll feed you (thank you Tosh). Aldo’s best bet is take advantage of Lamas’s
bad tendencies on the feet obviously. How he can do it is through his much improved boxing and leg kicks. Aldo has an accurate and powerful jab that he busted up Edgar and KZ on the feet with. He also has an extremely effective counter right hand. Using his jab, he can get Lamas to try and fire back (similar to what KZ did when popped with it) and use a lean back counter right if he does move forward. Should Lamas not attack, Aldo can move forward and force Lamas back at which point he can use the straight right to lead into a powerful leg kick. This strategy could chop down Lamas’s leg and diminish any takedown threat Lamas may have. I especially like his counter right in this fight because Lamas will toss out pretty lazy double jabs which are just waiting for a cross counter. Let’s see whether Aldo can do that.
Now that we have talked about the potential striking battle, how can Lamas overcome the beast that is Jose Aldo? He can do it by forcing Aldo to move when doesn’t want to, which he never wants to. Watch Aldo in the fight with KZ and notice how unless he was attacking or being attacked, Aldo did not move but would stay in the same place. While it may have been the broken foot that limited him more than other fights, I personally doubt it. Aldo has cardio issues and to conserve his own energy, he will not move around very much. His stalking style allows him to continue his explosive attacks while not burning through his energy reserves to quickly. Lamas can take advantage of this by feinting attacks and forcing Aldo to react. One specific type of attack he can do this with is the flashy kicks he started to throw but ended up pulling in his fight with Koch. Lamas used his lead leg and forced Koch to back up because he had no chance of landing a counter attack. If he can get Aldo to move like that a lot, and waste energy, he can tire out the champion and drag him into the later rounds.
The clinch is where Lamas gets his best offensive takedown attempts going. What I mean by that is when Lamas is specifically attempting to take someone down; he will have his best success with body lock clinch takedowns. The problem is that even though he has the most success from that position, he generally isn’t that successful. Fightmetric has his takedown accuracy at a measly 38% success rate. Aldo on the other hand successfully defends a whopping 92% of takedown attempts! The only men to take Aldo down successfully in his championship tenure are Frankie Edgar, Kenny Florian, and Mark Hominick. 
Frankie and Kenny are understandable but Hominick is where Lamas’s only hope lies. It took 4 rounds of getting mercilessly beaten on before Aldo was tired enough for Hominick to have that epic 5th round of ground and pound. Lamas is not able to replicate Frankie’s speedy shot takedowns and Aldo isn’t wild enough for his counter duck under shot takedowns to work. Lamas isn’t big enough to bully Aldo in the clinch like Kenny attempted but he is strong enough that he can grind away for a bit here and there tiring out Aldo more. That is what he needs to do against Aldo when he gets close. He needs to force Aldo to waste energy by grinding against him, occasionally throwing strikes to the head, and focusing strikes to the body. Lamas needs to make this fight as ugly as possible to win it. Aldo on the other hand has just as much ability in the clinch as Lamas does grinding wise and he is very strong too. When Aldo gets pushed against the fence, he should turn Lamas against the fence and pressure him, maybe even employing his very well developed offensive takedown game. While his top control is nowhere near as good as the other facets of his game, it would throw Lamas off if Aldo takes him down at will. Striking in the clinch is something Aldo can do but seemingly avoids as it wastes the precious energy he desperately needs. Aldo will prefer to separate and employ his sizeable striking advantage rather than play tag in the clinch.
Finally we get to where Lamas has the best chance of winning, the ground game. Lamas has seriously brutal ground and pound and knows how to employ it, especially from the guard. My favorite thing that he does is standing up and forcing his 
hips to stack his opponents legs with their knees pressed against their chests. He did this very well against Swanson and Koch and after doing so, he throws hard punches to the body and head with lots of elbows mixed in. He will either keep striking if it’s really effective or advance to a better position should the opportunity arise. He is also a very opportunistic submission grappler and caught Swanson mid-transition with a slick arm triangle. Considering Aldo will expose his back sometimes to stand up, he needs to watch out for the submissions savviness of Lamas. Aldo on the other hand is someone whose blackbelt is almost never seen put into action. On top, he’s mostly landing some strikes and trying to control his opponents and on bottom, he’s either trying to get up or, in the case against Hominick, trying not to get finished. However, Aldo is capable on the ground and should definitely not be overlooked there. The thing is, it’s hard to gauge just how good he is and that’s why I believe Lamas has a major advantage. Lamas’s ground game has been demonstrated to be very effective while the little we have seen of Aldo’s is not so much aside from his wrestling. That’s why Lamas needs to get this fight to the ground somehow and if he can’t he’s really in trouble.
After looking over how their skillsets match up, it’s hard to see how Lamas will pull this off. He will literally need to do everything he can to tire out Aldo as fast as possible to try and implement a strategy to get him to the ground in later rounds. The problem is that even though Aldo gets tired, he’s still able to fight back. In the 5th round with Edgar, he performed much better than he did in the 4th and stuffed Frankie’s takedown attempts. Lamas is a great fighter but Aldo is really just another level and a strategy that seems like it will be based around not getting finished and hoping to get it to the ground is really shaky. I like Lamas a lot but, to me, this fight will be a slaughter if Aldo wants it to.
Final Prediction: Jose Aldo by (T)KO Round 2.
-Ben can be reached at [email protected] or @agentbenten.
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