Fight Breakdown: Takedown Strategy, Left High Kick and Body Knee

- I think I was calm this time. At the end, you went for a takedown.

- You did, yeah. Right. This was an assignment from the coaches.

This time, they wanted me to incorporate some grappling into the exchanges.

It was more that it wasn't just about this fight.

When I show it in the future, they want me to experience those kinds of exchanges in the UC too.

That was the idea, and they told me to go for the tackle, so I went in, no matter what.

I went in at a pretty good time, but they reacted well.

- Surprisingly. Oh, I see. - Did they stuff it?

They stuffed it. But with that, I pinned them against the wall and threw elbows and things like that.

I was also targeting the knees, and that was one of the goals, - so I did that properly too.

The elbow was close. It was almost there.

- Yeah. It was there. Honestly, I felt I could get the takedown easily, but there wasn't much time left, and Kanahara-san was telling me to get the takedown, but I thought I wanted to conserve some energy, so I figured it was fine not to get it.

Honestly, I could've gotten it easily, - I think. Yeah.

You weren't even out of breath, - were you? Like, at all.

Not at all. I only got tired during the warm-up mitt work.

I had hardly even broken a sweat, - so I wasn't tired at all. Yeah.

Then in the second round, - at 34 seconds.

Right, in the second round, during the interval, Kanahara-san said, "You can close the distance, you can get in close."

I had also read their attacks, so I thought I'd finish them and closed the distance.

Then it was a straight into a left high kick.

That was one of the attacks I was aiming for.

Anyway, I'm pretty good with kicks. I've used those combinations a lot before, and it landed flush.

And, um, probably the temple is really effective here.

The jaw, the tip of the chin, and this temple area are really effective, but I really went for it right here, here and around the eye, and landed a full-force clean hit.

And after that, knees to the body. I’d decided to do that - from the start.

- You’d decided that? Well, actually, um, rather than after I’d hurt him, I wanted to get a takedown and drive a knee into his body to drop him.

That was what I was planning to do, but I figured this was good enough.

- It was just right.

Man, that was incredible. He couldn’t get back - up at all.

That really hurt him, right? I think the calf kicks probably did a lot of damage too.

I hurt his calf pretty badly too. And from the first round, I made him focus on the body.

Then I made him wary of attacks from the right, and then I threw the left high kick, so I’d already laid a lot of solid groundwork for it, so I thought it’d be hard for him to react.

Honestly, I probably could’ve got him with a body shot too, but…

I’m glad I went with the left high kick.