Kiwi-UFC 253: Better Learn About Brad Riddell Asap

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After putting the microscope on Israel Adesanya as he kinda just did what he does best against Paulo Costa, it's time to suss out Brad Riddell's win over Alex da Silva in the lightweight division. Riddell was the only other City Kickboxing fighter to win with Kai Kara-France and Shane Young both suffering defeats in what was a low key night full of drama for the CKB whanau.

Early in the event, Young got touched up by Ludovit Klein after Klein landed a high kick and then a swift combo of punches. Klein though, missed weight and the team-first vibe of CKB ensured that Adesanya put Klein's actions in the spotlight; making weight is an aspect of fighting that is crucial to a fair contest and Klein obviously care for that.

How this impacts Young's short-term future will be intriguing. There are likely to be no repercussions for Klein and a surface level assessment is that Young got smoked, so whether the UFC can see through this kerfuffle or not will impact how they book Young. Kara-France came up against Brandon Royval and Royval's length, plus his skillset proved too much for Kara-France as he struggled to get close to Royval and land his own hefty blows while Royval landed shots via his reach. Kara-France attempted a takedown to slow the stem of strikes and Royval immediately wrapped up his head then worked his way through the process to submit Kara-France in a choke.

Between those two fights, Riddell grabbed his third win in the UFC by getting a decision win over da Silva. This fight had a dose of drama as Riddell clearly landed a left hook to da Silva's right eye and da Silva responded as if he had been poked in the eye, to which the referee obliged and gave da Silva time to get his wits together. Kaumatua Eugene Bareman was ... rather vocal from Riddell's corner during this and had the ref not been fooled, Riddell would have followed up that left hook with a flurry of strikes to probably finish the fight.

Standing up and striking with Christchurch's Riddell is not a good idea.

The funkiest aspect of this fight though was Riddell's defensive grappling work as the first round saw him taken down three times, where he da Silva appeared to have control. One way of assessing takedown defence is how successful an opponent is in their takedown attempts and another is what happens when those takedowns are successful.

Da Silva was 3/3 in his first round takedown attempts and yet Riddell stayed calm, countered as much as he could without losing too much energy and worked through an escape process. As that happened in the first round, Riddell knew that da Silva would be fatigued from his time trying to wrap up Riddell on the mat and from there, the next two rounds were a striking clinic from Riddell.

This caught my eye, because it's similar to what's happened in Riddell's first two UFC fights.

In Riddell's first fight vs Jamie Mullarkey, Mullarkey was successful in a few takedown attempts as well as missing a bunch of them. This means that Riddell's takedown defence was good enough to deal with most of the takedown attempts and when Mullarkey got what he wanted, appearing to spend time in control of Riddell, Riddell was able to work through his defensive process.

Next up was a fight vs Magomed Mustafaev and after Mullarkey landed 3/15 takedowns, Mustafaev landed 8/11 takedowns. This started with 4/4 in the first round, then 3/3 in the second round before the tables turned and Mustafaev landed just 1/4 takedowns in the final round as Riddell took control.

Riddell has 60 percent takedown defence and that's damn impressive. For context Adesanya is a champion because genuinely has the best striking in the world, backed up by 80 percent takedown defence and this has enabled Adesanya to deal with the numerous wrestlers that the UFC put in front of Adesanya. For Riddell though, he has shown in his last two fights especially that he has the skills to patiently work his way out niggly positions on the ground and mixed in with Riddell's own tricky striking is a recipe for climbing up the UFC rankings.

Landing 7/18 significant strikes in the first round, Riddell then landed 25/29 and 35/89 in the next two rounds as he enjoyed the fruits of his grappling labour. Riddell destroyed da Silva's right eye with the non-eye-poke hook and as the fight went on, it was beautiful to see Riddell land a wide range of strikes; kicks, short punches in close quarters and the standard CKB fakes from distance to set up entries.

Post-fight Riddell stated that his natural instinct was to lay it on da Silva in the latter stages of the fight, although he heard Bareman telling him to be precise and control the fight. Note how Riddell started the fight by calculating da Silva's energy levels while da Silva seemed to be in control on the mat and then Riddell finished the fight by absorbing the coaching notes and putting them into action.

That is fighting skill combined with the ability to think clearly throughout the fight, taking in data and executing on the plan from that data. While this was put in the spotlight vs da Silva, this package has been on display in Riddell's two previous UFC fights and that's why I reckon Riddell is the key bloke from CKB to keep an eye on over the next 12 months.

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Peace and love.