Scoring Takedowns Off Of Kicks With Henry Cejudo

Since Dynamic Striking is naturally, about striking martial arts, we pretty much only talk about that aspect of fighting. With the large focus on striking we have we can sometimes forget that a lot of combat sports, especially Mixed Martial Arts, have a massive takedown component. 

We do have a ton of information on defending against takedowns, as this is the main goal of most strikers. With that being said, even if you are a striker, you should still know how to do takedowns. You can’t really say that you're a complete fighter without being able to. This will give you the ability to mix up your offense and make you a more dangerous and unpredictable fighter. 

One of the best ways to get a takedown in MMA is as a counter to your opponent’s attack. This is because they will be moving their weight toward you and if you can catch them at the right moment, they’ll pretty much fall over on their own without any effort on your part. One of the best strikes that you can counter into a takedown is a kick. If you are able to catch a kick, you are pretty much halfway to a takedown already. 

In this video, Triple C Henry Cejudo goes over how he likes to use his opponent’s kicks against them to score takedowns. Henry Cejudo is, in his own words, the greatest combat sports athlete of all time and it’s pretty hard to argue against him on that point. Not only did Henry Cejudo manage to hold both the UFC Flyweight and Bantamweight title at the same time and defend both belts, he also became an Olympic gold medalist in Freestyle wrestling at the 2008 Olympics. This makes him the only UFC athlete to ever win a title, let alone two, and hold a gold medal. With that said we are going to see how Henry applied his gold medal wrestling skills to MMA. 

Technique Breakdown

The video starts off with Cejduo talking about his philosophy when it comes to defending against low kicks. He says that he doesn’t believe in checking against low kicks, at least that isn’t his go to defense. He believes that if you can move away from the low kick, then you should. He believes that you should only check low kicks if that is the only defensive option available to you. 

He then goes into how low kicks forced him to take a smaller stance. In his wider karate stance, he would get his leg chopped up and this is what made him take a tighter stance. 

Cejudo then goes into talking about how he likes to catch kicks and go right into a counter takedown. The first defense is a defense against  a high kick. Cejudo says that you need to block as much of your head as possible to make sure that you are safe. From there you are going to bring your free hand underneath or over their leg to grab it, Cejudo recommends underneath. From there you can pull in your opponent’s leg and go for your shot and work whatever takedown you like from there. Cejudo shows a free different takedowns you can do from there. You can do the same thing whether it’s a left or a right high kick. Make sure that you don’t let go of the leg until you pull them into you and you can grab them. 

Cejudo's Instructional

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