UFC bantamweight champion Dominick Cruz is easily one of the best fighters to listen to when he is talking about his craft.
Cruz, like McGregor is obsessed with movement, and specialises in the art of not getting hit as much as he does striking his opponents. We saw from his spot-on breakdown of how Conor McGregor vs Jose Aldo was going to go that he really, really knows his stuff, and how he has given his views on the UFC 196 main event to Luke Thomas on 'The Luke Thomas Show'.
When asked what he thinks of the idea that Diaz only moves in straight lines, thus playing into McGregor's hands, he suggested that there were other, more interesting things to look out for:
He definitely does come in straight lines, but if you watch mixed martial arts, everybody in the sport comes in straight lines, for the most part.
That's something that very few guys have really read into and takes a specific mindset to be able to see the lines that these MMA athletes are using to be offensive. Once you see the lines that they're using, you can recognize which way you need to move in order to be the counters to those lines.
The beautiful thing about this fight is that he's a southpaw. How many rounds do you think Diaz has against southpaws, comparatively speaking, to the people McGregor has faced in the past?
Cruz then explained that he feels Diaz has two clear advantages over Conor compared to the Irishman's recent opponents:
Then you throw Diaz in the mix and he's already got two advantages. One, he's trained with his brother his entire life, who is a southpaw. Two, his brother's bigger than him, stronger than him and big brothered him, so he's used to being bullied. He's used to being talked to in a demeaning manner. He's used to everything Conor McGregor does because his brother Nick Diaz does the same thing to him day in, day out. There's nothing that Conor McGregor could do him that his older brother hasn't already done to him, I promise you if you know Nick.
That's a huge step in the right direction to begin with because the mental battle isn't nearly the same as it's been for all of McGregor's past opponents.
But just as it was beginning to sound like he felt Diaz was going to edge it, he explained how he sees Conor winning the fight.
Conor's movement is the key to why he's been doing so well. And the reason why it's been a key is because he sees the basics of everybody else that he's fought is moving on. They're moving in straight lines: forward and back. It's a drag race car. You're dealing with somebody who's making a lot of turns.
He uses the fact that you can only go in a straight line against you. He has all these other options when you basically have to stay in a straight line. How do you beat somebody who can turn, brake on a dime, do all these other things when all you can do is go straight and backwards as fast as possible?
In summary, this fight is going to be seriously entertaining.
Cruz does a truly impressive job of taking the technical aspects of MMA and putting them into terms that everyone can understand, and the only negative of his return to action as an active fighter is that we are going to see less of him as an analyst.
It's nearly time now...
