Middleweight’s Wildcard Submission Ace

Submission ace, Paul Craig, faces fellow Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt, Brendan Allen, this Saturday (Nov. 18, 2023) at UFC Vegas 82 inside UFC Apex in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Paul Craig is an enigma.

He probably always will be. He has a unique ability to win or lose against just about anyone he faces, because of the high-risk, high-reward unusual style of jiu-jitsu that Craig employs. The Scottish talent has built a ridiculous resume in the process, beating top names like Magomed Ankalaev, Nikita Krylov and Jamahal Hill over the years, while also coughing up some ugly knockout losses.

Now at Middleweight, I’m not sure the general do-or-die dynamic has changed much, but perhaps Craig can climb even higher? Let’s take a closer look at his skill set:

Striking

Paul Craig is not a striker. That said, a big part of his more consistent success from 2019-now versus his early struggles between 2016-2018 really comes down to confidence on the feet.

Historically, Craig has always been a pretty decent kicker. He doesn’t set his kicks up well with his hands, but the man is 6’4” and knows how to fling out his legs with nice form. Those round kicks make an impact, and they make even more of an impact when Craig is confidently running into them. Craig does have a bad habit of trying to get cute and kick off his backfoot, which can get him clobbered if his opponent is just a couple inches closer than he realizes.

Leave that technique to the Bantamweights and Glory kickboxers, perhaps.

Craig’s clinch game has grown noticeably more effective over the years. Again, the man is really tall and seemed physically strong at Light Heavyweight! If he wraps up the double-collar tie, it’s not that complicated for Craig to start hammering home knees to the body and head. Knees played a pivotal role in his stoppage wins over Mauricio Rua and Vinicius Moreira.

Finally, there’s Craig’s boxing: it’s not good. There are levels of not good, however. In recent years, Craig’s not great defense has been more covered up by his willingness to advance and throw punches. Again, this is a big man, so if he lands his right hand, it still hurts regardless of the wonky charging form.

More importantly, Craig committing to his punches opens up his other offense. If his opponent backs away, he can kick more effectively. If instead they stand their ground, Craig can level change into a shot or grab that double-collar tie and look for knees. It’s not quite to the same level, but remember how much more effective Fabricio Werdum became as a striker simply by gaining a bit of confidence and throwing hard?

It’s a lot better than hanging back at distance as a sitting duck …

Wrestling

Craig is an infuriating wrestler, because he continually makes the same mistake that any middle school wrestling coach in the US would fix in a few sessions. Nevertheless, Craig has managed to take down some really good fighters!

The fatal flaw — responsible for Craig’s ugly 22% takedown success rate — is that Craig wrestles from his knees. He’ll shoot a well-timed double, lock his hands under the butt, and then get simply stuck because he’s kneeling beneath his foe. A classic wrestling shot involves touching the knee to the floor BRIEFLY before firing back up to one’s feet, because it’s a terribly unathletic position.

Often, Paul will pull guard after getting stuck on his knees.

Along the fence, this flaw is a bit more manageable. Since his opponent cannot sprawl back fully and break his posture, Craig can slowly work up from his knees to standing and then actually finish the shot in good form.

Craig’s Middleweight debut against Andre Muniz perhaps showed some improvement in this regard (GIF). Both times Craig secured a grip on his opponent — via body lock and double leg — Craig was able to finish the shot by simply running his feet without letting his posture break (GIF). Whether that’s due to improved technique or simply a newfound strength advantage remains to be seen, but it’s a positive either way!

Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu

Finally, we’ve landed on Paul Craig’s wheelhouse. Craig has the very best triangle choke in MMA right now, and it’s not even remotely up for debate! Of his nine UFC wins, SIX of them came via some variation of the triangle choke — that’s absurd!

For strong 6’4” grapplers who understand how triangles work, finishing them is rarely the hard part. Craig secures the lower shin bone under his own knee easily, and he doesn’t even need much of an angle to squeeze hard enough to put someone to sleep — that’s the benefit of strength and leverage. If his opponents resists the choke, Craig will ruin their lives with free elbows or a cranking armbar from the triangle position instead. Or, in the case of Jamahal Hill, both!

Generally, securing the initial triangle position is the hard part. Professional fighters understand the golden rules of guard play: tight elbows and both arms in, or both arms out. Craig’s job on bottom is to off-balance and extend his opponent enough that an opportunity to catch just a single arm along the head opens up.

One of the best examples came at the literal final second against Magomed Ankalaev. Craig still stands as the only man to defeat the Dagestani! From within the guard, Craig was trying to force the wrist through his legs to set up the triangle, but Ankalaev was hip to it. When Ankalaev reached backwards to load up a ground strike, however, Craig was able to sneak his leg inside the arc of that punch and quickly lock in the triangle choke. That’s the classic MMA setup, but it’s rare to see it applied at such a high-level by such a large fighter. Furthermore, it’s impressive that Craig managed to secure the finish with his head jammed and twisted into the fence, as that usually goes a long way in shutting down the bottom man’s guard offense.

Craig secures many of his triangle/armbar entries after getting both feet on his opponent’s hips. This is a position commonly used to stand up, as the bottom can simply kick his opponent off him. Because of that, it almost forces the top grappler to push back into the bottom fighter if they want to maintain control.

Craig uses that pressure to his advantage. He does great work in wrapping an overhook on arm and using that leverage to quickly rotate to an angle, where he’ll attack an armbar. That armbar can easily transition into a triangle, which is how he came to submit/brutalize Hill.

Against Nikita Krylov, Craig pulled off a personal favorite entry into the triangle from that feet-on-the-hips open guard position. He committed both his hands to one of Krylov’s wrist, which combined with both feet on the hips, creates a lot of power to off-balance an opponent. Krylov tried to punch — Craig wasn’t defending his face, after all — but Craig yanked him off-balance and directly into a tight triangle choke for another first-round finish.

Conclusion

I wrote several critical things about Craig in this article, but I genuinely love watching the Scotsman fight. His bouts are pure chaos with the constant chance of a sudden finish, and he shouldn’t be counted out regardless of betting odds or hard punches absorbed from his opponent.

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Andrew Richardson, a Brazilian jiu-jitsu brown belt, is a professional fighter who trains at Team Alpha Male in Sacramento, California. In addition to learning alongside world-class talent, Andrew has scouted opponents and developed winning strategies for several of the sport’s most elite fighters.

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