Good, Dirty Violence

Diego Lopes and Terence Crawford Come Out on Top

Contents:

• A Blistering Fight of the Year Contender

• Terence ‘Bud’ Crawford Cements His Legacy

  • The Stance Matchup

  • Canelo’s Single Shots

  • Getting Ahead

  • Enforcing Offense

A Blistering Fight of the Year Contender

Diego Lopes vs. Jean Silva was an incredibly violent fight that did not teach us much new about either man. Many of Lopes' habits were taken advantage of by Silva, who himself made more trouble than he needed by getting overexcited. The man's love for fighting bleeds into his style.

Though the Fighting Nerds are in a lull as of late, the team is still well versed in executing tactical success in a fight. Silva was more than prepared to begin taking advantage of Lopes' stance immediately. Lopes stands with a high firearms guard, hunched over, heavy on his lead foot, and his head far forward of his hips. Being so heavy on the lead leg means calf kicks will be that much harder to defend and all the stronger when they land (V1). Though Lopes isn't a movement heavy fighter, it is always a good idea in MMA to invest in damage to the legs.

V1

His hunched posture also means that the front kick is a great weapon to attack the head (V1). I made another video on Lopes, explaining how he often attacks in straight lines. The front kick up the middle provides an additional deterrent to Lopes' forward moving barrages while investing in attritive work to the body, should he posture up to avoid getting hit in the face.

V2

V3

Despite Lopes' hunched boxing stance, he is not all that proficient at moving his head to avoid strikes. His head often stays on the centerline while he relies on his insane durability to stay conscious. Silva's assault from the outside continued by abusing this (V2, V3). The cross counter and its threat were one of Silva's most successful tools throughout because Lopes will often begin his combinations with non-committal jabs (V2). Silva banged his right hand against Lopes' head to keep him on the back foot, where he can't enact his offense.

Once Silva was able to get cooking, he got more creative in the ways he punished Lopes' lack of head movement. He used just about every straight line attack in the book (V3). The aforementioned front kick, jumping knees, right straights. The beauty of these sequences was how he was able to facilitate lateral movement while landing. He preemptively posted on the head while landing the knee to circle and push off, and landed a right straight inside of Lopes' lead hand work to dip outside of Lopes' lead shoulder.

Even as Lopes did move his head to take some mustard off the shots, Silva did a spectacular job knowing that his head would return to center without any additional movement (V3). He caught Lopes' dip with the left hook to bring it back, and throw another clean right straight, ending the sequence with a step in feint to get him dipping, hitting him with yet another lovely straight while returning to his stance.

Silva masterfully took advantage of Lopes poorer habits, so why did he lose his fight? Largely, his enthusiasm.

V4

V5

Silva's right hand was landing with abandon but he ended up overthrowing on multiple occasions. Overthrowing in these sequences incidentally put him into the phases of the fight where Lopes most excels: Transitional offense and the clinch. Silva spent much of the first round getting battered with elbows underneath Lopes after an all too close spinning back kick (V4), and gave up his back yet again in the second by overthrowing with his rear hand (V5).

V6

V7

Silva used the established threat of the straight to throw a long hook that he converts to a collar tie as it gets smothered. Though he tries to slot in an elbow, Lopes easily slaps on his own collar tie as the taller man to pull Silva right into an uppercut as he's out of his stance (V6).

These long hooks continued to get Silva in trouble, as he often went for a hook to the body that was countered every time by Lopes' own uppercuts (V7).

V8

Despite having success, Silva's own enthusiasm to fight creatively continually placed him in Lopes' best phases, and by the end of the fight he realized that he was facing a man as offensively opportunistic as him. It saw each man throw a flurry of every elbow variation in the book, and as Silva pressed forward while Lopes was on the fence, he moved out to the side just enough, to throw a spinning elbow that domed him for the finishing sequence (V8).

Lopes' finish was opportunistic. It was a great move at the time, but the fight as a whole still saw his worse habits being exploited. Silva himself is an incredible talent and intelligent in his approach, but once those cage doors open, the rush of adrenaline marred his decision making. He loves fighting, perhaps too much for his own good.

Terence ‘Bud’ Crawford Cements His Legacy

Terrence Crawford has catapulted himself into the top 2 conversation of pound for pound fighters in boxing. Though the of number one might seemed clogged between Crawford, Usyk, Inoue, and Bam Rodriguez, I believe it the first two of these men who occupy the zenith.

Before this super fight, many pundits had written off Crawford as a worthy opponent to Saúl ‘Canelo’ Álvarez. The modern Mexican great has certainly slowed in recent years, coming to decisions against fighters that would have been layups in his prime. Despite this, Terence ‘Bud’ Crawford was coming up against some shortcomings of his own. He had a career defining beatdown over Errol Spence in 2023, but waited over a year to put on a somewhat convincing decision over Israil Madrimov up a weight class, but it was not a performance that blew the doors off the arena. Now, he decides to move up yet another 2 weight classes to take on an aging all time great, while himself 37, after another 13 month layoff? None of this looked good on paper.

Yet he prevailed. Not only that, he did it while barely dropping a round. Crawford put on a legacy cementing performance that will no doubt leave its mark on history. As yet, he wants to continue it, and well he should with how well conditioned he seems to be. Though I am excited at what could possibly be awaiting him to further impress, lets take a look at what he did so well, and more importantly, what we can learn from such a performance to improve our own striking games.