Kyte: To that end, if you’re Tom or if you’re Andy, his dad, in his corner, do you come out and just check straight away? I would be tempted, given how he had nothing to offer Francis Ngannou and Jon was able to just peel him to the ground, I would be tempted to come out with the “let’s just see straight away if this guy has done the work.”
He looked pretty panicked against Serghei Spivac when he went to lock up with him and take him to the ground, and he didn’t do great on the canvas with Volkov either. It’s the path of least resistance because he’s not knocking you out off his back — I’m not saying you sell out, but I would be tempted to go out, change levels, and just see.
Madden: A hundred percent! As a striking coach, the easiest one for me to relate this to is that if we’re fighting a guy that has a history of taking low kicks, taking damage from low kicks — maybe he’s been finished once or twice by low kicks — what are we doing in the first round? We’re gonna fight out what his low kick defense looks like and go from there, but let’s ask some questions early in this fight.
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Has he gotten better here? Is he the same? Is it worse? The way you find out is you try it in the first round, see what the response is, and even if — let’s just propose a scenario where he attempts to take Ciryl down in the first round, Gane defends it for some reason: okay, great!
Now we have an idea that his defensive wrestling has improved, but the potential of Tom changing levels and looking for the takedown is going to exist in Ciryl’s mind for the next 22 minutes as well, right? Even if Tom isn’t successful on the first takedown, he got an answer to what he was asking, and it’s still on Ciryl’s mind.
