Dustin Poirier, Alexander Volkanovski, and Yair Rodriguez Set Apart From the Rest With This Unique Ability Claims Veteran MMA Coach

UFC 1 was a wild event that modern fans will scarcely believe. It was real-life Mortal Kombat; the whole premise is that practitioners of different martial arts will take on each other to see the last man standing. No weight classes, no unified rules, and not even a clear sport called MMA. Just a bunch of martial artists fighting with different disciplines.

Today, mixed martial arts is a hybrid and distinct martial art made up of striking, wrestling, and submissions. The discipline has rapidly developed over the past three decades. Skill level, techniques, training regimens, and diet has seen a sharp improvement in each generation. And now, an important figure in the sport has revealed a trend that top fighters like Yair Rodriguez, Alexander Volkanovski, Dustin Poirier, and Justin Gaethje are following.

Sayif Saud speaks about a trend that sets apart few fighters

MMA coach Sayif Saud joined Brendan Fitzgerald on Youtube to discuss social media usage by UFC athletes. In the course of the interview, Saud talked about a current trend in MMA that he claimed to have predicted a few years ago coming to fruition. This trend is of fighters being able to use both stances- Orthodox as well as Southpaw – in a fight, thus giving them more positions to attack from. He listed ‘Volk’, Rodriguez, Gaethje, and Poirier as examples.

“What is happening right now, and I told my team this uh probably four or five years ago [that] everyone will fight both sides very soon and it’s already happening. We saw it with Volk against Yair, we saw Yair do it, we just talked about Dustin doing it…even Gaethje. [Fighters use] both stances because it gives them more opportunities. If I can fight out of both stances I can give you twice the looks, right,” he said.

Saud also pointed to the influx of top-level athletes into the sport as another trend that will change the MMA. He claimed to have been contacted by many D1 college football players and other athletes looking to get into MMA. He predicted that the larger athletes will push the less athletic “tough guy” out of the sport.

Read More – Conor McGregor Sends a 5-Word Message After Dustin Poirier Gets Knocked to the Shadow Realm at UFC 291 by Justin Gaethje

What makes MMA an exciting and engaging sport is that fighting style is an integral factor in deciding the outcome. Elite fighters have the ability to adapt to their opponents in a short time. With so many variables at play and so little margin for error, MMA is a complex and unforgiving sport, as proven by Gaethje’s spectacular knockout of Poirier at UFC 291. And it seems that more athletic fighters are the future of the sport if Saud’s predictions hold true. We’ll see.

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