Rear Body Lock Finish With Cain Velasquez
The ability to quickly adapt to your opponent’s moves is one of the best that a fighter can have in combat sports. If you are able to build off your opponent’s moves, this can make them feel like they’re fighting against quicksand and are just sinking. For the most part in combat sports, this is mainly known as countering.
In wrestling, this not only means countering your opponent’s attacks, but also countering any of their defensive moves. Having the knowledge, reaction time and ability to to adapt and make moves of your opponent’s defense is a great way to almost guarantee victory.
In this video, Cain Velasquez shows a follow up to one of his favorite techniques if it gets defended against. Cain Velasquez is an MMA legend, being a two time heavyweight champion in the UFC with victories over big names like Junior Dos Santos and Brock Lesnar. In a lot of his fights, Cain used his smothering, control based wrestling style and vicious ground and pound to win matches and championships.
The video starts off with Cain getting a high level single and attempting to trip his opponent. To do this trip Cain needs to get a collar tie and his opponent knows this. To counter that his opponent reaches out and pushes off Cain’s chest or shoulder. This means that now Cain can’t reach his opponent. Instead of desperately reaching out in a futile attempt to grab his opponent’s head, Cain adapts.
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Cain says that in this situation you're going to use your free hand and place it behind his elbow. From here, you're going to post that elbow up with your hand to turn your opponent and move to their back. You're going to maintain control of your opponent’s leg while you're doing this. Keep in mind that you aren’t simply pushing their arms upwards, you are posting. This means that you are holding your arm in that extended position so they can’t bring it back. You will also be maintaining this position with your arm while you are moving around to the back.
Once you're behind your opponent with their leg, don’t feel like you're safe. Your opponent still has an opportunity to defend and escape. This means that you need to take them down and Cain shows us a solid option to use. From the back position you are going to use your free hand to grab your opponent’s knee on the leg that’s standing. From there you are going to drive them forward and onto the mat. From there you are going to climb up and secure the position.
If you don’t want to drive forward from the back position, you can drop the leg and get a back body lock. Keep in mind that you are still going to transition to the back with the leg being controlled. Also keep your body trite to their leg to keep it stuck. To do that try to get the elbow of the arm that’s controlling the leg below the leg itself. This will prevent them from kicking out their leg easily.
From this back body lock you can do a lot. You can suplex or slam your opponent but if you don’t like to lift your opponent, there are still a ton of options available to you. You can even switch to a double leg position and work form there if that’s what you prefer. Keep in mind that if you do want to go for the double left that you need to maintain that body lock grip while you're transitioning. If you leg go while transitioning, your opponent can catch an underhook and pull you off of them. With that body lock grip, you can still drive them down.
If you like this tutorial and want to learn more from 2 time heavyweight champion Cain Velasquez, then check out his complete video series “Finishing The Single Leg Takedown: The Art Of Chain Wrestling By Cain Velasquez” available exclusively on Fanatic Wrestling!