🛠️MMA Tool Box: Reverse Z Guard
Reverse Z stand up, sweep, submit concepts from "The B Team Bottom Game: Imparting Wrestling, Turtling, and Heisting For Superior Results" by Craig Jones
The wall walk is one of the most important skills in MMA, however with the Dagestani fighters developing a system of slowing down the wall walk, there needs to be a different way of playing bottom. The reverse z guard could be an answer to the strong wrestler in mma.
The Basics
The reverse Z guard is a position where the bottom player has an over back grip and the butterfly hook on the wrong side. This is a fantastic position for the bottom man to threaten to stand up, sweep, or submit the top man.
The video below explains the connections for the position:
Connections
The purpose of the over back grip is to break the opponent’s posture and prevent him from circling to the back. When someone wants to circle to the back they have to lift their head, the over back grip does a nice job preventing that.
The butterfly hook on the near side leg makes it difficult for the opponent to press in, while the bottom leg needs to be on the inside of the opponents near leg.
The main objective from this position is to stand up, that is why the bottom player must look to post the arm and seek head height.
Entries
There are two ways to get to this position:
After getting taken down.
Off the threat of the hip bump sweep.
Threaten the hip bump sweep by posturing up on an elbow but instead of going for the sweep, reach for the over back grip to break the top man’s posture.
From the over back position, its important to keep the same side leg LOW. While the leg on the elbow post HIGH. This makes the top man think that they can pass easily towards the over back grip.
As the top man looks to pass guard, insert the LOW leg into the reverse butterfly hook position.
Stand Up
Standing up and building for head height should be the number 1 option in this position. Threatening to stand up will force the opponent to either sit back to prevent getting swept or push in to keep top control. The opponent keeping top control is where sweeps and submission options become available. When the opponent sits back, the bottom guy can heist up.
If hips are below shoulder, then it’s easier to stand up.
Volkanovski using the reverse Z position to get an over hook and stand up. This is a great example of getting the reverse butterfly hook in after getting taken down.
He’s able to use this on Islam Mackachev, a fighter with great top control.
Using Reverse Z to get to wall walk. This is an interesting move from Ricardo Lamas. He is using the Reverse Z position to get to the wall. The over back grip breaks the opponent’s posture while the butterfly hook prevents him from taking the back. Usually, fighters just butt scoot to the fence, so this position can be an alternative to butt scooting.
Sweep
Sweeps become available when the opponent has committed to keeping the bottom man down and starts to press in.
If hips come above shoulder line, it’s easier to sweep. This is possible by threatening the stand up so opponent applies forward pressure.
Aspen Ladd sweeping Kayla Harrison from the reverse Z position while Harrison is using forward pressure to try to keep Ladd down.
Here an example from Craig Jones rolling, instead of the over back grip he has an over hook. Jones is using the reverse butterfly hook and wrist control as his training partner pushes in, which allows him to execute an overhead sweep.
Sumudaerji executes a overhead sweep after getting taken down by Charles Johnson.
Johnson takes Sumudaerji down with a body lock.
Sumudaerji establishes an overhook, reverse butterfly hook, and wrist control like in the Craig Jones clip above and times the sweep when Johnson applies forward pressure.
The danger of the over back grip is the opponent using the claw grip to reach over and break the posture then threaten with an arm triangle.
The solution for this is to keep the bottom leg on the inside to the the option of flipping the hips.
The interesting thing about this sweep is that its over 100 years old. Here’s a video from
showing this sweep by a catch wrestler over 100 years ago.He even flips the hips, gets the underhook as the opponent tries to claw to hit the butterfly sweep.
Submit
The main submission option is the arm in guillotine, which is available when the opponent BASES and tries to pull back as the bottom player attempts to sweep them.
The video below shows how the bottom man can catch the arm in guillotine in transition.
Overhead sweep attempt by Lamas while Elkins pressures forward. Sweep fails but Lamas enters garbage guard to threaten arm-in guillotine.
Here’s Lamas using the threat of the get up to enter on an arm in guillotine.
Threaten the arm in gilly from from reverse Z with far leg outside.
The downside is opponent can post head on mat.
Instead of committing to the arm in. Jones recommends pummeling top foot into a half butterfly hook, and clear the half guard leg to post and sweep.
Review
The YouTube video below below explains the basic options from this position and how to execute depending on what the opponent is doing.
This is from my YouTube channel. Make sure you subscribe to it if you aren’t already doing so.
Closing Thoughts
This is not commonly seen in MMA at the moment but the few examples that have occurred in fights have yielded some positive results. With more strong wrestlers coming up in mma, this can be a vital position to learn for any mma fighter.
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