Stop-hits and lead rights with Rose Namajunas
Rose Namajunas: no longer the queen of strawweight, but still the queen of pot shots.
Rose Namajunas fights this weekend. It will be the former strawweight champ’s second foray into the UFC’s women’s flyweight division, after her valiant but fruitless effort against Manon Fiorot.
Opposing her this time will be Amanda Ribas, tough, scrappy, well-rounded–and profoundly hittable. Ribas’ lack of defensive craft did not stop her from racking up a four-fight win streak at the start of her UFC career, including a momentous upset against star submission artist Mackenzie Dern, but it has proved troublesome of late. In 2021 she was nearly knocked out with a single shot by Marina Rodriguez–twice. And just last year Maycee Barber dropped Ribas before pounding her out on the ground.
If Namajunas has any hopes of making a new name for herself in a new division, then this seems as good a place to start as any. Thug Rose is arguably Trevor Wittman’s greatest accomplishment as an MMA coach. Go watch her first attempt at a UFC title, way back in 2014, and you will see a young woman who not only had no idea how to box, but had at best a tenuous grasp on striking in general. In the years since, Wittman has molded Namajunas into a precise and powerful puncher, arguably the best pot shotter in women’s MMA.
In this piece we’re going to look at two of the straight punches that define Namajunas’ striking game: the stop-hit, and the lead right.
The Stop-hit
First things first: what is a stop-hit?
As far as I can tell, the term comes from fencing, but the concept is universal to all combat sports. It was a favorite of Bruce Lee’s–in fact, the martial art Lee created is more or less named after this one tactic; Jeet Kune Do: the Way of the Intercepting Fist.
That is precisely what a stop-hit is. An interception; a same-time counter, thrown such that it interrupts the opponent’s forward momentum before their own strike can connect. And if you have ever read one of my breakdowns, or listened to my podcast, or simply happened to find yourself standing within shouting distance of my location, it will not surprise you to hear me say that there is no stop-hit better than the humble jab, the foundation on which so much of boxing strategy is built.
The whole idea of the boxer’s stance is to interpose the lead hand between oneself and the opponent. The staggered stance provides passive defense–hiding the chin behind the lead shoulder and angling the body to create a narrower target–but more importantly it presents the jab as a dynamic defense, one which must either be worked around or confronted head-on. In other words, the ideal stop-hit.
Take a look at how Namajunas uses her jab to stop Joanna Jedrzejczyk’s counter attack in its tracks.
The footwork is what makes this shot so effective. Rose steps in for a one-two squaring herself up in order to bring the right hand on line. Once that is done, however, she immediately pivots in order to place her lead hand back between Jedrezczyk and herself. Joanna doesn’t respect the threat; she moves in to answer with a one-two of her own. But Rose’s position is superior. As soon as Joanna steps forward, the jab shoots out to meet her.
The jab is a marvelous counter punch because, so long as the feet are well positioned, it can be thrown quickly and effectively at any range. The range of an arcing shot like the left hook is narrowly defined: throw it too long and the opponent will suffer nothing worse than a smack on the side of the head; too short, and it misses entirely. A good jab, on the other hand, shoots straight out from the shoulder, striking anything in its path with unmatched speed and virtually no tell. And because the whole structure of the stance is designed to support the jab, it hardly needs full extension to land with authority. In fact, even a half-armed jab can hit like a hammer, particularly when the opponent runs straight onto it.
Case in point: a pair of jab stop-hits from Namajunas’ second fight with the notoriously aggressive Jessica Andrade.
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