MMA Labology Breakdown: Oliveira vs. Gaethje

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Charles Oliveira vs. Justin Gaethje

There is a storyboard you can extract from a deeper past here.

Oliveira breakdown

Many people look at Charles Oliveira like this unforgiving submission machine who has been running through people as of late. With a 32-8 record and all but three coming inside the distance, Oliveira is not someone who particularly wants to take things to the cards. The third-degree black belt in BJJ, for my money, is one of the most mindbending submission aces in MMA today. With 20 wins by way of submission, He is the poster child for jumping through opportunistic windows.

However, if the opportunity is not there, Oliveira will create his own windows, with seamless transitions, well thought out set-ups, and picture-perfect technique. For lack of a better term, Oliveira is poetry in motion from a grappling standpoint. Now on a nine-fight win streak against all top-level opposition, there don’t seem to be many people who can keep up with his glossary of ways to lose you in translation on the ground. However, the one point I do bring up about his career when he fights is that buried somewhere within him was something that caused him to quit in certain spots. Call it a confidence thing or maybe realizing he is breaking, you can’t deny the fact there have been situations where CO threw in the towel on himself.

Now, it’s quite clear that those days seem to be behind him, but does it really leave forever? Or is it something that may go dormant? As of now it seems like a distant memory, but almost like Roberto Duran saying, “No mas,” the purists tend not to forget. He takes on the one human on this earth that has an Ivy League Ph.D. in the art of breaking the human spirit.

Gaethje breakdown

Justin Gaethje had made his career living up to the name “The Human Highlight,” not for his ability to be super flashy or dynamic, but for his thirst to thrive in chaos and war like no fighter we have ever seen. While 99.9% of fighters get swept into a situation of darkness, they will lose their legs, lose their senses, and start swinging at the ghosts that surround them. Gaethje tends to have the ability to fight in this room full of mirrors that I call it.

When he’s in trouble, Gaethje has a knack for getting out and fighting his way to daylight. He will give you the highest of highs and lowest of lows. Most seasoned fighters will hurt him, and when that happens, the adrenaline runs, the heart starts thumping and the brain tells the body to attack because the fight is won. Once you realize that he isn’t jumping into the grave, all the emotional highs suddenly vanish and it’s his turn to pull you into the darkest place that you could ever imagine.

Gaethje teaches you a lot about yourself when you fight him. He takes you to a place that you have never been to before and even though you stepped into that cage numerous times, on the night you step in with him, it’s an entirely new experience. He will hold your hand, swim you into the deepest of waters and then ask you to swim, and if your moral code isn’t ready for it, there is no black belt, or training that can ever prepare you for that moment.

With a record of 23-3, Gaethje has only been submitted once in his career by Khabib Nurmagomedov. With extremely high-pedigree wrestling, Gaethje has really seemed to ignore it for the largest part of his career, which really never made any sort of sense for me. He would come out with a game plan, get rocked and then all bets were off and it was his way or death. This prolific mindset has earned him 19 KOs of his 23 victories. With his devastating leg game being a huge culprit of setting these KOs up in the long haul.

Gaethje has some of the best leg games in the business, and if he can slow down your movement, then it’s like shooting fish in a barrel when he lets his hands go. One thing I did notice in him is that he is finally maturing as a fighter. He is patient, calm, well thought out and even when he does get clipped, he will allow his body to get back under him before swinging desperately. The maturity is at its peak for him at this present time, and he’s going to need every ounce of that, so he doesn’t make a mistake in this fight, because one mistake can be the difference in him walking out the new champion or him just being another submission highlight for the always dangerous Olivera.

Fight analysis

This fight is really pulling cars to be honest with you, and whoever you chose, there are arguments. However, I’m going Justin Gaethje here. I know what I’m getting from him. I know he is going to brutally fight for my money no matter what the cost. I still don’t know if I can say that about Oliveira. Sure, he has definitely made me think that his mindset is completely flipped now, but if we are ever going to test that philosophy, it is going to be right here, right now, in this fight.

There is no doubt Oliviera is going to hurt him, there is no doubt Oliviera is going to have his moments, but the question still needs to be asked: If you don’t get him out of there, will you be able to swim in a place that you have never been dragged before? I’m going to say no. Gaethje used his wrestling defensively to keep this upright, take some ample punishment, fire back with punishing leg kicks, until Charles starts to back up, eventually bending him to a point he either fights through until someone drops or he folds and Justin breaks him like he did to 19 of his previous 23 opponents.

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