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Coach Conversation: Aspinall vs Blaydes 2 | UFC 304
Eliot Marshall Shares His Insights On Saturday’s Interim Heavyweight Title Clash In Manchester
Ahead of every championship fight, UFC staff writer E. Spencer Kyte will sit down with one the sharpest coaching minds in the sport to break down the action and provide UFC fans with insights into each championship pairing from the men that spend their days getting these elite athletes prepared to compete on the biggest stage in the sport.
For the UFC 304 interim heavyweight title fight between Tom Aspinall and Curtis Blaydes, Kyte tapped Ultimate Fighter and UFC alum Eliot Marshall, now co-owner and head instructor at Easton Training Center in Denver, Colorado, to break down the matchup.
Best Trait of Each Fighter
Kyte: Let’s just dive right into this — what’s the best trait of Tom Aspinall and what’s the best trait of Curtis Blaydes.
Marshall: Curtis? Wrestling. Tom Aspinall? Athleticism, speed; he’s well-rounded.
Order UFC 304: Edwards vs Muhammad 2
Kyte: What is it about Curtis Blaydes’ wrestling that differentiates him from others, because I would say that in the heavyweight division over the last bunch of years, his wrestling — is it that his wrestling is different or he’s so good at it?
Marshall: He’s got the most takedowns in UFC heavyweight history, right?
Kyte: And he can get there, keep guys there, and maul them. I will never not remember him splitting (Alistair) Overeem’s dome like a coconut.
Marshall: Right, and he’s like a Khabib-style guy. ‘I’m gonna do it and I’m gonna get you down. You know it’s coming,’ and that’s along with his striking improvement, obviously, so I’m not taking anything away from him whatsoever.
But what you know is that Curtis is gonna come in there and try to put you on your back, and he’s not mostly likely going to do it — he’s going to do it; he’s going to get you down. He’s going to get you down. Can you get back up? Can you break the clinch?
You know the wrestling is coming. He’s going to close the distance on you, so can you deal with it?
Kyte: Is it technique? Is it tactics? Is he just a big, strong dude? Or is it some combination of all of those things?
Marshall: He’s very athletic, he’s very strong, he’s got great hips, and he’s worked hard on how to enter in better, so it’s all of these things, and he’s just got that “grind you away” mindset.
He’s fine with winning boring; he doesn’t care. You win a boring world title fight, guess what? You’re world champ!
Kyte: When I look at him from a position of things he still needs to improve — or can always be doing better — is those moments like the Derrick Lewis fight, where sometimes he gets a little tired, gets a little lazy with it…
ATHLETE PROFILES: Tom Aspinall | Curtis Blaydes
Marshall: That’s what I was just about to say.
I don’t think Tom Aspinall has that uppercut power that Derrick has, but he could — as Curtis has shown to get a little lazy, get a little tired with it sometimes, he could make that worse for Curtis, by counter-wrestling, stuffing him over-and-over. Curtis has to be very skillful and mindful of how he enters in when he’s gonna wrestle.
This won’t happen in the first round, but if we see the end of Round 2, Round 3, that’s when we’re talking.
Kyte: For Aspinall on the athleticism front — and I agree that’s the thing that separates him from the pack — why is it that his brand of athleticism is such a differentiating factor?
Marshall: I think it’s his speed. His timing and his speed are f***** fast! I think that’s what it is — you’re not ready for that; you’re just not ready for that. It’s almost Anderson Silva-esque.
Kyte: He’s more quick twitch than anybody.
Marshall: Yeah, but with some power to it, too. He knocked out Sergei (Pavlovich), he’s knocked out a bunch of guys, but so did Anderson, and the shots never look that hard; it’s the timing of them.
Kyte: The Pavlovich one, he clipped him, flipped the equilibrium and finished; it wasn’t one where he was out.
Marshall: It’s not Francis Ngannou power where if his pinky touches you, you’re going to sleep. There is something about that and his movement — he’s just… he’s Ciryl Gane-esque in his movement with very good grappling.
Kyte: This is why I’m so fascinated by this fight.
Path to Victory for Each Fighter
Kyte: So this one is straightforward for Blaydes — take him down, stay on top, maul him — but what’s the path for Aspinall?
Marshall: Get Curtis tired. Wear on him, whether that is mentally leading to physically, or just physically. I don’t think he wants to try to catch him early, even though obviously, it could happen, and when I say, “doesn’t want to catch him early,” we all want to win quickly, but he’s not hunting.
I think you’re gonna see a lot of movement, and can he get Curtis to the place where he starts to take those lazy shots, where he starts to get undisciplined, and that’s what this fight is: can he get him there?
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Kyte: When you say, “Make Curtis work” and tire him out mentally, what does that encompass?
Marshall: Get up a bunch if you get taken down. Defend on the cage. Make it so Curtis wants to shoot, but can’t find the rhythm and the timing to shoot, because that is mentally fatiguing.
When you can’t implement your thing, you start to get frustrated — and this is for both guys.
If Tom can’t get up and Curtis literally holds him down for three rounds — you think you’re the one that’s going to be getting up — it’s as much mentally fatiguing as it is physically fatiguing, and this is what I’m saying in terms of, can Aspinall do that more to Curtis?
Aspinall vs Blaydes 2 Co-Main Event Preview | UFC 304
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Aspinall vs Blaydes 2 Co-Main Event Preview | UFC 304
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Kyte: It’s the wrestling equivalent of how do you respond when you land that shot that normally puts someone down and they just eat it? How do you react?
Marshall: Right; it f**** up your brain. When I head kick you and you’re still standing there, and your brain goes, “No way!”
Now, no way once is one thing, but no way a couple times? No way in the third round, fourth round, and you’re on your feet? That’s what we’re talking about.
I think the difference is that Tom will always probably believe, even if Curtis keeps taking him down, that he will have a path to victory on the mat, and that’s the difference, later in the fight. Even if he doesn’t, he might believe it still.
Kyte: Do you mean in a sense that he’ll be fine down there? He’ll be accepting of being down there?
Marshall: Anderson-Chael I — right? I still have this triangle that I might pull off.
Kyte: You might make enough of a mistake where I can find something and capitalize.
Marshall: And the opposite is if you’re not getting the person down and you’re down three rounds, let’s say, it becomes “even if I win the next two rounds, it’s gonna be hard” because no one has stopped Tom on the ground like that before.
It’s just these different scenarios that we make up in our heads that may have no truth whatsoever, but that’s the job of talking about that.
Kyte: Do you talk to your athletes about that kind of thing?
To me, the way my brain works, is that right there is a flow chart that we’re drawing on a board and going through. That to me is “here’s what we do, and if it goes this way, this is the response.” Do you have those sorts of conversations?
UFC 304 EMBEDDED: All Episodes | Episode 1
Marshall: You want to avoid the panic, and the way you avoid the panic is actually going into the scenario, and asking, “What do we do?”
You only panic when you don’t know what to do; that’s where panic is. If you know what to do, you’re going to try something else, and then look — I’m not saying it’s going to work, but we’re just talking about the mental side of things here; we’re not talking about whether you actually go win the fight.
Panicking gives you no chance to win the fight, so how do you stay present? And then you can’t ask them to do something you’ve never worked on before.
Kyte: But you’ll go through those scenarios?
Marshall: What does their path look like? What happens if that starts to happen?
Kyte: So if you’re Cody (Donovan) and Vinnie (Lopez) in Curtis’ corner, and you get to two rounds down — “Hey man — we’re probably two rounds down, this is what we need to do. We’ve talked about it, we’d gone through it, and now this is how it needs to go.”
Marshall: “This is what’s happening, this is what we do when this is happening,” and then it just becomes whether your athlete can go do it or not; you’re just trying to keep them calm.
Kyte: Right — you can’t control the physical part because there is another person trying to ensure that you don’t do what you’re setting out to do, but it’s “We’re in Scenario 3, so we need to enact Plan C.”
Marshall: For sure.
X Factor
Kyte: If there were one thing that was going to significantly impact how this fight plays out — that swings it in one direction or the other — what would it be?
Marshall: How both fighters see Fight No. 1.
Kyte: Okay, walk me through it, because I agree with you, but I know you’re gonna go deep on this and I want all of it.
Marshall: We’re back in England. We’re back fighting the same person.
Is there any residue in Tom from being hurt like that, facing Curtis Blaydes? The situation looks the exact same. So is there any residue? And is Curtis putting any stock into “I already beat this guy,” because you didn’t, really.
You did — I’m not…
Kyte: No, no — I know what you mean. You did — you have a victory over Tom Aspinall…
Marshall: But he threw a kick and tore his ACL. Nobody was winning.
Kyte: It was literally 15 seconds.
Marshall: These things can — if you don’t address it, you might have issues.
From everything we’ve seen, Tom is over the injury…
Kyte: But those first 15 seconds could feel real familiar and real strange.
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Marshall: Yeah; we’re gonna see.
That’s one X factor, and I really think another is on the Curtis side in terms of does the monster in Curtis show up or does the Curtis that fought Sergei Pavlovich show up? He has amazing looking moments, but even in his last fight — he looked asleep in the first round, and then he woke up a little in the second.
I don’t think he’s got time to be asleep with Tom.
Kyte: No. This needs to be his Volkov performance. I won’t ever point to him knocking people out — it needs to be the Overeem, the Volkov where it’s just “this is the strength in my game and I’m just going to Khabib you here for 25 minutes.”
Full Fight | Curtis Blaydes vs Tom Aspinall 1
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Full Fight | Curtis Blaydes vs Tom Aspinall 1
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Marshall: Is he ready for 25 minutes? Not 22. Not 19. Is he mentally prepared to be locked in — and everyone loves that word in sports right now, locked in — but are you really f****** ready to be locked in for 25 minutes?
Is he ready for that, because he has shown sides of both — massively locked in, and then lapses.
Kyte: Dialed in for Round 1 of Derrick Lewis, and then a terrible shot in Round 2.
Marshall: 100 percent locked in for Derrick Lewis in the first round; won the striking.
The beauty of fighting and this is why it’s so much different than anything else: in every other sport, no one is locked in the whole time.
Kyte: You can go to the bench or the sidelines where you don’t have to be locked in. You get subbed out, get to sit and shake it off for a second — still pay attention, still be 85 percent — but then they send you back out and you lock in for that next stretch.
Marshall: And the moments of not being locked in aren’t event-ending.
The other team scores a touchdown — fine, you still have make-up time here. Whereas if you’re not locked in for 10 seconds fighting, you take one bad shot, you’re in the hospital.
Kyte: You’re looking at Marc Goddard asking, “What happened? Tell me how I ended up down here.”
Marshall: And that’s the difference.
Have we seen Tom in a very long fight yet?
Kyte: No; he’s been quick with it. Six minutes and change is the longest he’s gone in the UFC.
Marshall: Right, so what does Minute 12 look like? What does doubling the fight time look like for Tom?
That’s one on the X factor side for him, because Curtis has seen 15 or 25 minutes multiple times. So what does winning going into the fourth round look like? What does losing going into the fourth round look like?
These are things outside of the injury that are compelling.
I think there are a few different things: the residue of that first fight, and in there is whether Tom feels he needs to “get that one back,” because that can f*** with you. Two, can Curtis stay locked in? And then on Tom’s side, what does Round 3 look like?
One Coaching Curiosity
Kyte: Coaches see the sport differently and look at the sport differently than anyone else, picking up on different things and paying attention to movements, habits, or intangible pieces that others might not notice, but that could have a significant impact on the action inside the Octagon.
Every matchup offers its own unique collection of elements that might pique a coach’s interest and get them paying a little closer attention to once the fight gets underway.
So what is that one thing in this matchup?
Marshall: Obviously, my homies are coaching in this fight (Cody Donovan and Vinnie Lopez), so can they get a world title? That would be very cool. I tried to stay as objective as I could here throughout, but I definitely want my friends to win a world title.
Kyte: That is understandably one thing you will be paying very close attention to; it makes sense.
Marshall: So I’m interested in that. But what else am I interested in the most?
Kyte: Does the weird timing rate? Does it being a home game for Tom or a road game for Curtis — any of that stuff interest you?
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Marshall: The thing I’m interested to see is how Curtis deals with the big moment.
This is the biggest moment of his life, so I’m really interested to see that, because I know Curtis well, and so I really hope that he rises to this moment, and to see how he deals with that…
This is where all my being unbiased before flips because you become heavyweight champion of the world, this kind of sets you up for a nice life, hopefully, and so that’s my biggest thing.
Kyte: Is there an approach you would take to giving him, helping him have the best opportunity to do that?
Marshall: Yeah — Vinnie Lopez.
Kyte: Just the relationship they have?
Marshall: Vinnie Lopez is one of the best things that could have happened to Curtis in his life, and you can put that in the piece.
He pays attention to people. He pays attention to what somebody needs, and then he can give really tough love or really inspiring love, and that’s what Curtis needs, and he’s got somebody like that in Vinnie.
When Curtis is in a space that he can hear it, accept it, and follow through with it, that’s when you see him shine.
Full Fight | Curtis Blaydes vs Jailton Almeida
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Full Fight | Curtis Blaydes vs Jailton Almeida
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Kyte: To that Vinnie piece of it and finding the way to get him dialed in, giving him the best chance to shine on Saturday, I automatically go to “You were a JuCo National champion as a sophomore” and just go over that with him; that he’s “won the big one” before, rose to the occasion.
Marshall: I’m sure it’s gonna look something like that. He’s gonna make him visualize and see what this looks like, so that it’s not foreign.
It goes back to the panic thing — it’s the same thing; you want to see it happening, all of it, so that your mind is prepared for all of it.
Winning is a hard thing, too. “Oh s***, I’m up three rounds; don’t f*** this up” can be just as tough as “I’m down three rounds.”
Kyte: It’s why we talk about “trap games” and “trap fights,” right?
All of this stuff is hard, even when everyone else thinks it’s supposed to be easy. This is why we love it so much.
UFC 304: Edwards vs Muhammad 2 took place live from Co-op Live in Manchester, England on July 27, 2024. See the final Prelim & Main Card Results, Official Scorecards and Who Won Bonuses - and relive the action on UFC FIGHT PASS!
