Why weren't Izzy's hands super effective?

Izzy used kicks effectively against Whittaker and Costa, but finished both with his hands. He completely dominated Vettori, but didn’t have much success with his hands. I haven’t watched the fight again, but I’m curious if anyone here with a good eye had a sense about why Izzy couldn’t do much damage with his hands.

He doesn’t really have good boxing technique. He doesn’t know how to use his hands to parry and counter, and his feints have no threat behind it. He should be parrying and using his jab more often to blind them to his kicks and counters.

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When people are mainly fighting not to lose it’s hard to look good winning.

Vettori was beat before he got in there

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He was kind of self conscious about it a couple of years back, I can’t remember who he finished but afterwards he was talking into the camera going sarcastically “I ain’t got no knockout power” “I ain’t got no knockout power”. So he was happy that he was able to finally finish someone like that, but the social media posts must have been getting to him and people were telling him at the time he never finishes anyone like that. It’s just a reality with him, either you have it or you don’t when it comes to hitting power but that’s not to detract how precise he is with his strikes.

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Interesting.

Vettori definitely didn’t abandon solid defense and never really opened up. That probably contributed.

That’s super interesting. I didn’t know that.

He kept throwing that weird 1-2 low combo that never even came close to landing and looked like a girl punching for the first time. Obviously he’d beat my ass and I’m nobody but that was confusing me

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He has great leg kick timing and leaning back on his hip or back leg throwing not the best left hook and thats all, has height and reach advantage, Polish power did very good job then Yzzy was leaning back

How did Jan punish Izzy’s lean back? I can’t remember.

Takedowns. Leaning back opens you up for TDs.

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Double or triple jabs work well against opponents with great head movement. That’s how Samuel Peter handled Toney in the rematch. Adesanya KOd Whittaker and Costa by slipping punches and countering, so Cordeiro probably came up with the double jab strategy. This forced Adesanya to retreat rather than stand and counter, which is how Vettori kept getting him to the fence.

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Ah, I think that’s probably it. Doubling up punches is famously how Weidman KOd Silva. While it didn’t “work” for Marvin, you’re absolutely right that it shut down Izzy’s slip-counter attacks that we saw in the Knuckles/Costa fights.

Since their last fight, Whittaker has really perfected punch/kick on same side combos (most notably jab-cross-rear leg high kick). That has a similar effect – if Izzy slips, he’ll slip into a head kick. It’ll be interesting what effect it has on the fight and how Izzy chooses to respond. If he leans back, Bobby might then go jab-cross-double. If he just retreats, Bobby could attack his lead leg side kicks or leg kicks on the way back.

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strong text**[quote=“wiggum, post:7, topic:3673858, full:true”]

That’s super interesting. I didn’t know that.
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He wasn’t self conscious about it. The vast majority of his wins are by knockout. I completely disagree with this assessment.

I’d have to watch it again but yes Vettori did have solid defense and didn’t really allow Israel in close. He also wasn’t interested in engaging any time they were in boxing range. Izzy did land land some and was really looking for that lead uppercut/shovel punch from southpaw. He landed it a few times but not to devastating effect. He probably could have used his jab more but he admitted that Marvin’s defense was better than expected.

Is that true in kickboxing? And are the KOs mostly with hands?

I know he got the Whittaker and Costa KO with hands.

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Israel has had several fights where he didn’t have much pop in his hands and they did basically nothing as far as hurting his opponent. I remember some fights as he was coming up him landing many hard shots and nothing happened and people commenting he had now power in his hands.

People forget but there was a narrative for quite some time he had no power in his hands.

He does have really good accuracy and with 4oz gloves enough accurate punches from a middleweight frame is going to hurt. He definitely has enough power when landing pin point shots to hurt people but not like some of the hard hitters out there.

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I don’t know about most of his KO’s being with hands but if you are familiar with this kickboxing career, you’ll know that he has some of the best hands in kickboxing period. If you aren’t familiar with it, I’d recommend looking up some of those fights. You can watch his GLORY fights on Fight Pass (I believe) and a lot of his King In the Ring fights are on YouTube. In that tournament in particular, I think he had 9 or 10 fights total. I think maybe 4-5 of those were either finished with punches or the initial knockdown came from a punch. 100 percent in all of those fights, his boxing played a HUGE factor. Lawrence Kenshin has a bad ass breakdown video on his performances in those fights:

Here’s my theory on his striking in MMA vs. kickboxing: His MMA game is much more distance based. What do I mean by that? He puts more of a focus on keeping guys away from him. Unsurprisingly because of the threat of clinching and takedowns. I know this doesn’t surprise you Wiggs, but not many people are familiar with his background. I actually feel like his hands are just as good if not better than his kicks, it’s just that most people have seen a lot of his kicks because he throws substantially more of them in MMA than he did in kickboxing. He uses a lot more teeps and leg kicks than he does straight punches. I actually don’t think we have seen the best Israel in MMA yet, because I don’t think he’s confident enough in his ground game to really let his hands go. Once he gets that confidence, he will hit a new level. If you watch his kickboxing fights, he is much more aggressive and uses his hands far more often. Now he does use a variety of attacks just like he does in MMA and that has always been part of what makes him great, but his striking style was established far before he ever competed in MMA. There’s a kickboxing fight vs. Kim Loudon from King In the Ring you should check out. His boxing skill and hand speed is amazing in that fight, and he works the body, the head, straight punches, hooks, etc… he’s a great boxer.

For those who aren’t aware of it, Israel is actually 5-1 in professional boxing. Granted these fights were exclusively in New Zealand and only one of those wins was by way of knockout, but it just goes to show you the level of skill that Israel brings to the table. I honestly believe that he could be one of the best if not THE best in the world in any of the three major combat sports: MMA, boxing or kickboxing. He’s just that good.

His left hook is probably his best punch.

I disagree with some of this. It doesn’t make any sense that he can knock out high level kickboxers with huge gloves, but doesn’t have pop in his shots against MMA fighters with 4 ounce gloves. Like you mentioned he has great accuracy and timing. He doesn’t have a history of “one-shot” KO’s with punches, but he certainly has them on his resume and has dropped probably a few dozen guys with his hands. He simply doesn’t use his boxing the way he did in kickboxing and that’s due to the threat of the takedown. That’s why he appears to be more aggressive against guys who aren’t looking to take him down.