“Struggling for the takedown,” also known as “mashing the four face buttons on the controller repetitiously and with haste,” is at times imperative. You’ll find yourself doing this when an opponent attempts to stuff your takedown, as well as when you attempt a submission. In many ways, in any instance of struggle or contest, the game’s interpretation of who wants it more comes by way of who more effectively and persistently mashes their buttons.

In many cases, your attempt at taking your opponent down, given its success, will land you in your opponent’s full-guard. Against Chuck, this is satisfactory.

When attempting a takedown, ending up with an opponent on top of you working for a submission is an imminent threat. However, given practice, it’ll only be a matter of time before you're alternating between setting up striking opportunities, and setting up well-timed takedowns.

However, flip the game over to Expert difficulty (via the Options menu), and prepare to witness an unrelenting clinic on what it is to get Jiu-Jitsu’ed by an opponent of artificial intelligence. Now that we have our opponent there, we’ve got to learn how to handle him.





Counter-Grappling

The timing of your controls means everything once you’ve taken your opponent to the ground. Most importantly, pay attention to the animations of the fighters. Most commands initiate an animation sequence that must be observed to coordinate when your next button presses will be best timed.

In the event that you attempt to pull off a button sequence (a combination) or an analog stick command (transition) and have not waited for the previous animation of your fighter’s action to complete, the game will not process your command correctly. In this sense, you must learn your fighter’s timing, figure out the best timing to input attack commands based on their animations, and use that as your guide for when to pull off the next move. This, in ways, is the essence of what makes the learning curve somewhat challenging.

Take, for instance, attempting a transition once you’ve scored the takedown. As you push the right analog stick directionally either which way, you’ll notice your fighter post up. The animation as he posts up must complete in order for the transition to execute properly. For example, if you attempt a major transition, and move into the circular analog stick motion before the animation of your fighter posting up has completed, the command will register incorrectly, and your fighter will most likely do nothing at all. This can leave you open. Timing is of paramount importance in all areas.

I mention timing so intently because the Counter-Grappling function in the game, derived of use of the right analog stick during grappling exchanges, relies explicitly on the timing of your input vs. your opponent’s attacks. It’s important to develop habits based timing your inputs to coincide with what you see your on-screen fighter doing in his animations.

Just as you watch your own fighter, watching your opponent once you’ve taken them to the floor is important, because you can be reversed from any position, and your opponent doesn’t want to be on his back. He’s trying to get up, or move to a better defensive position. Better yet, it’s also possible to submit someone from the bottom.

Counter-grappling is just as essential as keeping your finger on the block button while stalking and looking for a takedown, as once you’re on the ground your opponent is as capable of counter-grappling you as you are of pursuing him. Reversals come swiftly for the experienced, and for as crucial as timing is in this game, the value of developing good timing habits cannot be stated enough.

Establishing Position

On the occasions when I’d train at Ultimate HB in Huntington Beach and Fabiano Iha would show up to teach Jiu-Jitsu, I distinctly remember his tutoring on “position, position, position.” I can almost hear his voice now, as I recall such things. In this game, the important of position in Jiu-Jitsu, as well as wrestling, is translated well to the player through this game.

As both characters have a propensity towards one skill set, Chuck with his striking, and Shogun with his Jiu-Jitsu, Shogun’s got some signature Jiu-Jitsu transitions that work well. Using him as an example here will certainly be of relevance in your future play time with this game, as his characteristics as a fighter serve as a great launch pad for learning the grappling system.

It can be very tempting to try major transitions before attempting a minor transition, and often, this is wrong. A great example of this would be trying to major transition out of opponents for guard in regards to the opponents guard you first got a break the guard. You’re best going to accomplish that with use of the minor transition: pointing the right analog stick either up or down, then circling the joystick in a clockwise or counter-clockwise motion.

Once I've taken my opponent down, I land in my opponent’s full guard. The objective here is to get to side control, which you can go about doing two ways. You've got two options – a major transition to side control, which is harder to pull off but harder to counter, or a minor transition to half guard, which is a quicker and more subtle transition, although it will take more minor transitions up to accomplish what you would in one major transition.

A transition to full mount is a major transition from either half guard or side control, but it's good to develop the habit of alternating transitioning differently, especially when it pertains to competition against a live opponent. In essence, an opponent can easily counter your grappling moves by performing the opposite move of the one you are performing on their own right analog stick, but we’ll get to that in a minute.

With that in mind, be warned that an opponent can pick up on a repetitious pattern to some degree of effect, such as minor transitions or major transitions all tending to go either right or left, or a sequential pattern of transitions used in repetition throughout a fight.

The mount allows me to rain down heavy bombs upon my opposition without relent, damaging them whether they block or not, so I like to get there. Yes, that’s right… despite an opponent's best attempts to block any incoming shots while underneath a mounted opponent, the one dining on bombs still incurs damage. From the mount, you've got two different options for a submission, as well. It’s difficult to have your posture broken or be reversed once you establish the mount, it's easy to defend against any such attempt to dismount you, and any shot you throw that comes anywhere near landing will do some notion of damage.

Once you've landed the takedown, most likely, your opponent has you in his full guard, and your posture is broken (your opponent is pulling you down, “hugging” you)). From here, posturing up is a major transition, which can be pulled off to either the right or the left, either up or down.

Knowing when it's right to use a minor transition, and knowing when the timing is right to go for a major transition can be the difference between gaining or losing crucial position in a fight. In that sense, the replication of one essential element of MMA is authentic, as a split-second’s worth of action can change the course of a fight.

Minor transitions will always start at either the up or down position and will circle in a quarter-circle motion either clockwise or counterclockwise. Major transitions will always start at a diagonal position, and rotate either clockwise or counterclockwise half-circle motion, requiring more movement of the joystick to execute.

Anybody with the knowledge of the ground game as it pertains to MMA or Jiu-Jitsu will be able to figure the logic behind where a minor transition from, say, half guard to side control may logically apply. Likewise, differences between a major transition, such as one from side control to full mount, and a minor transition, like the advancement from full guard to half guard, should also be quite discernible.

The in-game tutorial describes Minor and Major Transitions: A transition is the movement from one ground position to another. Transitioning to better positions Is crucial to success.

Minor transitions have a greater chance of succeeding against your opponent’s defense, but result in a small improvement in position. Minor transitions are also easier for your opponent to reverse. Major transitions have a smaller chance of succeeding against your opponent’s defense, but result in a larger improvement in position and are harder for your opponent to reverse.

You may find yourself fending off an opponent that has sprawled on you after a failed takedown attempt. From here, it's good to get into the habit of mastering the timing of the minor transition to open guard, which will afford you the opportunity to set up some other minor transitions and either reverse your opponent, or stand the fight up altogether to set up for another takedown. With an opponent sprawled on top of you, shogun actually has a pretty sweet signature minor transition, where he pulls the opponent into his open guard, but also pulls their head down breaking their posture in transition.
From the open guard position, an opponent that's on top of engaging can be taken out of his rhythm via two successive major transitions. The first serves to break his posture, and the second kicks his legs out and creates space, allowing your fighter time to return to his feet.

If your opponent should start trying to pass out of guard to your half-guard or side-control, your options to stand-up come via two minor transitions with Shogun.

In our next piece (1 week away!), we’ll cover the submission game with more thorough detail, including counter-submissions and technical reversals, as well as other options for attacking a downed opponent.