Cummings: My leg lock game is a ‘scathing indictment’

‘New Zealand’ John Danaher black belt Eddie Cummings recently won $20,000 at the Eddie Bravo Invitational 4, beating four competitors in a row, all via Heel Hook. Cummings spoke with Luke Thomas for MMAFighting.com about the leg lock game.

Is Cummings’ success an indictment of the way BJJ has avoided leg locks?

I absolutely believe that 100%. I think the techniques that John Danaher taught me, in terms of leg locks – he was very frustrated with the state of leg locks in grappling for a very long time. I’m just very lucky he decided to open up and started teaching me and Garry [Tonon] the details of his game.

The general jiu-jitsu community just hasn’t accepted it yet or didn’t accept it at the time, but they’re starting to accept it now as we see the efficacy of the techniques.

It’s a scathing indictment on the way they’ve been training over the past decade or so.

Where can a world class competitor go to get better at leg locks?

John Danaher. That’s exactly it. There’s really nowhere else to go, I think, to get these sorts of deep insights into the leg locking game.

I think other people might be doing interesting stuff here and there. The Japanese leg lockers have always been really creative, but in terms of a controlling system that’s in line with the jiu-jitsu philosophy of controlling positions before you move to attack, I don’t think there’s anything else out there on this level at all, to be honest. I’ve studied every instructional, every tape. I’ve watched every leg locking grappler. I’m consistently watching tons and tons of tape. There’s just nothing close.

Are leg locks really new?

Most movements have been done before. Are we the first people to figure out that you twist a foot this way and the knee goes? No, I’m sure grappling’s been around forever and people have figured that out many, many times.

The real insights come in the subtle details of the modifications of the movements that make them more efficient. The set-ups, the way you control them, the way you integrate them into your game.

I think where Eddie Bravo, for instance, needs to be praised is not so much in inventing the wrestler’s guillotine, but figuring out a coherent system from the back using what he calls the ‘truck’, and figuring out that whole coherent game and the set-ups to position and how to control and hand fight in the position to get there. That’s where the insight is. That’s really where the technique is perfected.

I could put on one of the old Gokor instructionals and even in that instructional you’ll see every leg lock you can imagine, but the details are way off on a lot of them. The set-ups aren’t there, there’s no insight. He doesn’t say, ‘Look, here are the three or four key moves you should focus on for a coherent game.’ That’s really where the insight and innovation comes from. Not so much the vulgar technique itself, but the subtle details in how you set it up, how we control.

There’s still a lot to be done in the leg locking game. A lot of connections with leg locks, moving from upper and lower body submissions, moving from leg locks to upper body submissions. That’s a very unexplored area. There’s a lot to be gained there.

There’s a lot of very interesting things that are going to happen in the leg locking game, in particular. Plenty of room to evolve, in my opinion.

Are leg locks too dangerous?

The ‘dangers’ of them are being debunked as people train with them as they become more and more familiar with them, they realize they’re no more dangerous than an armbar or strangulation that we do. If they’re applied dangerously and without control or knowledge, yeah, they’re devastating and can hurt your training partner, but if you’re all aware of what’s going on, they’re no more dangerous than any other joint lock.

I don’t see the IBJJF changing their rules at any point to allow heel hooks. That would be admitting a large error and I don’t see large organizations doing that often. I don’t ever see them allowing heel hooks, necessarily. I think they should. I think most high-level black belts agree they should, but I don’t see them changing their rules.

What rules changes could be made to make grappling and BJJ more spectator friendly?

These open rule sets are certainly more exciting for these participants or if you’re training jiu-jitsu to watch and learn from. They’re more exciting even to lay people, but I ultimately think that trying to find a rule set that’s going to appeal to the average man is sort of a bit futile. It’s a complicated sport. There’s a lot of entanglements that are very detailed. If you’re not an educated fan, you won’t understand that.

I think you see that with the UFC a lot. People understand the striking a lot more than they understand the grappling. You’ll hear crowds periodically boo when the fight goes to the ground.

Are these rule formats good and in the right direction? Yeah. The Eddie Bravo rule format is terrific. I actually enjoy training for it. The overtime rules are bit controversial, but it’s the best overtime rule system I’ve seen so far in terms of allowing it to be decided by jiu-jitsu as opposed to wrestling or point fighting.

Is the level of leg locks in MMA getting better, worse, or staying the same?

You basically have three big-name leg lockers in mainstream MMA, not counting all the Japanese guys. You have Palhares, Marcin Held and Ian Entwhistle. Now that Palhares is banned and has his own issues, there’s just not a lot of people trying them in MMA. There’s not a lot of highly-skilled leg lockers in MMA yet.

I actually recently cornered a training partner in an MMA fight. He finished a beautiful inverted heel hook 30 seconds into his fight. I just think the level of technique is not there yet for people to be confident going for leg locks the way they are for triangles or armbars in MMA.

I also think the whole, ‘Two hands on his leg, he’s going to punch you in the face’, you know, if you try to punch a good leg locker in the face, it’s actually a lot harder. Go put boxing gloves on, have someone put you in an ashi garami position and just play with your base, try to hit him in the face. It’s hard.

I actually think the reason you don’t see more submissions in MMA, in general, is because of how MMA fighters train. As someone who has trained with gloves on a few times, being the submission guy on bottom is rough just in training. Like if we trained together in MMA and you’re on top of me – I’m playing closed guard – even if I catch you in a triangle, I probably ate a bunch of punches on the way there. Over the course of training everyday, ultimately I think people are conditioned to just play a safer game on bottom, not necessarily going for submissions because they’re eating punches all day if they do that. You’re going to eat a little bit here and there. I think it’s the same with leg locks. MMA fighters have a lot of things to concern themselves with. Leg locking is very intricate and time consuming to learn. That’s why I think you don’t see them doing anything else. You’re going to eat a lot in training if you’re going for submissions and on top of that, it’s just a very large barrier to entry to developing that skill to finish a leg lock.

Is Rousimar Palhares the best leg locker in MMA?

Yes.

Because he can finish those outside heel hooks very, very well. You see Held go for submissions. Held can finish leg locks, but he has some hard times with the guys willing to take pops and breaks. He has a hard time following through on those breaks. Palhares’ breaking mechanics are the best in MMA, by far. We’ve taken a lot of our game from his breaking mechanics.

In MMA, people aren’t going to tap. In the high levels of grappling, people aren’t going to tap. It’s just understood. If you don’t have the actual mechanical ability or intention to severely damage the leg, you’re not going to be able to finish people. Palhares has those breaking mechanics and you definitely need that. He has them more so than anyone else.

But yeah, he’s got other issues and his actual leg lock game isn’t as sophisticated as we initially thought after watching the Jake Shields fight. We trained with him a bit for the Palhares fight.

[Palhares] didn’t have the transitions. He didn’t have the entrances. He has a good finish, but if you challenge him on the transition after defending his initial attempts, he really doesn’t have good answers for that at all. He doesn’t have any answer whatsoever. And he has some core set-ups, but that’s all he has. He doesn’t have an understanding of how stuff works. With that Shields’ fight, he really showed us that.

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