Artur Kyshenko vs Alviar Lima: Finally!

This Kyshenko vs. Lima fight is one I have been waiting for since the first time I saw Alviar Lima fight. It doesn’t happen often but I had an immediate dislike for Lima; he just gets on my nerves. Before I go on, let’s make one thing perfectly clear: I respect every person who steps into the ring, cage or onto the mat to do any form of full-contact fighting. Regardless of how good or bad they are, regardless of their personality, it takes guts to do that. If you haven’t stood there, you can’t understand. But…

Alviar is just annoying as hell. He’s a one trick pony and has set himself up to always stay just below the top of the sport. Why? Basically, he smothers the other fighter. Take a look at this clip:

This is a typical Alviar fight; he smothers the other guy:

• He smothers his opponent by pushing and shoving him slightly whenever he can. Often, he does this with his punches
• He uses clinching not as much to throw techniques and do damage but to break the rhythm of the other fighter.
• He doesn’t deliver many clean, crisp techniques. It’s “punches in bunches” to coin a phrase. Loads and loads of techniques but nothing really all that impressive as far as power goes. I’ve yet to see him do a clean KO that didn’t result from a battle of attrition.
• He doesn’t bridge the gap well. Usually, he just steps forward with a closed guard to get into mid- or close-range and start working.
• He mainly uses broken rhythm combined with non-stop pressure. It makes for a very unorthodox and uncomfortable experience for his opponent.
• The one thing he does have is insane conditioning. He just keeps on going from start to finish. So a lot of respect for the training he puts in, not every fighter can say the same.

When you combine all the things I mentioned in the bullets above, you get a very specific fight strategy: Lima smothers his opponents by keeping the pressure on and never letting them get set to launch an offensive. He hits just hard enough that you can’t ignore his techniques and counter when you normally would. He also varies his targets well. It’s like fighting with a blanket wrapped around you: you can do it but it’s annoying.

I fought guys like Lima when I competed and they always managed to piss me off. Sure, they were working within the rules of the game so you can’t fault them on that. But you can’t do a good fight with them, it’s always (half) a brawl. You also don’t learn much from the experience and neither does the guy who fights that way. But the worst part is that you end up injuring yourself against those guys, simply because of how unorthodox they fight.

The main problem with this fighting style is its limitations: you can’t get to the top with it. The sub-top, yes. But once you go against somebody who’s spent a lot of time honing his skill in a regular, orthodox manner, you run into trouble. There’s a reason why most fighters use these regular techniques: they work best. Unorthodox techniques and strategies are “tricks” and tricks only work for a limited time and under specific conditions.

Granted, Lima makes the most of it but here’s what happens when he goes up against somebody who’s really good:

Artur Kyshenko is one of the rising starts in the K1 circuit and rightfully so. He has amazing speed, strikes hard and makes good combinations. I’m curious as to how he’ll mature but the potential is certainly there.

Back to the fight against Lima, look at how he schools him:

• In the first few seconds, Lima does his usual thing by trying to smother. Kyshenko closes his guard and counters with single techniques and immediately steps away at a slight angle. This makes it hard for Lima to keep waltzing forward because now he’s facing a guy who can actually fight as he retreats instead of enduring Alviar’s onslaught.
• Just as he’s about to get cornered, Artur comes back with a powerful and precise combination which puts Lima down. This is the first time I’ve seen Lima take punches of that caliber: explosive and precise. He doesn’t take them well…
• As of then, Lima is in unfamiliar territory: Kyshenko takes his time but everything he throws is hard and fast, while the targets vary. And he keeps using good footwork to stay out of range when he wants to.
• Lima automatically tries to step forward but because he doesn’t practice bridging the gap in an orthodox manner, he gets beaten to the punch almost every single time. Just watch his footwork and range; they’re both wrong.
• The same goes for countering. I’ve never seen Lima counter well (unloading from a closed guard isn’t countering) and his timing is way off when he tries it now.
• Kyshenko starts clubbing him, dropping bombs that rock Lima through his guard. Alivar doesn’t seem to know how to block or evade these kind of attacks. Probably because he never encounters them…

The point I’m making is this:

• Lima is 31 and started fighting in 1999. He won’t get much better than this.
• Kyshenko is 22 and started fighting in 2004. He will get much, much better than he is now.

Conclusion: choose your fighting style wisely. What works right now might not work in the long run.

Lima isn’t a bad fighter, not by any standard. But he chose a dead-end road as far as fighting strategy is concerned. Kyshenko isn’t the only one who can pull this off. At the top of the game, every fighter I know has the skill to handle a guy like Lima. Tricks and unorthodox fighting styles work, but they shouldn’t be your bread and butter. Lima is exceptional in how he managed to make his “trick” work for him. He exploited its potential to the max. But unfortunately, that potential is not as big as what orthodox fighting can offer.

Thanks to Nopstar for the find.

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