VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Coach Vince Salvador:
How’s it going? I’m Coach Vince. This is Jeff Creighton, one of the pro fighters here at the Arena. Today I have a clinch tip of the week.
Whenever I’m clinching, as basic as it gets, the first thing’s first is I need a grip. I can’t just grab him over the top or anything like that. He’s going to hit me. I don’t have anything to control him, so when I enter the clinch, I want to have a good grip and my favorite grip for being the shorter fighter is the head in the bicep. Going here is good if it’s Jeff. Jeff has full plum. It works really well. He can knee me up the middle, right? It’s a good strong position, but for me I would have to bring the crown of his head down and it’s going to be a lot harder. I would have a lot more strength because I’m a lot shorter and heavier, but it’s not something that I like to keep so I go right here.
The second thing is my hips. My cup is going to touch his cup. So if he tries to knee me now, not as much power, I’m leaning back. Easy knee, I go down.
Another thing too, a good way to block a knee is just to keep my knee up. So if he tries to throw knee and he can’t knee me. But if I’m here, even with the right knee he can’t really knee me, all right? So I can use that to keep his hips away and give him no space, no angle for the knee.
Another way for me to create the angle is if he’s standing straight up like we’re supposed to do to defend the knees, I can break him down with the grip and also with my leg. I can go to the inside of his thigh, break his waist down, turn my leg in to get a better angle at this and push him back so I can throw the knee to the body. And that’s a good way to create space. Hips in is the key. Hips away. You get kneed. That’s my tip I think.
