The Evolution of the Mount: Why the Position is Going to Change

The mount is probably the most static position in mixed martial arts. It’s rare to see a fighter move past a position he can hit hard from, and there’s no where you can hit harder from than the mount.

Every fighter in the sport is willing to admit that if you’re in the mount, you’re in about the best shape you can be. There’s no way that the judges are going to look the other way about a position like that, and the chances that the fight is even going to go to the judges are slim to none.

Fighters look for the mount to finish, but there’s a way that they finish way more than any other, and it’s something that’s strange, given the number of grapplers in MMA.

The viceral nature of the sport makes everyone feel like strikes are the be all and the end all, especially from a position where you have some much control over them. That’s why even the top Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu fighters don’t finish with submissions from the mount, even when an opponent throws their arms up to protect them from strikes.

The sport has come a long way from Rickson Gracie, and it seems that the sport has left behind that go to submission from the mount.

What you should watch for in the next few years is for that game to evolve, not because of the number Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu based fighters who have been taught to attack that way, but because of the only real exception to the rule, and the only situations where BJJ guys have resorted to it: fighting opponents with freakish strength.

It’s not that we’re going to see fighters start getting unmounted constantly by opponents with freakish strength. In fact, because of weight classes, that’ll probably never happen (though, there are bizarre exceptions like Sean Sherk where that might be possible). Still, it won’t become a staple in the game for that reason.

There’s been a long hard failure to adopt on the great dictums in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, in terms of mainstream MMA. Most fighters can’t escape from positions and, honestly, that’s going to be the next big change in MMA, out of necessity.

As soon as fighters start figuring out how to escape an opponent with a crazy, strike-based mount, you’re gonna start seeing that mount get more solid, get heavier and not behave so vicerally. Realistically, that’s where the armbars and keylocks off of that position come in. There’ll be strikes used to set it up, but that’s what they’ll be for, setups, just as they were when Rickson was fighting.

Using those strikes to create openings will be a serious development in the ground game, and while the grapplers in MMA are still behind the guys in submission grapping and BJJ, in terms of their actual ground game, that change will have a serious effect on the way that they play the game, and the respect they get from pure grapplers.

Whether you care about the respect MMA fighters get in the grappling world or not, the development is something you’ll see on every UFC card, and it’ll seep in smaller venues as those developments usually do, and it’ll change the way the position is played.