Who all watched the last UFC? I hope everyone paid attention to the Rich Franklin fight because that should have been an eye opener as to how important it is to know how to fight from the tie-up/clinch/thai plum. If Rich would have known how to work from that position he may not have lost the fight and would probably still have a straight nose today. As a result of his lack of skill in the thai plum he now has a nose that looks like Owen Wilson and man did it make my nose hurt just looking at it. When you are in the Thai Plum with some one (when they have both hands on your neck and are holding you by controlling your head) you NEVER, NEVER want to keep both of your hands on the outside of there arms so you can try and punch! If you do you leave yourself open for some very dangerous and very powerful knees not to mention that your punches will not have a lot of power behind them because they will be mainly "arm" punches with little or no body movement behind them. The first thing you need to do when you find yourself in this position is to "swim" your arms inside in order to gain inside arm position and be able to defend against the knees. You also do not want to try and block the knees with your forearms because again you leave yourself open for other attacks. There are a couple of things you can do to prevent the knees that are very easy to do.

1) place both hands on your opponents hips as a way of controlling him. This way when he does throw a knee you can stop it by pushing back on his hips. It sounds cheesy but it works.

2) gain inside arm position and control the neck/head this way as he throws the knees you can turn your hips into the knees making them null and void. They will not land with any effectiveness.

3) as he throws his knees simply wipe them off by doing a parry motion with your hands. You will want to parry them from the inside to outside if possible by doing this you will open him up for some really good, powerful uppercuts to the body. You can also scoop his knees from the outside in by using your arm. If do this you will be able to lift and dump him.

I know the third one is easier said than done but if you practice you will be able to do all three of the above and survive the thai plum and possible the fight.

Would love to hear all of your thoughts on this as well.

Train Hard, Train Smart