Khusein Khaliev: The Chechen Beyblade
Photo courtesy of Absolute Championship Akhmat
This breakdown stems from a larger dissection of ACA’s lightweight division.
The Caucasus region has such a rich history of grappling arts that it rarely produces pure strikers. Any fighter coming up in gyms around Dagestan, Chechnya, or Ossetia will be exposed to so many training partners with Judo, Wrestling, or Sambo backgrounds that he’ll be sure to pick up at the very least competent grappling. A large presence of Sambo in the region, an art that focuses on sprint grappling and transitions between striking and grappling, means that these fighters are often prepared to mix their striking and grappling on the fly, using one to set up the other.
Khusein Khaliev is exactly that type of striker. While there isn’t much information available on his history, his fighting style makes it clear that he has some sort of traditional martial arts background - perhaps Tae Kwon Do or Sanda. His A-game is flashy spinning attacks and various long-range kicks, but he looks just as comfortable tossing opponents in the clinch or riding like a freestyle wrestler.
Upon entering ACA after the ACB/WFCA merger, Khaliev was the WFCA Lightweight champion with a stellar record of 19-1. His only loss had come two years into his career, a close split decision to Yasubey Enomoto. He was immediately booked against Ali Bagov, a top 5 Lightweight and one of the scariest men in MMA, for a title unification fight. While Khaliev put up a good fight and was surprisingly competitive early, he was overwhelmed by the elite wrestler and submitted late in the fourth round with a kimura. Although his first fight in ACA ended in defeat, Khaliev has a bright future in the organization, especially with Bagov now moving up to Welterweight.
Striking
Khaliev’s striking style bears a lot of resemblance to that of Sambo fighters in MMA, who prefer to set a long distance and attack by covering it with explosive bursts. He maintains a long distance between himself and his opponent, filling the distance with kicks. Strong rear-side leg kicks and a dexterous lead leg allow him to out-fox opponents on the outside. His punching offense comes mainly in the form of explosive bursts, wherein he’ll leap forward and use his lead hand to set up his rear straight or overhand.
While explosive bursts of aggression leave fighters open to counters, Khaliev sets his up with active entry feints and rhythmic, bouncing footwork, making his blitzes less predictable by continually feeding his opponent false starts. He also anticipates counters and takes proactive defensive measures after he enters, such as dipping to his left or rolling to his right, or collapsing the space and entering the clinch.
Khaliev’s bouncy footwork allows him to condition opponents to expect a certain rhythm, before breaking it and quickly closing distance. He uses this bouncing to set up skip-up kicks with his lead leg.
His lead-leg kicks tend to be light, probing in-and-out kicks, allowing him to pick off opponents at distance while moving around them. His rear leg is used for power kicks, as he’ll regularly sit down on outside leg kicks and punt opponents out of stance. Occasionally he’ll switch to southpaw and throw a knee off his left side to much greater effect.
Khaliev will hide his stance switches inside his combinations, allowing him to step forward and get devastating power into the knees. Once of his most impressive wins came via leaping knee over talented journeyman wrestler, Shamil Zavurov.
Strikers in MMA often struggle to fight southpaws due to both the increased distance in an MMA fight, and a lack of familiarity with quality southpaw opponents. Styles built around blitzes tend to work quite well in open-stance (southpaw vs orthodox) matchups, however. Tyron Woodley famously made his hay alternately exploding into his right hand and luring opponents into it, primarily against southpaws. In open-stance matchups, the distance is lengthened, the jab hands line up which makes it more difficult to use it for probing setups, and the shoulders open up, creating a clearer path for the rear hand.
Open-stance matchups are no problem for Khaliev. Fighting a southpaw creates a lane for the open-side body kick, which he works actively with. Once he establishes the body kick, it’s easier for him to burst into his blitz, as opponents will anticipate a body shot on his forward step. The overhand right is his money punch, and southpaw opponents lack the natural protection of the shoulder on their left side.
No TMA-based skillset would be complete without spinning attacks, and when he’s not tossing guys from the clinch or leaping at them, he can usually be found twirling around while slamming limbs into people. Khaliev doesn’t just spin and hope for the best like many traditional martial artists seem to, however, but has a relatively comprehensive game built around his spinning attacks.
Khaliev employs consistent setups to land his spinning attacks. Here he throws a body jab while circling inside, before feinting a level change to disguise the spinning backfist. In the second sequence, he bounces in with an inside leg kick and shows an entry again, before stepping across and spinning.
He’s also cognizant of openings left by missed spinning attacks. When his opponent gives ground or circles off and makes his attack fall short, he’ll follow up and continue the combination instead of lingering. Here he follows a missed spinning backfist with a round kick, and prevents his opponent from capitalizing on a spinning back kick by slamming a backfist into his chin as he retreats. More rarely, Khaliev will even throw his spinning backfist as an intercepting counter to take advantage of an opponent’s aggression, although he lacks the intercepting back-kick employed by many fighters from TKD and Karate backgrounds.
Khaliev’s biggest weakness on the feet is his lack of nuanced boxing, both offensively and defensively. He fights in a very tense and rigid posture, which isn’t conducive to throwing layered combinations in the pocket or defending punches well in close. He has a jab, but it’s used mainly as a pot-shot on the outside or to set up his explosive blitz. Lacking a versatile jab means that he relies on blitzes to land his punches, and an opponent who can control the distance and deny those blitzes could frustrate his entries.
The other thing with relying on large, explosive movements to land punches is that it exposes one to counters. As a rule, small, short motions are quicker and more difficult to read in a vacuum, while explosive bursts give opponents more time to land precise counters. Closing distance quickly and aggressively - and often overextending - also means that if he is met with a simultaneous counter, his momentum will add to the impact.
So far, most of the counters opponents have been able to land have been as Khaliev exits range after his blitz. While he is conscious of counter opportunities and takes measures to mitigate them, his exits are often sloppy or delayed, leaving him vulnerable to counters. He can also be caught overextending on the right hand, as over-committed motions are often necessary because he needs to cover a large distance without allowing his opponent to give ground.
One thing that often troubles fighters from traditional backgrounds is ringcraft. The ability to maneuver and position yourself around the fighting surface is important in any fighting sport, but arts like Karate, TKD, and Sambo tend to have an open mat with resets when fighters go out of bounds. As such, these fighters are often unprepared for the hard surface of the cage, which stops their retreat and traps them in their opponent’s range.
Khaliev has good lateral movement in space - pivoting off his jab and setting up his kicks with circling footwork - but is not very conscious of his positioning in the cage. He lacks the ability to notice that his back is about to hit the cage and take immediate action to correct it, usually circling out with urgency only once he’s already on the cage.
A lack of conscious attention to his position in the cage means that opponents with intelligent pressure games can mitigate his distance-striking advantage and force him into exchanges by eating away at his space. As his game relies on keeping a buffer of distance between himself and his man, Khaliev is markedly less effective in exchanges than he is on the outside, .
Although none of Khaliev’s opponents have been able to beat him on the outside, the flaws in his cage positioning mean that there’s an opportunity for elite kickers or outside-boxers to draw him in and force him to chase his way onto counters. Khaliev tries to maneuver around his opponent rather than around the ring, so he will often chase if the distance is too far to cover it with a blitz, which may allow crafty opponents to successfully frustrate and counter his attacks.
Clinch Game
While Khaliev usually possesses a striking advantage, he is no less comfortable in grappling exchanges. He can win fights just as easily in the clinch and on top as he can at distance. He’s an active and willing grappler as well, taking down most of his opponents even while comfortably outstriking them.
Khaliev has a diverse repertoire of clinch throws. He hits throws off the whizzer and from the body lock regularly, and uses foot-sweeps to destabilize opponents and create openings for strikes.
Against the cage, Khaliev’s clinch game is relatively static, using control positions to hold opponents in place and setup throws. He is much more active in open-space however, using turns and transitions to set up his offense.
He controls his opponent with an underhook or collar tie, while using his other arm to keep their elbow away from their body, either with bicep control or an overhook. With their elbow not protecting the body or threatening offensively, he is free to throw a barrage of knees. Khaliev is constantly moving to create openings, using turns and foot-sweeps to break his opponent’s balance and set up further offense.
Grappling
Khaliev is a far better grappler than one would expect given his proficiency on the feet. He has a smothering top game and is more than competent off his back, able to keep himself safe and return to the feet against all but the most elite grapplers. He has great hips, whether using them for sweeps from the bottom or to float over the back as his opponent attempts to stand up. Khaliev is an excellent scrambler as well, using frenetic grappling exchanges to improve and solidify position.
His top game is a mashup of BJJ and wrestling tactics. He’ll generally attempt a BJJ-based passing progression, but once he’s passed the guard, he looks to enter the mounted crucifix and work with active, intelligent ground and pound. When opponents are able to find space and turn into him, he has a sound riding game and will control them from the quad pod, returning them to the mat when they try to stand and break grips.
Khaliev is a competent guard passer. Here he isolates his opponent’s right arm with his leg, before using punches to convince him to reach the left arm across his body. Once his opponent tries to turn into him, he isolates the left arm as well with a half nelson, using the nelson to put pressure on the head and flatten his opponent out. With both arms isolated and his positioning compromised, Khaliev can easily untangle his leg and pass to side control.
While Khaliev lacks advanced folkstlye riding tactics that we see from fighters like Khabib Nurmagomedov, he is a more than capable rider:
These clips show how intelligent Khaliev’s approach to grappling is. In each sequence, he controls the entry to his ride by manipulating his opponent’s positioning. In the first clip, he keeps pressure on the head as his opponent turns into him, keeping him off-balance and preventing him from building a base until Khaliev has established a strong riding position. In the second clip, he controls the wrist, preventing his opponent from getting an underhook or elevating his shoulder to begin escaping. Note also how Khaliev attacks the rear naked choke without having hooks, in order to initiate a scramble that allows him to consolidate position - another Khaliev staple.
Here’s a longer sequence showing Khaliev’s control and riding tactics. Note how he uses scrambles to initiate his own positional improvement while denying his opponents. Knee on belly is used to prompt his opponent to turn into him, before floating over to his back, and also to solidify position after his opponent turns out of a choke. His chokes are used to prompt scrambles and force his opponent to the mat. When his opponent attempts to turn into him with an underhook, he shuts it down with a half nelson or a whizzer, even stepping over the head from the whizzer later in the clip to take the back once again.
While Khaliev does his best work on top, he has a fundamentally sound and extremely functional bottom game, which is particularly useful for someone who does a lot of his work on the feet. Khaliev uses knee shield to create distance on the bottom and frustrate the top player while working back to his feet, and butterfly hooks to destabilize their base and threaten sweeps.
Khaliev uses his left leg as a knee shield to create distance and work back to his feet, as well as a butterfly hook to elevate his opponent’s hips and destabilize his base. Even when Bagov had him nearly flattened out in a smash pass, he was still able to rotate his hips just enough to leverage the hook and transition seamlessly into single-leg X-guard. The knee shield greatly aids survivability off his back too, as he can use it in half guard to keep the top player far away while controlling a wrist, removing his ability to land ground and pound.
He also threatens with slick submissions off his back. While fights are rarely won from the bottom in high level MMA nowadays, an active submission game is still useful to keep opponents honest and use the threat of those submissions to aid in returning to the feet.
Given Khaliev’s well-rounded skillset and his depth of skill in each phase, he’ll likely be a mainstay of ACA’s top 5 at Lightweight for some time.
Should he choose to defect to a promotion based in the western world, Khaliev will fit right in with the UFC Lightweight division. While he will likely struggle with dedicated specialists in any given area area like Khabib Nurmagomedov or Dustin Poirier, there are many winnable fights for him around the #5-10 slots like Donald Cerrone, Paul Felder, and Dan Hooker.
His well-rounded skillset means that he can mitigate disadvantages in a single phase, as he can mix his wrestling and striking together to prevent opponents from building momentum. He would be among the division’s better fighters in each individual phase as well, capable of competing with all but the most elite in pure striking or grappling engagements.
If Khaliev is signed by the UFC, my projection is that he would fall somewhere around the #7 spot at Lightweight.