What makes UFC fights so interesting is the variety of holds that a fighter can use to inflict intense pain on his opponent. Fighters who master a few of these holds get their opponents to submit or give up avoiding more pain and possible serious injury. Keep in mind that Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) is an extremely complex fighting discipline and each of these holds requires concentrated training in order to achieve mastery. The following holds are just a few from the numerous holds available.
The Guillotine Choke hold is used when an opponent exposes the head. When an opponent is forced into a takedown and puts his head outside of the body of the one taking him down, he is open to a guillotine choke hold. This is where pressure is applied with the forearm to create either an air choke or a blood choke. The air choke is named as such because it is a method to restrict air flow to the fighter and the blood choke is applied to restrict blood flow in an artery. To better understand how these techniques work you need to watch the mma videos on Youtube or other video sites.
Another popular choke is known as the rear naked choke. This choke hold gets its name more than likely from the Judo technique known as Hadakajime, which translates to English as “Naked Strangle”. The fighter forces his opponent to submit by cutting off the flow of blood to the brain. This is usually accomplished by the wrapping the arm around the opponent’s neck so that his throat is just inside his elbow. Through a combination of pulling against the throat, pressing out the chest, and anchoring the feet just inside the thighs, an opponent will more than likely submit or lose consciousness.
