Glover Teixeira finishes Jan Blachowicz at UFC 267.
Considering that the sitting champion will be carrying a clear edge on the ground, winning the wrestling will be paramount for both parties.
Wrestling since he was a youngster in Brazil, Teixeira has always possessed underrated skills in this department, effortlessly chaining off from his favored home base of the single-leg position. Teixeira also displays solid layers of defensive grappling, either by stuffing initial shots or smartly re-wrestling his way back to his feet when taken down.
Even after being repeatedly rocked and dropped by Alexander Gustafsson and many others, the Brazilian was still able to immediately attack off his back and initiate intelligent scrambles that allowed him to get back into the fight. If Teixeira is able to gound or reverse his younger counterpart, then Prochazka will need to be on his best behavior – even if the champ is hurt.
Glover Teixeira turning partial losses of consciousness into dominant, fight-ending positions is one of my favorite MMA things: pic.twitter.com/4s2OhittgU
— Dan Tom (@DanTomMMA) March 4, 2021
The challenger is not a complete fish out of water when on the floor, but Prochazka has traditionally been either troubled or contained by superior ground fighters in the past, both in victory and defeat. In his defense, Prochazka has appeared to improve his counter wrestling in the forms of sharper sprawls and smarter positional floats as of late.
That said, Prochazka will still need to be careful whenever attempting explosive getups given his tendency to turtle to his base.
As we’ve seen in many of Teixeira’s fights before, the Brazilian can close the show if you turtle out or expose your back in transit. A fluent pressure passer and positional rider, Teixeira is a master chef when it comes to cooking his opposition underneath him.
Methodically (and brutally) using ground strikes, Teixeira adds fuel to the fire as he force-feeds his opponents into head-and-arm chokes if they turn into him, or rear-naked chokes if they turn away.
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