Innovation in the fight game

Ducking a superman punch to open the fight, Donald Cerrone grabbed at Conor McGregor, wrapping up the shorter striker's arms in a clinch.

The fight prior, Holly Holm leveraged the clinch dozens of times in a 15-minute contest on her way to a win against Raquel Pennington, illustrative of just how frequent this technique is. By tieing up all four arms the fight grinds to a halt. The fighters push and grind against one another, trying to establish an angle to strike while avoiding being taken to the ground.

But McGregor changed the sport of MMA last night in Las Vegas when, his arms tied up in a clinch, he crouched and launched himself shoulder-first into Cerrone's cheekbone. McGregor shouldered his opponent's face thrice more before Cerrone finally backed away. By then his nose was broken, and the fight was over 20 seconds later. Cerrone never landed one strike.

"I'd never seen anything like that before," Cerrone, a veteran of over 50 professional fights, said afterward. Joe Rogan, who sits cageside for nearly every UFC event, agreed.

Nobody had. Shoulders were irrelevant in the thousands of fights and perhaps millions of clinches prior. But this morning, fighters around the world began drilling shoulder strikes in the clinch, and we'll see more shoulder knockouts to come.

Innovation is obvious in hindsight. But every "industry standard" practice has a beginning, before which that practice seemed as weird as jump-punching someone with your shoulder. Or jumping up and throwing the ball down, rather than shooting it up into the hoop.

Someone always has to go first.