Excellent fight breakdown of UFC 229 main event Khabib vs Conor by TheWeasle. In this video he goes frame by frame explaining the moves and tactics of the fight for both fighters.
Listening to this really in depth breakdown you can easily see how Khabib used different tactics to neutralize Conor’s threats and impose his will.
In the first round, TheWealse explains how Khabib started his game plan and get the range and the speed of Conor. How he defended some usual moves that Conor does, and how he used foot movement to escape cage traps. In second round Khabib drops Conor with right haymaker that was so fast that Conor did not even see it coming, because it was masked as a fake takedown.
From the other side, TheWeasle explain what Conor did good in his defending game, but also how his gameplan was set from beginning and how it was fading towards the end of the fight.
TheWeasle also talked about the mental games in the cage. Because that right hand which dropped Conor was not only heart him, but it forced Conor to change his gameplan. Until this point in fight Conor was focused only Khabib’s takedown but since this moment he need to be focused on his striking as well.
Talking in the cage is also something that affects the fighters, and both of them are known as a cage-shit-talkers but even this part of the fight goes to Khabib. There was not much talking until Khabib puts Conor on the back in a second round and he start talking to him. But surprisingly Conor did not talked much, which just tells that his mind was totally occupied with Khabib and the fact that he is losing fight and have no solution to it.
At the end of the round 3, Conor was saying something to Khabib and octagon mic catch the last words from the sentence: “… it is just business”. Soon as he heard that, Khabib put a smile on his face, because he knew that Conor is done. Conor usually does not talk like that to his opponents, because it sounded more like apology. And as the fighters walking out to their corners, Khabib said “Hey” to Conor and he turned his head to actually see what Khabib wants to say. Khabib said “let’s talk” and Conor turn his head back away from Khabib looking down. This was a big sign that Conor mentally is not in th fight anymore.
After the fight, Khabib lead by emotions jumped out of the cage and this was actually a proof that Conor’s trash talking and mental games before the fight had a lot of effect on Khabib. This was the biggest moment in Khabib carrier and biggest payday for him as well. And he made a really stupid mistake like that, he put a dark shade on his excellent performance and a win against huge opponent.