Knowing yourself is not enough. You can know yourself through and through, be ultra-fit, and still lose to an inferior opponent who springs one surprise attack on you. The hardest fight for me is one where I fight an opponent that I don’t know much about.
Every fighter that does not worry about his opponent’s strengths and knowledge enters the match at a serious disadvantage. I like to know who I am fighting and what they like to do. You should watch your opponent fight. In many tournaments, you don’t know who all the competitors will be until close to the event, but is you have the chance, you should try to watch them fight. I always try to watch my next opponent’s match. If I am in the quarterfinal and I advance, I try to watch the other quarterfinal and study the tendencies of the fighters I might face.
In the ADCC, for example. you only find out who the fighters are a few days before the event. And the brackets are set the night before the event. When I fought my first ADCC, I went in much more blind than I would have liked to–not only because I didn’t know all the fighters, but also because I hadn’t fought before under those rules and didn’t have a chance to develop a thorough fight strategy. I knew I was going to face the best there was from different disciplines in submission grappling. I knew these fighters would be as good or better than I was under these rules, so I trained specifically for those types of situations. I went in there to become a champion, but I didn’t know what to expect. Everything happened so fast and I was fortunate to win. But I went there with little knowledge about my opponents and without a set game plan.
I began to understand what was expected and what was important to be successful in submission grappling events. I started to organize myself and prepare a little more for that specific situation. No doubt my background gave me a roadmap to success: the first thing is not to get submitted; then organize yourself, posture,arms, elbows, and so on; then try to pass. One thing at a time. But there were people from different backgrounds launching attacks and reacting in ways that weren’t “normal” to me, so the fight was less predictable and the speed of action was a lot faster than in jiu-jitsu competitions.
If you can, get tapes of your opponent fighting. Study how he likes to pass the guard, what sweeps he prefers, what submission he likes to use. Also look for his weaknesses. What sweeps does he fall for? If he got submitted, what technique did he use? Did he fall for it because he was late or inattentive? If it was because he was late, what caused him to be late? Was it the move before? Or two moves before? Does he have a side he prefers to pass on? Or defend? Try to compile all that and have a mental picture of your opponent going into the fight.
These are the sorts of concerns that a champion has on his mind days, even months, before a fight. Becoming a champion is not for the half-hearted.
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