Eddie Bravo: "Dustin Hazelett's rubber guard best in UFC so far"

Eddie's post Taken from www.mixedmartialarts.com:

"So far we've only seen the rubber guard pop up here and there in the UFC, and only just a few fighters have gotten to the point where they can bring real heat with it. But there are quite a few UFC fighters in the process of developing their rubber guards. Frank Mir is deep in the process, as well as Roan Carneiro, Dante Rivera and soon to be UFC fighters Dan Hardy and Matt Horwich. The few who have brought heat like I mentioned earlier are Dean Lister, who used it to submit Alessio Sakara, Jason Day used it beautifully with striking against Alan Belcher and now Dustin Hazelett just used it quite effectively in his fight with Josh Burkman, and I think, even though he didn't submit Josh with the rubber guard, he's the most fluid with it in the UFC so far. His mission control was tight as hell, which is where most fall short and the tightness of his clinch is the first sign that he's been using it for quite a while. And that oma plata, it was tight as hell and so close to ending the fight, it looked like Burkman might be double jointed. And the fact that he kept going back to mission control everytime he was put on his back tells me that he must be having alot of success with it in training. But that flying arm bar off the whizzar to end the fight was definitely the best part of the fight, check it..."

"The one correction I would make with Hazelett's rubber guard is the way he goes from new york to chill dog(clearing the neck).

He held onto his ankle when trying to clear the neck both times he worked the rg. It worked the first time because Burkman basically cleared his own neck for Hazelett and put himself into the jiu claw position by trying to posture up. But the second time he tried to clear the neck it didn't happen because Burkman stayed too close and tight to Hazelett's body.

The most effective way to clear the neck is to let go of your ankle, clear the neck, then re hook the ankle once the neck is cleared. Keeping your opponent at bay with your forearm on his neck is HUGE.

Look at the second time Hazelett got to new york and see what I mean.

Other than that, Hazelett's rg looked beautiful. Maybe now more and more fighters will start to believe in the rg so that we have less fights with boring g n p/lay n pray :)"