Passing closed guard whilst protecting the face

The answer is to improve your standing passes, since they're the ones that generally work on decent opposition big and small.

Lots of times the actual attempt to reach face-wards would expose them to obvious counters, so I think you're setting an unreasonably high bar by avoiding positions where they might even attempt it. If I'm mounted low, an opponent could reach up and try to gouge my eyes. But if he did, I'd break his arm, so it's not a good reason to avoid low mount.

 

In MMA we use a good one. You pin your opponents wrist to his opposite hip, the other hand holds the elbow. From there, you can hit and elbow, and of course, standing pass.

 

Can I just ask, are you controlling the wrist/sleeve when rolling? Hannibal posted this great clip when I asked a not dissimilar question earlier this week:

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxLHBaDgyu0"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxLHBaDgyu0[/ame]

 

I'd say if you are controlling the legs that you shouldn't worry about upkicks and that most of the time punches arent a threat as its hard to generate power at the angle they'll be hitting from and from being on their back. Any extension of the hands toward the face can usually be delt with by either pressing the arm away with your own head or positioning the head to mitigate against it ie burying into the far side neck/shoulder space or transitioning through kesa, reverse kesa and side control options.

Generally if people are sticking their arms out you can catch a shoulder or arm lock such as a kimura or straight armbar.

Elbow strikes would be more of a concern and you'd have to just eat them until you've established position and can exact revenge IMO.

Perhaps if you told us exactly how you are passing and where you feel vulnerable people could give options?

 

How "outside the rules" are you looking at? I have a standing based pass that involves headbutts and nutshots that I teach in my Apprentice Instructor curriculum

 

Why am I not surprised?

 

I will film an example tonight....there may be an example online from Vu in the meantime so hang on a sec......

 

Nice one Dunc, yes it makes sense. I actually use both those passes myself.

Where is your head when you feel exposed?

Re elbows: I think the elbows come more into play as they are percussive blows and come in and out quickly and sharply where as anything that requires a grap or pull such as a gouge to the face allows for a tactile response.

 

Are you worried about the hand on the far side of him when settling into side control? Any attempt to reach for your face there should be met with an immediate Americana/paintbrush like in the
infamous John Marsh challenge match:
[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UW4vKszHhtY"]John vs. Kung Fu - YouTube[/ame]
Still not completely clear which passes you're going for after you've opened the guard?

 

The first one is completely fine, there's no way he can reach your face to do damage there in any way you can't take for the couple of seconds it's going to take to pass his guard. If you used double unders to get there, that might have been a bit unsafe.

The second one I would avoid, but more because of shots to the back of the head.

Not sure which hand you're worried about in the third one? The near hand is controlled by your body and any attempt to face-grab with the far hand is, as I said above, Americana bait.

P.S. I think you need to work this stuff live a bit rather than imagining where you might be vulnerable. Grabbing the face by reaching round and striking the ears are legal in MMA, so you should find someone willing to spar them with you.

 

Cannot find the clip...I will try and record one tonight

 

Ear slaps do suck, but you're overstressed about them here. There's no way he can possibly target you with any power and it's pretty unlikely he can even reach,

Yeah, I agree it's not a great position if striking is legal. Which kind of face grips are you worried about, though? Grabbing the chin is completely legal in all the grappling sports where you'll see that kind of position.

You scrunch your face for a moment and then Americana him. He'll trade a half-second eye gouge attempt for a broken arm.

Absolutely no way, you can trivially easily turn your head away even if he can reach and he's deepening your control on the arm leading to free GnP, near side armbars, neck cranks and sundry other unpleasantness.

 

I agree with the other comments so don't have too much to add other than to say: if you are keen to totally avoid those situations then I would recommend developing your half guard game from top. It's an excellent position for MMA in my opinion for controlling and GnPing from and also has a couple of very effective passes which leave almost zero potential opening for the sort of facegrabby slappy stuff you are fretting about.

I recommend developing half guard top control and practicing both the underhook knee slice pass and the far shoulder control pass (reverse kesa). If you can get someone to train with 7oz gloves too then even better!

Might slot into your game or might not (personally I live working from half guard in both nogi and MMA) but if not it'll still be a common position to find yourself in and you'll have potentially better/more fluent answers

Edit - obviously I mean you should seek half guard rather than the full pass. It's beyond easy to slot into half guard top once you have the guard open and one leg pinned to the mat.