O'Malley has steadily increased the utility of his jab
As a sharpshooter, O'Malley needs a lot of space in the cage to be able to work his feints and darting combinations. As he has improved, he has learned to use his jab better to cover his lateral movement, back opponents up, and halt them in their tracks when they charge in at him.
Despite constantly looking for parries, Chito had no effective defense and no answers for O'Malley's jab. This allowed O'Malley to use his jab feints to set up more damaging offense.
Comments (2)
One of the big things I noticed when watching back his career was how much he’s been able to improve on and build off his jab, but this shows just how much he’s developed it around other elements of his game at a very high level as well. Great work as always Miguel!
Yeah I think those spots in the 4th round where Chito was able to run him into the fence show that some of those old habits are still there but his jab getting better has made it harder for people to force those mistakes out of him.