Cody McKenzine’s Guillotine choke, the “McKenzietine”
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I’ve been watching The Ultimate Fighter on Spike and Cody McKenzine’s guillotine choke has been on my brain. Cody hits the choke with a different grip and elbow position; it’s made me curious to know more. Since Cody’s explanation of how he does the choke was two-seconds long, I’ve had to look elsewhere. Below, a video from Precision Martial Arts down in Texas, showing the basics of this variation.
The cool thing about this choke is that it just *hits* differently than a normal guillotine. The top pressure a guy uses to try to escape interacts differently with your grip, you can finish the choke from unusual angles, etc. One thing I like about it is that you don’t have to have the same hip control to tighten it.
As you can see on the left, Marc Stevens has passed Cody’s guard – and Cody has only partially kept Steven’s hips from swinging around by getting a hook on the outer leg (I think this is what’s called empty half guard). I’ve even seen guys tapped from clean side control, no hooks attached – although that’s uncommon. On the right, you can see how a lot of guillotine’s from the guard get finished; by compressing the choke-arm’s elbow towards your own hip.
Another detail – the position of the supporting arm in the choke is varied. On the right, you see how the elbow flares up and comes off the body while on the left (it’s sort of hidden) the supporting elbow can stay down and still provide leverage for the choke, as well as keeping the head caged up. From my experience, if the guy on the right sucked in his elbow towards his hips, it’d be easier to wriggle the head free.
I’ve heard some guys call this the prayer choke, palm to palm guillotine, or now – in Cody’s honor – some suggest we call it “the fisherman”. McKenzine has a nice body for the choke – long, thin arms ; slender core and slightly concaved chest. The Diaz brothers have such frames too.
As I’ve been playing around with it, the grip has intrigued me. Like Josh Koscheck points out, you’ve got to attack the grip to stop the choke, because hip position won’t necessarily do it.
Anywho, I’d like to know your thoughts and experiences – have you choked or been choked with this? How does it stack up to the regular guillotine? What name would you give this variation?
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