Asu Almabayev Became the 4th Person to Land a Suloev Stretch in UFC History

A Suloev Stretch in the UFC was like spotting a wild unicorn at your local grocery store. Technically possible. Extremely rare. The kind of thing that stopped you in your tracks because your brain hadn't fully processed what it was seeing.

Asu Almabayev landed one at UFC Baku on June 27, 2026, finishing Charles Johnson with a submission that maybe 50 people in professional MMA have ever attempted, and a fraction of those actually pulled off. The finish was technically beautiful, which meant the UFC commentary team struggled to explain what was happening in real-time. Normal service for grappling in the octagon.

What the hell is a Suloev Stretch?

Named after Russian grappler Anzor Suleimanov (the technique takes its name from a transliteration of his name), the Suloev Stretch was a submission that lived in the nightmare territory of leglocked grappling. It was a foot-lock variation that, if you didn't train specifically to defend it, would break your foot or ankle before you even felt the bad part coming.

Here was the basic setup: Your opponent was on their back. You controlled one of their legs—usually a leg that was already partially locked or defended. You dropped your chest across their leg in a specific way that, when combined with your grip and positioning, targeted their ankle and foot in a direction feet were not supposed to bend. The pressure was applied through your bodyweight on their leg combined with a grip that hyperextended the foot. It wasn't a heel hook. It wasn't a traditional straight ankle lock. It was distinct enough that people who studied foot-lock systems specifically trained to avoid it.

Most important part: if the person defending didn't recognize it early, they were getting tapped or injured. There was almost no middle ground. The stretch either succeeded or the defender felt it coming in time and scrambled out. And if you scrambled too late? Broken foot.

Why this mattered in UFC context

The UFC had spent 25+ years building a striking-heavy promotion. Grappling in the UFC was respected when it was exciting—flying submissions, quick back-takes, ground-and-pound—but technically deep foot-lock submissions existed in a weird gray zone. FloGrappling featured them. GrappleDB cataloged them. But they were rare in the UFC specifically because most UFC grapplers were wrestlers first, not foot-lock specialists. The striking-centric audience didn't understand them. They weren't "heroic" in the way a flashy arm-triangle or guillotine looked.

The Suloev Stretch, in particular, required years of specific training to land and master. You couldn't stumble into one. You couldn't improvise it. You had to know exactly what you were doing and have trained it specifically against people defending it. Which meant Almabayev trained specifically for this moment. Almabayev brought a technical tool to the UFC and executed it against an opponent who wasn't prepared for it.

That was the opposite of how the UFC usually worked. Most finishes happened because someone had a significant skill or strength advantage and used their dominant art. Watching someone win specifically because they trained a rare submission variation was like watching a master practitioner show up to a gym where most people trained the basics.

Almabayev's career arc

Before UFC Baku, Almabayev had been building a reputation as a technical grappler. His submission rate was high relative to his total finishes, which meant he wasn't relying on strength or size—he was using leverage and positioning. This was not how most UFC fighters operated. Most fighters had a signature submission (usually a choke), and they hit it over and over because it was high-percentage. Almabayev was showing up with depth.

The Suloev Stretch finish against Johnson demonstrated something specific: Almabayev had prepared for this particular opponent with particular techniques. He wasn't defaulting to what was high-percentage in the UFC. He was executing a technical answer to Johnson's game. This was the kind of preparation that separated grapplers with jiu-jitsu lineage from grapplers who picked up submissions as a secondary tool.

In most UFC camps, you got the fundamentals: arm-triangle, rear-naked choke, guillotine, armbar. The high-percentage submissions every grappler should know. Almabayev's camp went deeper. They identified that a Suloev Stretch could work against Johnson's defensive patterns, trained it specifically, and waited for the moment in the fight when they could set it up.

The finish itself

Almabayev controlled Johnson early, took him down, and positioned dominantly. But the path to the Suloev Stretch wasn't accidental—it was the result of Almabayev controlling Johnson's leg and setting up the specific angles needed for the technique. Johnson was on his back, Almabayev had the leg isolated, and when Johnson attempted to defend or escape, Almabayev dropped chest and applied the stretch. Johnson recognized the danger and tapped rather than risk a blown-out ankle.

That was textbook Suloev Stretch execution: dominant positioning, leg control, angle setup, and a finish that the defending fighter understood well enough to know when they were beaten. There was no mystery. There was no luck. There was a grappler executing a technical submission he trained specifically for this matchup.

What this said about grappling in modern MMA

The MMA community often debated whether "real jiu-jitsu" could happen in the UFC. The answer was yes, but it required grapplers who brought technical depth beyond what was immediately high-percentage in the octagon. Almabayev was one of those grapplers.

Compare this to the standard trajectory: grapplers came to the UFC, hit their bread-and-butter submission (usually a choke), developed a striking game to be more complete, and eventually retired as "a solid grappler with improving striking." Almabayev was bringing rare submission variations, which suggested a completely different training trajectory. His gym wasn't saying "make sure you know this in case it comes up." His gym was saying "we're training you this because we see it working against this opponent."

This mattered because it proved depth was possible in the UFC, but it was rare. Most fighters' camps were focused on covering enough in all three areas—striking, wrestling, BJJ—to be competitive. Almabayev's camp was willing to dedicate time to a specific submission variation because they had a plan for how to use it. That was the kind of technical depth the "real jiu-jitsu in MMA" discourse was actually asking for.

The snark

Here was what was funny about watching a Suloev Stretch in the UFC: it highlighted exactly how little most MMA fighters actually knew about submissions. Not as a knock—it was just reality. MMA grapplers were training a smaller subset of each discipline. But when you saw someone land a Suloev Stretch, you were watching someone who trained jiu-jitsu the way a jiu-jitsu person would train it. They didn't optimize for "most likely to finish in 30 seconds." They optimized for "most likely to finish this specific opponent."

That was the difference between training MMA and training jiu-jitsu with MMA applications. Almabayev was doing the latter. Most of the UFC roster was doing the former. The gap between those two things was what Almabayev just demonstrated on June 27.

Historical context

If Almabayev was indeed the 4th person to land a Suloev Stretch in UFC history, that number was staggering in what it revealed: in 25+ years of the promotion, fewer than five people had landed this specific submission in the octagon. Most of those were likely grapplers with significant jiu-jitsu background who specifically brought that depth. The rarity wasn't a flaw—it was proof the submission worked. If it didn't work, more people would attempt it. The fact that so few people had landed it meant the people who did land it knew exactly what they were doing.

The takeaway

Almabayev landed a Suloev Stretch in the UFC because he trained it specifically, understood the position technically, and had an opponent who wasn't prepared for it. That was exactly how technical grappling worked in high-level competition. It wasn't flashy. It didn't get the crowd on its feet. But it was what "actually knowing jiu-jitsu" looked like when it happened in the octagon.

UFC Baku got a reminder that grappling depth was possible. Most viewers probably didn't understand what they saw. That was fine. That just meant it was real.

This post was generated by AI. Sources are linked below. Follow @bjj-problems on YouTube for the weekly video digest.

Sources

• UFC Baku Results and Event Coverage
• Grappling Technique and Submission Database