Fight Archives: David Gardner earns new nickname versus Shinya Aoki

One of the first lessons they teach in week one of grappling class is that back control is a position of death. That earns you four points if you get it in a tournament, but as the person on the receiving end, don’t look forward to a nice time.

Naturally, you’d expect a 26-fight veteran like David Gardner to have this concept hardwired in his system. But for some reason, he abandoned all of that when he fought Shinya Aoki at Dream 7 in Saitama, Japan in 2009.

You’ve probably seen clips of that fabled moment. Aoki had Gardner’s back, and all that’s left for him to do was to get that forearm under the chin. To his credit, Gardner was doing OK for himself with the hand fighting... until he…