Scouting Report: Marlon Vera
- Opponent
- Marlon Vera
- Level
- UFC
- Report date
- unknown
- Original
- download (md)
Marlon “Chito” Vera has been reviewed three separate times, so this report merges all three looks at him. That depth is its strength: the patterns below were not just seen across fights, several were confirmed across separate reviews years apart.
| Review | Fights watched |
|---|---|
| First | vs Silva de Andrade, vs Wuliji Buren, vs Lineker, vs Guangyou Ning, vs Grant |
| Second | vs Ewell, vs Song Yadong |
| Third (focused follow-up) | vs Cruz, vs Sandhagen, vs Munhoz |
The third review was a focused look at two tendencies requested by the corner: dropping his jab, and shelling up.
Stance & Movement
Switches stances frequently. When throwing his teep with the rear leg from orthodox, he will bring the leg down and stay in southpaw. He also switches while walking down opponents, changing angles.
He often favors hands high and open, gauging distance and protecting his head, but not protecting his body.
Moving backwards is where he looks least comfortable: he tends to retreat in a straight line. The first review caught him eating a left hook, straight right while being walked backwards.
When he is overwhelmed, he tends to escape to the left.
Lead hand habits
His lead hand is the most consistent read on him: it reaches, it paws, and after the jab it drops. Every one of the three reviews found it doing something exploitable. It reminds me slightly of Petr Yan, but more chaotic.
Reaching parries. He reaches when he parries instead of keeping the motion tight. Seen in the first review and still there two reviews later.
Lead hand pawing. He keeps his lead hand out a lot, reaching for the opponent’s lead hand.
Dropping his jab. He routinely drops the jab down after throwing it rather than bringing it back to his face. The focused review found it in all three fights examined (two clips are annotated to point it out).
Shelling up
When his opponent throws multiple strikes or a flurry, Chito shells up his guard and reacts in one of two ways: he either crashes forward into the attack, jamming it with his elbows and forearms, or shells and moves backwards. The jamming version first appeared in the Song Yadong fight; the second review noted it looked new at the time.
High guard, open body
The high, open guard shown in Stance & Movement has a cost: he favors blocking high and leaves his body open. The first review caught a spinning back kick finding exactly that opening.
Front teep
He really likes his front teep and throws it a lot. It also feeds his stance switching: the rear-leg teep from orthodox often lands him in southpaw, where he simply stays.
Other notes
Single-review observations without clips, kept for whatever they are worth:
- Likes to ramp things up in the last round.
- Throws a lot of left body kicks and left head kicks.
Notes and limitations
- This page merges three separate review notes written across different camps; the originals are preserved unedited in this report’s folder (first review, second, third).
- Review dates were not recorded in the originals; the fight lists above fix each review’s era.
- The shelling pattern has a known counter-example (Munhoz fight, noted above).