No Holds Barred Fighting: The Clinch - Mark Hatmaker

In this brutally practical entry from Mark Hatmaker’s long-running combat series, the clinch becomes less of a wrestling position and more of a pressure cooker where leverage, exhaustion, timing, and controlled violence all collide. Built around over 750 instructional photos, the book breaks down the dirty mechanics of close-range fighting: head control, off-balancing, underhooks, knee strikes, takedowns, escapes, and the constant chess match of positioning when opponents are chest-to-chest and breathing hard. Hatmaker approaches the clinch as the engine room of no-holds-barred combat, where fights are often won through attrition, pressure, and tiny positional advantages invisible to casual spectators.

What gives the book its edge is its stripped-down, no-theatrics approach. Rather than flashy knockout techniques, Hatmaker focuses on grinding efficiency, showing how fighters can smother attacks, create openings, and wear opponents down from one of the sport’s most physically punishing ranges. The dense photo sequences make it feel almost mechanical at times, like studying blueprints for controlled chaos, while the explanations carry the intensity of old-school fight gyms where repetition matters more than spectacle. Even outside MMA circles, the book captures an era when early mixed martial arts was still evolving in real time, with practitioners mapping out systems for positions many traditional martial arts barely addressed.