We all know to exceed in MMA you need a well rounded game, but I have always had the belief that the best base to build off was wrestling, it allows you to dictate the range a fight takes place at, if you want it standing you can keep it standing Ala chuck liddel, if you want it to go to the floor you can take it there, ala matt hughes, and the fact that the like of hughes, liddel, brock, randy all dominated in their time seemed to support this belief. But lately it seems the champions are coming from a different background, a lot of the guys coming out of brazil seem to be Thai and BJJ experts who only study wrestling in order to keep the fight standing 4 of the belt holders in the ufc now are Thai boxers who also have BJJ blackbelts or have won state championships but who seem to want to keep it standing and manage to do so without a vast background in pure wrestling, watching Barao and Aldo defend takedown after takedown with such ease, and watching Anderson in the second round simply shrug off Sonnens best attempts after nullifying all his attacks off his back for 5 minutes has made me wonder, maybe the brazilin camps have the right idea: get very good at stand up, and very good at ground work, and then add in takedown defence, it seems easier for them to do this than for a lot of pure wrestlers to become very comfortable with striking Of course three of the champions are still former college standout wrestlers but are the days of wrestlers dominating the top tire of the sport gone?
I wouldnt say so. In the end its down to each individual's ability to use the skills they learnt, rather than just the style itself. Its usual Wrestlers can dictate position but useless if dont know how to strile or submit. JiuJitsu good on the ground...if you can survive the striking to get it there. Strikers useless if you cant get off the ground (in a bad position). I'm more striker than wrestler but when I go up against my wrestling colleagues I do slightly better when we have an MMA session..only cos I know how to mix things. What is interesting though is to see those who come from nothing and straight into MMA. (John Hathaway -London Shoot). How will they fare against 'pure' stylists.
I might be inclined to say the tide is moving from BJJ... though there are a lot of BJJ blackbelts out there it does seem more of the case that people rely on standup and keeping the fight standing, which is where the wrestling comes in. Whilst 99.9% of fights go to the ground (according to the Gracies) sometimes the guy goes to the ground because he has been knocked clean out. Also - on the pure MMA front keep an eye on Rory MacDonald, set to face BJ Penn in UFC 152, a great young prospect.
I can see the logic here, but the fact it a lot of the stand-up artists are bjj black belts who prefer stand up like aldo, who are using their Thai skills with counter wrestling to keep it standing, and whereas before wrestlers would be able to take these guys down they are not, I wonder if it’s because of a change in the way they are training their takedown defences, or the fact we are simply seeing better athletes entering the cage whereas before the best athletes tended to be wrestlers and this is levelling the field
So my point is that people are improving their wrestling (call it counter wrestling if you must) so they don't need to go to ground and use BJJ. So wrestling is on the rise, BJJ on the decline in terms of key skills in MMA. If you can control the fight, you don't need the BJJ Blackbelt - which takes a long time to achieve and if you aren't getting much out of it then where is the value? Especially when most of the training is with the Gi. Look at Weidman as an example of this.
Evolution of the sport. . BJJ dominated early UFC because people weren't ready for groundfighting. Then came the wrestlers, who fared best against teh BJJ guys because they knew how to keep it standing or how to hold these guys down. Now we're seeing guys that can defend against the high level wrestlers and strike back instead. In time the wrestlers we see will also be better strikers, and so on and on. .
Yes but it was Mark Coleman who (in keeping with the title) turned the tide off the BJJ guys and showed Ground and Pound and how it could be done. Natural progression of the sport, we will see it seem to favour strikers, then grapplers etc..back and forth. 5years ago commentators and MMA fanboys alike were talking about how "TMA" would never work in the cage. We have since seen Lyoto's and Thompson's karate, the Showtime TKD Kick, Bendo's TKD, Aurelio's Caporeira kicks...just waiting on a KF guy to come in and rock the phoenix punch. Watch TUF3 finale during one match Joe Rogan was going on about how TKD is good but not for the cage...now its "TKD kicks are so weird it works"
Hmm, MMA. Where the people who can apply what they choose to learn the best tend to win, regardless of what it is.
I think wrestling and grappling are just being used in a different way and incorporated in a different way. Also a fighter like Jose Aldo or Fedor at his peak have a mindset to just beat the hell out of the guy in front of them, not caring how and not messing about and slowing it down to play a game on the ground or get pulled into playing a slow game on the ground.They dont give anyone time to do it They will take a submission if its available but mainly want to knock people out. Or theres even half and half, where you get a sub hold and strike at the same time. Catch what you can AND continuosly wack them with what ever part you have free on whatever part is available. Its an agressive attacking mindset. Wrestling and elements of BJJ are definitly needed and they are in the make up of fighters like Jose Aldo ,which tacticaly combined with his standup means he can keep its standing and seem to do it easily. Its subtle as to how grappling is helping,when he is striking. I think that the argument of how MMA can be incorporated and used for SD is being answered by guys like Aldo ,as he needs his grappling skills to do what he does but he strikes and wins more by striking. But only because he has those grappling skills ingrained in his make up.
