If grappler always beats a striker why bother with striking?

I always hear that a grappler always beats a stand up fighter. And from the MMA fights I have seen, it looks pretty easy for the grapplers to take the stand up guy down. What has puzzled me for a while is, why do these grapplers even bother learning stand up? I have heard of BJJ world champions competing in MMA and learning stand up. But what is the point in that? Would it not make sense to just train 100% BJJ and take them down and end the fight. Didn't that Gracie guy prove in the first couple UFCs that BJJ was the best when he was taking down all these stand up guys? So why did he learn some stand up for his fight against Matt Hughes? I really do not get it. You may be facing an MMA guy who has a bit of everything, but he can't use all these things simultaneously, he still starts the fight standing up, and you are better if it goes to the ground, so why not just take him down? I am not really an MMA fan to be honest, love boxing though, but this question keeps popping in to my head. Could someone please enlighten me.

 

Aaah, but things have changed now, in the UFC you are more likely to go up ANOTHER high level grappler, so it comes all the way back to "it's best to be a complete fighter".

Also, hit a black belt on the ground he turns into a brown belt, hit him again and he's purple.

 

You are right, we should all play ping pong instead!


Osu!

 

But if Tennis is faster, more explosive impact...why bother with Ping Pong at all?

 

"In ping pong, everything is on the table!"
~ Forrest Gump

Osu!

 

Grapplers don't always beat strikers.

As seen in the Early UFC.

Well trained and knowledgable grapplers beat naive strikers.

 

That's two threads now, what's your thing with strikers? We don't bite! In fact, Kino-Mutai is grappling, so it's THEM who're the biters

 

Also Hannibal is a biter, he said as much.

 

You got me all wrong. I hate grapplers (no offence). I used to be a little naive and think that a high-level boxer could go in mma and beat those guys with ease. I hate grappling (it is boring) but I am man enough to admit that is very effective and concede that a stand up fighter is going to have a hard time against a grappler.

 

Are you referring to me? If so, how can I be right when I asked a question. Surely you have to give an answer to be right. I was just stating my impression and hoped someone could answer this thing that has been nagging me for a while. Anyhow, the first poster answered the question for me, I think.

 

I have only seen a few of those early UFC fights, but was always of the impression the strikers struggled with the grapplers and Gracie came out on top, and sort of proved that BJJ was best.

 

Why does the OP say "Today" instead of "Late 1994"?

 

Huhm, in the ring, a pure grappler is likely to have a good time of it against a pure striker, but A: the ring isn't everything, and B: there AREN'T any pure fighters anymore, aside from those only competing within their discipline. Fighters with a stronger striking background have to learn some grappling to compete, and grapplers have to learn to strike. If you think a fighter could get by with nothing but grappling then find an example, stick him in the ring with Anderson Silva and see how long he lasts.

 

Royce Gracie was an excellent fighter, but he's one man, and one man is a pretty small sample group. By which I mean, that's a hell of a generalisation to get out of one man.

 

I agree but the early UFC picked out a certain kind of grappler vs a certain kind of striker

The Gracies style of BJJ was revolutionary, very few people knew how to deal with ground-fighting let alone with the strategies employed by the Gracie family. No one in the "stand up" world at the time consider ground-fighting a real threat, and very few of them were really aware of the complexity of ground fighting. Many didn't even recognise grappling as a form of martial art at all!

Stand up fighting however was well known, and there is no doubt that the grapplers who competed in the early MMA events knew how a boxer would attack or how a TKDer would attack. Generally speaking the "striking" strategy of fighting was much more famous and as a result a lot more predictable than the Gracie "get em on the floor" approach. Furthermore after that, the opponents complete ignorance of ground-fighting made them easy meat after the "takedown".

The Gracies dominated early MMA by A: Being fantastic, pragmatic martial artists. B: Fighting in an un-orthodox manner that took their opponents by surprise.


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Now however, people understand how to fight on the floor, as a result wins via submission are a lot less frequent. Now that the ground game in the UFC has improved, a form of balance is beginning to establish itself and it's not ruling striking out you'll be pleased to hear!


P.S. Grappling is awesome fun once you know how to "do it right".

 

It helps that most grappling arts include training and techniques with which to bring an opponent into a grappling situation and keep him there while most striking arts sort of assume things will stay standing up.

 

lol who said that?

no fighting style is utlimately superior, trust me, its probably because you do a striking sport, so you can only see the flaws in your own one.

I used to think the same, but i know there are just as many openings in a grappling art as there are in striking ones, and just as many advantages in each.

Best thing to do though, is to just train everything, or most things.

 

No offence but that whole sentence just sounded kind of gay. And no offence to anyone who is in to that sort of thing either.

 

I agree, however if I remember correctly when UFC first started out it was more of stlye against style matches, and it seemed that it was geared toward finding out what style was more effective. I don't think that was a fair assessment because it's not necessarily the style that wins matches it's more of the skill of the practitioner. So I don't think it's fair to assume that striking is inferior or superior or visa versa. The promoters have changed the focus to the fighters not the style as of late and that is probably what has led to UFC's continued success.