How Ridiculously good would Yoel Romero have been If he went into MMA right after the Olympics?

MescalineDreams

MescalineDreams

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He won a silver medal In the olympics In 2000 at 23 years old. It's kinda scary to think about how good this dude would've been If he went Into MMA right afterwards.

wonder if we'll start seeing more young olympians transition into MMA at an early age

guys with NCAA level wrestling have dominated the game for a long time but high level olympians are on a completely different level. Shit is gonna get real when they start flooding MMA en masse
 
He would be the mw goat at least. He's been doing this for such a short time at such an old age, and look what he's accomplished.
 
Yoel is such a freak of an athlete, it would of been pretty hard to deny greatness there.
 
MescalineDreams said:
He won a silver medal In the olympics In 2000 at 23 years old. It's kinda scary to think about how good this dude would've been If he went Into MMA right afterwards.

wonder if we'll start seeing more young olympians transition into MMA at an early age

guys with NCAA level wrestling have dominated the game for a long time but high level olympians are on a completely different level. Shit is gonna get real when they start flooding MMA en masse
Click to expand...
Depends... In 2000, right after the OG, he would have possibly signed with Pride...

Then...@openweight... who knows... Only for the braves...
 
MescalineDreams said:
He won a silver medal In the olympics In 2000 at 23 years old. It's kinda scary to think about how good this dude would've been If he went Into MMA right afterwards.

wonder if we'll start seeing more young olympians transition into MMA at an early age

guys with NCAA level wrestling have dominated the game for a long time but high level olympians are on a completely different level. Shit is gonna get real when they start flooding MMA en masse
Click to expand...

It’s really hard to say, that is basically what Randy did went from wrestling to mma, and he learned it while fighting. So he doesn’t have the best record. I think most of his early losses were subs.

Going right from one to the other , he may not have won right off. He’s a freak for sure, but needed time to learn other areas. I don’t know if he trained any other areas before. It would have been been nice to see how he would have done at a younger age, but grapplers do tend to be able to fight longer.
 
We'll never know.
 
He would probably be doing as well as he is now. He has flashes of greatness, but it's not constant. He needs a better ground game, and more than a few nitrous bursts to dominate a division. It's one thing to win the belt, it's another thing to hold it for a while.

Freak athletes don't seem to be the prototype for champions in MMA because they have to much physicality to fall back on.

It's like HW's with their shitty technique, grappling, and shallow gas tanks. They have power, and size, and so they tend to rely on that more than the things that make long standing, technically dominant champions. Fedor, Cain, and D.C. have been successful at HW, despite being undersized because size can be detrimental to the wide open technical options in MMA. You can take a guy down, and neutralize his size, or you can get under his guard with your speed, and the smaller gloves, and dominate.

MMA is a high IQ game. It's not about who's the best athlete. There's too many ways to stifle speed, and agility in MMA for it to be the dominating factor.

Physical advantages can be neutralized, unlike boxing where someone with superior physical advantages in the narrow range of just throwing punches above the waist, can use their natural attributes to dominate.

The modern HW's in boxing have been giants, and pose problems for more technical HW's who don't have that size, and reach to compensate for those natural gifts. It's not like that in MMA.
 
yeah we would all be like anderson who?

yoel would have had a stranglehold on middleweight for sure and would have wrekt all the pride and ufc lhws at the time too when they were premier divisions.
 
Also, the skills required to be champion in MMA are not relative to the gulf of talent between an Olympian, and a non Olympian. You don't have to be an OIympian level wrestler to have a better wrestling game for MMA than an Olympian.

What it might bring is just a more experienced competitor who is highly disciplined, and used to the rigors of high level competition. Beyond that, being an Olympian, technically speaking, is not going to necessarilygoing give you technical advantage.

Being an Olympian in MMA is great for your experience, but it's overrated.
 
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MescalineDreams said:
He won a silver medal In the olympics In 2000 at 23 years old. It's kinda scary to think about how good this dude would've been If he went Into MMA right afterwards.

wonder if we'll start seeing more young olympians transition into MMA at an early age

guys with NCAA level wrestling have dominated the game for a long time but high level olympians are on a completely different level. Shit is gonna get real when they start flooding MMA en masse
Click to expand...
I thought he was gonna take over till Frankie exposed his ass
 
Same goes for Cormier. How could would he have been if he started at 22 instead of 30?
 
itheuser said:
Also, the skills required to be champion in MMA are not relative to the gulf of talent between an Olympian, and a non Olympian. You don't have to be an OIympian level wrestler to have a better wrestling game for MMA than an Olympian.

What it might bring is just a more experienced competitor who is highly disciplined, and used to the rigors of high level competition. Beyond that, being an Olympian, technically speaking, is not going to necessarilygoing give you technical advantage.

Being an Olympian in MMA is great for your experience, but it's overrated.
Click to expand...











Just like with high level college wrestling being proven to be an excellent base for MMA, the exact same Is true for Olympic level wrestling except on an even higher level. They hold a certain mentality and discipline that can enable them to succeed In anything they put their mind towards.

That said, not everyone Is destined to be a fighter..but some are, as has been evidenced by the wrestlers we've already had dominating the sport for many years.

High llevel olympic caliber silver medalist / gold medalist wrestlers simply represent an even greater level of what has existed In MMA already for quite a long time. It's only a matter of time before they start migrating to MMA, Yoel was one of the first of his kind. Yet at only a fraction of his full potential, In old age, he's still one of the scariest middleweights on earth. That Is one example of how much potential high level olympians can have in MMA, If the correct mentality Is there.

Quite clearly, It is the tip of the iceberg.
 
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