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Firas Zahabi mentioned in one of his videos he wouldn't let his guys fight if they weren't at least a blue belt in bjj and have been wrestling with them for a couple of years. Not sure if one is secondary to the other, but without confidence in the ground, he reasons most of the striking is too tentative to be useful. He also mentions that longtime grapplers like Demain Maia who has been training striking for years still looks rigid and clunky because of the " locked up" nature of grappling. Whereas like in muay thai, we're constantly being told to relax. I think the majority of Top 15 in any weight class will be littered with wrestling and grappling base, but I believe the elite of the elite will more often be guys who possess more fluidity on the stand up. This transcends martial arts bases, and more on the individuals ability to train across the entire spectrum.
It's very hard to compare the efficacy of grappling vs. striking in MMA for many reasons, but one of the big ones is that elite strikers rarely go into MMA, or if they do it's near the end of their careers or just 1-2x as a money grab. We've had several Olympic medalists and tons D1 All American wrestlers go into MMA, it's about the only way they can make money off their combat sports expertise after college. How many Olympic boxers have we seen go into MMA? How many Lumpinee champions? When guys have made the transition in their primes like CroCop they generally become very top guys very fast.
As for grappling making you clunky though, I don't think that's true. Grappling isn't nearly as locked up as people think, good BJJ, wrestling, or Judo involves a lot of going back and forth between high tension and relaxation just like striking. You can't be fast on the mat if you're tense all the time, plus being tense all the time makes it very, very easy to misdirect you into a TD or sub. Not to even mention that no human being can sustain peak muscular tension for the length of a wrestling or BJJ match without gassing. I think guys like Demian Maia look clunky with their striking because they're not athletic in the way most good strikers are. Even on the mat Maia is not that fluid, he's just super technical and deceptively strong. I think when you get guys with more timing, flowy grappling styles who are also good athletes with good striking coaches they look pretty natural pretty fast, like Mendes and Dillashaw with Ludwig.