Are There Any Top Judo Fighters Today?

[JustOnce]

I recently discovered a Judo fighter at Invicta, Cindy Cinderella Dandois, she finished Jessmyn duke with a hip trhow followed by an unsual armbar.

Amanda Nunes used her judo skills to reverse a takedown attempt by Miesha

 

[victorious_ian]

Even though Mousasi is more recognized for his striking, his judo is pretty nasty too. As an Armenian, I think he has pretty close ties to Gokor and the guys in Glendale. There is a video of him grappling with (and toying with) big Ronda.

The problem is in how you define judoka, if you are only going to count people with pure judo backgrounds, meaning Olympic or other elite competition, you are going to have a very small sample size. Very few people in MMA outside of wrestling have "pure" backgrounds in a single discipline, and I'd argue that the only reason we still see it with wrestling is because wrestling has strong institutions at the collegiate level in north America.

Also, one-dimensional fighters rarely succeed. Big Ronda's dominance had everything to do with fighting in an incredibly shallow women's division. Do you remember the early days of the men's lighterweight divisions, when guys like Brian Bowles and Miguel Torres were on P4P lists because they had 30 fight win streaks compiled fighting against weekend warriors?

 

[Blayt7hh]

Of course, every bjj fighter owes a large part of their takedown game to Judo. Judo alone doesn't bring enough skills to mma though to be a good base to transition from

 

[BrazilianDude]

Akiyama and Lombard

 

[Conor McTap]

just fat honda but her jaw is still wired shut.