best wrestling team for mma

[tekkenfan]

wrestling like jiujitsu 70% goes out the window when punching happens in jiu jitsu you dint always have to sub or stay on top of a guy to win like the miyao bros for years going to 50 5 to get a sweep and usually winning on advantages ect wrestlers can win without even scoring takedowns some guys embrace getting taken down and scrambling funk style

for instance for mma guys from say a rafael mendes lineage prob isnt the best type of style for mma vs say carlson Gracie basics top pressure styled game

im curious in wrestling certain areas are bigger on certain things right? i noticed alot of guys in mma coming out of osu and missuri but not penn state which is the best atm or iowa is this just by chance or do you think different styles play a role into it

 

[yetanother]

> for instance for mma guys from say a rafael mendes lineage prob isnt the best type of style for mma vs say carlson Gracie basics top pressure styled game

Wrong.

 

[dsdoubled]

wrestling like jiujitsu 70% goes out the window when punching happens in jiu jitsu you dint always have to sub or stay on top of a guy to win like the miyao bros for years going to 50 5 to get a sweep and usually winning on advantages ect wrestlers can win without even scoring takedowns some guys embrace getting taken down and scrambling funk style

for instance for mma guys from say a rafael mendes lineage prob isnt the best type of style for mma vs say carlson Gracie basics top pressure styled game

im curious in wrestling certain areas are bigger on certain things right? i noticed alot of guys in mma coming out of osu and missuri but not penn state which is the best atm or iowa is this just by chance or do you think different styles play a role into it

"wrestlers can win without even scoring takedowns some guys embrace getting taken down and scrambling funk style"

Are you talking about wrestlers in MMA or sub grappling or are you talking about wrestlers in wrestling?

 

[dsdoubled]

As for wrestlers coming to MMA, I think it really just comes down to the individual and what other wrestlers that individual is friends with. Because while many OK State wrestlers have come to MMA (Hendricks, the Rosholt Bros, DC, King Mo, Mocco, etc) half of those guys tried for the Olympics first and at least that many OK State wrestlers stayed in and went for Olympic style wrestling. Point is, I don't think its the schools themselves that are funneling guys towards MMA. On the contrary, I know most College coaches would rather see their top guys stay in wrestling. Staying with OK State as an example, and going back to my original point, while its not the school or coach John Smith that is encouraging MMA, DC is still very much plugged into the wrestling community and he is encouraging guys to come to MMA bc they can make a shit ton of money. Its the same with most of the clusters of wrestlers from the same school that came to MMA.
-Dan Severn helped Don Frye get involved, both guys are from Arizona State.
-CB Dolloway, Ryan Bader, Cain Velasquez, Jesse Forbes, etc all wrestled at ASU together.
-Jay Hieron and Phil Baroni wrestled at Nassau CC and Hofstra together. Later on, Weidman, Gian Villante, Iaquinta, Chris Wade, Ryan LaFlare, also came through this pipeline.
-Mark Coleman, Mark Kerr, Kevin Randleman, Branden Lee Hinkle were all Ohio wrestlers who got involved in MMA together.

 

[dsdoubled]

i noticed alot of guys in mma coming out of osu and missuri but not penn state which is the best atm or iowa is this just by chance or do you think different styles play a role into it

Penn State has a few guys in MMA now.
Pat Cummins
Phil Davis
Ed Ruth
Eric Bradley
Bubba Jenkins wrestled for Penn State and ASU

Iowa has had only a couple I am aware of
Royce Alger fought in the 90s UFC
Paul Bradley was briefly on TUF and is doing well in Bellator

look at Edinboro
Shawn Bunch
Koscheck
Chris Honeycutt
Gregor Gilespie

Iowa State had
Kevin Jackson
Mike van Arsdale

 

[Uchi Mata]

> for instance for mma guys from say a rafael mendes lineage prob isnt the best type of style for mma vs say carlson Gracie basics top pressure styled game

Wrong.

I don't think that's wrong at all. A bottom oriented, sweeping style with lots of redirective leg work passing when on top (the basic Mendes no-gi game) is not optimal for MMA at all. If you're a good grappler you could certainly adapt, but having a pressure top game that keeps people down once they're on their backs is hugely important for BJJ in MMA.

 

[Uchi Mata]

I don't know that where you wrestled matters that much as there's typically a lot of diversity at any school (it's not like Penn State, for instance, has a set style everyone uses. Bo Nickal and Zain Retherford, for instance, are both successful wrestlers currently on the team who to my eye don't have a lot of stylistic similarity). However, I do think style matters a lot not so much for whether you'll be successful or not but rather how your wrestling will translate to your MMA game. If you're a guy with a really strong top game then a good strategy for you is probably going to be getting guys down however you can and then just riding and beating the snot out of them. If you liked to go upper body a lot, maybe you have a strong Greco background, then clinching and dirty boxing will probably be something you're good at. If you're someone like Yoel Romero coming from a freestyle background with relatively little experience in controlling people for long stretches on the mat, you might get a lot of mileage out of taking people down and then using the windows of time created as they get back to their feet to do damage (which Yoel does really, really well), rinse and repeat. If you were more of a defensive wrestler or had a good bottom game, you could concentrate on getting your striking sharp knowing that you can close distance and really commit to your punches without worrying overly much about getting taken down. If you were someone who set up your takedowns with a lot of in and out movement and fakes, that's pretty easy to translate into an in and out striking game where you can mix up your level changes with your boxing (this is pretty much all Frankie Edgar does when he's really on). So I don't know that where you wrestled matters all that much, but your style absolutely matters in how your game translates into MMA.

 

[dsdoubled]

I don't know that where you wrestled matters that much as there's typically a lot of diversity at any school (it's not like Penn State, for instance, has a set style everyone uses. Bo Nickal and Zain Retherford, for instance, are both successful wrestlers currently on the team who to my eye don't have a lot of stylistic similarity). However, I do think style matters a lot not so much for whether you'll be successful or not but rather how your wrestling will translate to your MMA game. If you're a guy with a really strong top game then a good strategy for you is probably going to be getting guys down however you can and then just riding and beating the snot out of them. If you liked to go upper body a lot, maybe you have a strong Greco background, then clinching and dirty boxing will probably be something you're good at. If you're someone like Yoel Romero coming from a freestyle background with relatively little experience in controlling people for long stretches on the mat, you might get a lot of mileage out of taking people down and then using the windows of time created as they get back to their feet to do damage (which Yoel does really, really well), rinse and repeat. If you were more of a defensive wrestler or had a good bottom game, you could concentrate on getting your striking sharp knowing that you can close distance and really commit to your punches without worrying overly much about getting taken down. If you were someone who set up your takedowns with a lot of in and out movement and fakes, that's pretty easy to translate into an in and out striking game where you can mix up your level changes with your boxing (this is pretty much all Frankie Edgar does when he's really on). So I don't know that where you wrestled matters all that much, but your style absolutely matters in how your game translates into MMA.

Great post and a discussion I find really interesting. One such subset of wrestlers I find really interesting to watch in MMA is Greco guys from outside the USA. Especially those from Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Estonia, Norway, and even France where their Greco is MUCH stronger and more prevalent then freestyle. Or any other Greco guys that haven't done freestyle/folkstyle in a very long time. If you look at these wrestlers in MMA, they (unsurprisingly) prefer to beat guys up in the clinch with strikes. It is a highly effective style, move forward, clinch, batter with punches, toss em to the ground if you sense trouble, let them up, repeat. Damian Janikowski, Mark Madsen, Amir Aliakbari, among others, are world class Greco guys coming up in MMA and they fight this way. Really interesting matchups will be these guys against freestylers who can attack the legs.

 

[tekkenfan]

"wrestlers can win without even scoring takedowns some guys embrace getting taken down and scrambling funk style"

Are you talking about wrestlers in MMA or sub grappling or are you talking about wrestlers in wrestling?

i meant in terms of wrestling they can win by not having to score a takedown


also i didnt mean that maybe some schools try to gear there guys towards mma i was curious if like bjj certain colleges obviously have different coaches who all have different ideas and strategies like maybe one coach is bigger on being aggressive dominating the takedowns and another coach is more funk oriented ben askren like i was curious if \

do coaches really matter that much in college of getting the guys more technical and better or is it like baseball that the guys are basically already super talented when they get there and coaches just keep them in shape

 

[dsdoubled]

i meant in terms of wrestling they can win by not having to score a takedown

How so? In NCAA wrestling the most you can get from riding your opponent is 1 point and getting taken down will cost you 2 points. In freestyle you can win with scoring minimal takedowns but you need to score at least 1 and then get to work with gutwrenches and such. You don't see hardly any escapes or reversals in freestyle. In NCAA wrestling riding s a good skill to have because you most likely scored a takedown (2 points) or reversal (1 point) to get dominant position and then by riding your opponent you prevent them from scoring but you cannot win matches only with riding skills.

 

[tekkenfan]

How so? In NCAA wrestling the most you can get from riding your opponent is 1 point and getting taken down will cost you 2 points. In freestyle you can win with scoring minimal takedowns but you need to score at least 1 and then get to work with gutwrenches and such. You don't see hardly any escapes or reversals in freestyle. In NCAA wrestling riding s a good skill to have because you most likely scored a takedown (2 points) or reversal (1 point) to get dominant position and then by riding your opponent you prevent them from scoring but you cannot win matches only with riding skills.

i meant freestyle due to tons of guys who went into mma who couldnt hardly take guys down or hold them down if they even got them down

man id be real interesting to see jordan b come over but i think hes a bit too old now hes 30 he said back then after 2016 he would try to go into mma but guess he still wants to wrestle think hes making alot of money still

 

[yetanother]

I don't think that's wrong at all. A bottom oriented, sweeping style with lots of redirective leg work passing when on top (the basic Mendes no-gi game) is not optimal for MMA at all. If you're a good grappler you could certainly adapt, but having a pressure top game that keeps people down once they're on their backs is hugely important for BJJ in MMA.

The Mendes brothers tripod pressure passing is a lot better then old school on your knees passing. Sure you have to adapt a lot of stuff but a least it offers you useful stuff while old school no-gi is simply obsolete crap.

 

[dsdoubled]

i meant freestyle due to tons of guys who went into mma who couldnt hardly take guys down or hold them down if they even got them down

man id be real interesting to see jordan b come over but i think hes a bit too old now hes 30 he said back then after 2016 he would try to go into mma but guess he still wants to wrestle think hes making alot of money still

Yea but that doesn't really hold up. You absolutely cannot win in wrestling without scoring takedowns.

Taking guys down and not being able to control them is another discussion. And honestly, I think its a bit overstated. How many guys/girls can you think of in MMA who are pure freestylers? Yoel Romero, Sarah McMann, some of the other Cubans and other international guys are about all there is. And then there's Khabib and Khabilov and those other guys who have all kinds of wrestling backgrounds but obviously no American folk style experience. They do however, have sambo and BJJ which would help with control. Even for pure freestylers, I think if you can gutwrench, leg lace, or gator roll a resisting world class opponent then you can probably hold them down as well. My point is, how many times can you think of off the top of your head where a good TD artist struggled to keep their opponent down?

I believe all wrestling styles will equip a fighter to hold down and control an opponent. If they fail to do that I don't blame the style of wrestling they came from, I blame their gameplan/execution or the escaping opponent being really good at it.

 

[dsdoubled]

i meant freestyle due to tons of guys who went into mma who couldnt hardly take guys down or hold them down if they even got them down

man id be real interesting to see jordan b come over but i think hes a bit too old now hes 30 he said back then after 2016 he would try to go into mma but guess he still wants to wrestle think hes making alot of money still

Yeah man, Burroughs would have been interesting but who knows, he may not have done as well as your average NCAA DI champ coming over to MMA. I think there is a point at which being any better at any given art is only going to be so valuable. In other words, Burroughs wrestling may be at 100 when all it would take to win fights with wrestling is a 55, or 70, or whatever. Burroughs is making really good money through wrestling and he doesn't really have a job per se. He gets to train and "coach" and do appearances while making great money. He actually ruled out an MMA career after the Chandler vs Alvarez rematch. He said the sport is too brutal and not for him.

 

[ArtemV]

Probably AKA or ATT.

 

[cjd]

I think it's more that certain places have established a bit of a pipeline into MMA (Oklahoma State), whereas other places pretty much everyone ends up going into coaching wrestling (Iowa for example). If more Iowa wrestlers had decided to go into MMA, I'm sure they would be doing as well (on average at least) as Missouri or whomever.

 

[tekkenfan]

Yea but that doesn't really hold up. You absolutely cannot win in wrestling without scoring takedowns.

Taking guys down and not being able to control them is another discussion. And honestly, I think its a bit overstated. How many guys/girls can you think of in MMA who are pure freestylers? Yoel Romero, Sarah McMann, some of the other Cubans and other international guys are about all there is. And then there's Khabib and Khabilov and those other guys who have all kinds of wrestling backgrounds but obviously no American folk style experience. They do however, have sambo and BJJ which would help with control. Even for pure freestylers, I think if you can gutwrench, leg lace, or gator roll a resisting world class opponent then you can probably hold them down as well. My point is, how many times can you think of off the top of your head where a good TD artist struggled to keep their opponent down?

I believe all wrestling styles will equip a fighter to hold down and control an opponent. If they fail to do that I don't blame the style of wrestling they came from, I blame their gameplan/execution or the escaping opponent being really good at it.

i coached in ireland back in 2012 so i got pretty familiar with the mma scene for cage contender cage warriors ect and there was a guy who fights today named ali arnish who was a very good free style wrestler and he gets like 6 takedowns a round but guys just keep getting back up and these are guys who train in england and ireland that dont have wrestling partners he was like 21-3 but hes been losing so much lately due to not being able to keep guys down when eh takes them down and he gasses

i think khabib learnt alot from dc or at aka notice after his second fight when he couldnt get a cage takedown he went to aka to learn how to wall wrestle probably learnt alot of pinning techniques from dc his style changed alot from when eh went to aka u can see in his breakdown videos they even say it

 

[tekkenfan]

Yeah man, Burroughs would have been interesting but who knows, he may not have done as well as your average NCAA DI champ coming over to MMA. I think there is a point at which being any better at any given art is only going to be so valuable. In other words, Burroughs wrestling may be at 100 when all it would take to win fights with wrestling is a 55, or 70, or whatever. Burroughs is making really good money through wrestling and he doesn't really have a job per se. He gets to train and "coach" and do appearances while making great money. He actually ruled out an MMA career after the Chandler vs Alvarez rematch. He said the sport is too brutal and not for him.

jordans style would translate over well i feel having that blast double and a solid single leg game hed fight at 155 as well if he were to god too bad we never got to see him or kurt angle fight

 

[dsdoubled]

i coached in ireland back in 2012 so i got pretty familiar with the mma scene for cage contender cage warriors ect and there was a guy who fights today named ali arnish who was a very good free style wrestler and he gets like 6 takedowns a round but guys just keep getting back up and these are guys who train in england and ireland that dont have wrestling partners he was like 21-3 but hes been losing so much lately due to not being able to keep guys down when eh takes them down and he gasses

i think khabib learnt alot from dc or at aka notice after his second fight when he couldnt get a cage takedown he went to aka to learn how to wall wrestle probably learnt alot of pinning techniques from dc his style changed alot from when eh went to aka u can see in his breakdown videos they even say it

Yeah I also think the unrestricted rule set of MMA helps fighters get up from on bottom, even against good wrestlers. Being an athletic, strong, fighter with good grappling and you can punch, elbow, and threaten subs from bottom is quite a lot of tools to have at your disposal.

I agree about Khabib and AKA. For so many wrestlers that enter MMA they become great MMA wrestlers at AKA. A guy like Arjan Bhullar comes to MMA as an Olympian from Canada but as far as MMA goes, I might put more stock into the fact that he is a great wrestler who spent time at AKA rather than a great wrestler who made the Olympics. Look what they did with Luke Rockhold, a decent High School wrestler.

 

[tekkenfan]

Yeah I also think the unrestricted rule set of MMA helps fighters get up from on bottom, even against good wrestlers. Being an athletic, strong, fighter with good grappling and you can punch, elbow, and threaten subs from bottom is quite a lot of tools to have at your disposal.

I agree about Khabib and AKA. For so many wrestlers that enter MMA they become great MMA wrestlers at AKA. A guy like Arjan Bhullar comes to MMA as an Olympian from Canada but as far as MMA goes, I might put more stock into the fact that he is a great wrestler who spent time at AKA rather than a great wrestler who made the Olympics. Look what they did with Luke Rockhold, a decent High School wrestler.

mma is weird too guys like jon jones wasnt a great college wrestler but in mma he takesdown almost everyone rockhold takes guys down when he wants to as well and they are both really long and tall for there divisions longer taller guys who know there wrestling seem to do very well in mma when they get there hands on guys