The reality is that it's not isolated in MMA though... & "the best base for MMA" is the question being asked.
When I said in isolation I meant putting pure wrestlers out of a college VS pure BJJ guys out of Brazil, make them fight and see who comes out victorious. I think we have enough data (outside of MMA), showing that the BJJ guy will get the submission. Again, to make it clear, this is not MMA fighters but pure practitioners in a fight. How many pure wrestlers have won ADCC?
A wrestler of 20 years+ can relatively quickly pick up what I call "anti-BJJ" & negate a high level BJJ guy. On the flip side though... a BJJ specialist of 20 years+ will still struggle against high level wrestlers in the same amount of time. Also, since the wrestler dictates where the fight takes place, he can just decide not to go down with the BJJ guy. IT'S HIS CHOICE and that's a powerful asset in MMA.
A quick look at today's environment where everyone has to know "Anti-BJJ" will show you that the BJJ specialists have fallen short when everything is mixed together, while wrestlers (specifically the "Collegiate" style) have dominated. Per this convo... that makes Collegiate wresting the better base... & shows that BJJ is just something you have to learn how to neutralize.
I have to disagree in part. MMA fighters don't just learn to negate BJJ, they add it to their repertoire of fighting skills. The way Khabib takes the back and chokes people, the kimuras, the triangles, ie., the finishes, all of these are techniques one learns in BJJ. What we see then is that if BJJ is missing, then the wrestler has a much lower chance of success in MMA, mainly defensively speaking. Wrestlers learn BJJ mainly to negate it but also as a useful addition to their fighting skills. So BJJ is a necessary as wrestling in MMA I would say.
To make a point that Woodley's wrestling had nothing to do with his successful outing vs. Maia is completely overlooking the fact that it's his wrestling that allowed Woodley to dictate where that fight would take place. Woodley's wrestling completely neutralized Maia's biggest strength.
I agree, wrestling allowed him to keep it standing, but merely keeping it standing is not enough, you need to score and he scored with strikes. Here we have an instance analogous to that of wrestlers learning BJJ to negate it. Strikers learn wrestling to negate it, but not necessarily to use it offensively. Wrestlers learn BJJ to negate it, but not necessarily to use it offensively. In Woodley VS Maia we see the use of anti wrestling. But the fight was won via striking. Wrestling gives you the control of where the fight goes, but so does BJJ. The threat of being submitted forces the best wrestlers to avoid using offensive wrestling.
Speaking further to the FACT that wrestling is a major factor in striking... look at how a power wrestler makes a dominant striker adjust his game when they know the wrestler actually wants a TD
The threat of TD is 100% a very important part of striking because it changes everything for the striker. Any pure boxer or kickboxer that gets into MMA can attest to that. They have to change their entire stance & that changes everything for them. Their whole game is different.
Now take a kickboxer who has made those changes. He does pretty well in MMA against average TD artists... but the adjustments in stance & technique have to go way deeper when he goes up against a real power wrestler. Someone who can seemingly take them down at will at any given moment. Now they can't be as aggressive with their striking unless they can manage to "fight long". They will want to keep a good distance & not work from the inside... etc... Do you see how wrestling impacts how a person strikes against the wrestler?
I agree, it does influence the way the striker behaves. A striker has to adapt to the strengths of his opponent, he will have to make adjustments to better defend against the wrestler's offence. The same could be said about a wrestler vs a high level BJJ guy. The wrestler will not use his wrestling offensively because of the threat of submissions and will be forced to keep it standing. If he decides to shoot he has to adapt to the guillotine threats and other submissions once they hit the ground. Even a boxer has to adapt when he fights a kickboxer. So we see strikers influenced by wrestlers and wrestlers influenced by BJJ guys and so on.
A top shelf power wrestler absolutely changes everything about the way their opponent strikes against them... & allows the wrestler more "liberties" in his stand up than his opponent has... & so it's not accurate to say that "striking is not a part of wrestling." In MMA, they are very much intertwined.
I agree, but so does a top shelf BJJ guy completely canel the wrestlers offence and forces him to become a striker. in MMA we see that wrestling, striking and submissions/grappling are intertwined and very difficult to isolate, so the question which is the best base is not a very good question and assumes that these a forms or distances can be issolated such that there is no influence of one on the other, which is clearly false.
When I said that striking is not part of wrestling I meant pure wrestling such as you find in colleges and so on.
