Look at the champs: striking is by far the most dominant discipline

[Grijswaarde]

UFC started out with a dominant grappler, then came the wrestlers who sort of neutralized BJJ, then came an era where striking and wrestling kinda took turns, but at this point, about 25 years after the first UFC, striking is without a doubt the most dominant discipline.

Except for Cormier basically all champions are strikers:

Miocic, Bisping, Woodley, McGregor, Garbrandt, Johnson (more hybrid than the others though), Nunes en Jedrzejczyk. Another striker will be added after Holms - de Randami have fought.

Fighters have almost perfected the TDD, almost perfected their BJJ and now are able to keep the fight standing most of the times. Even long time grapplers like Werdum are becoming more and more pure strikers in MMA.

So is this a coincidence? Or is striking turning out to be the most dominant form of fighting?

A lot has changed since this fight.

 

[zerofux]

There's a reason everyone is ducking Khabib, Maia, and Jacare though.

 

[Sjb1888]

It's true, and I'm glad, there was a time when the Wrestler/Boxer looked to be coming out on top and I was tiring of poor boxing mixed with point scoring takedown topped off with some positional lay and pray with the occasional obligatory (don't stand us up) gnp.

Good times ahead.

 

[Xenon_]

Interesting point. Perhaps Top 10 lists for each division would tell us more.

Seeing as striking is the most fun part of fighting, I'm happy with this being true haha

 

[TGArthur]

I remember on these forums 10 years ago, you would of never heard that about striking, and I was thoroughly under the impression that Takedown defense was some extremely difficult discipline because guys facing Hughes/GSP could not stuff a takedown to save their lives.

I definitely still think wrestling is the strongest discipline unless you have superior TDD and long range striking.

 

[OngBakBoy]

UFC started out with a dominant grappler, then came the wrestlers who sort of neutralized BJJ, then came an era where striking and wrestling kinda took turns, but at this point, about 25 years after the first UFC, striking is without a doubt the most dominant discipline.

Except for Cormier basically all champions are strikers:

Miocic, Bisping, Woodley, McGregor, Garbrandt, Johnson (more hybrid than the others though), Nunes en Jedrzejczyk. Another striker will be added after Holms - de Randami have fought.

Fighters have almost perfected the TDD, almost perfected their BJJ and now are able to keep the fight standing most of the times. Even long time grapplers like Werdum are becoming more and more pure strikers in MMA.

So is this a coincidence? Or is striking turning out to be the most dominant form of fighting?

A lot has changed since this fight.

woodley a striker? say what?

woodley is a wrestler. he is fast and explosive and thus can deliver powerful strikes, but woodley is not a striker.

 

[Brolypr]

No. MMA is cyclical in nature. its always been that way. Fighters tend to focus on one aspect of the game and neglect or dont focus so much in another. It is just imposible to be the best of the best in everything. A big group start getting good in strking.....so the rest must train to combat strikers..thus neglecting takedown defense......fast forwad a year or two and in comes a really good wrestler or two and starts taking these striking oriented fighters down at will and estabilishing dominance. And the cycle continues.

 

[StopDucking]

Cain is injured, Jones is still suspended, Khabib is ducked, Yoel vs Bisping hasn't happened yet = striking is dominant myth.

 

[Literally Bricked]

What if wrestling was the dominant martial art and that is the reason striking is so prevalent? To protect you from the real danger of BJJ/Judo.

 

[Levi_]

No. MMA is cyclical in nature. its always been that way. Fighters tend to focus on one aspect of the game and neglect or dont focus so much in another. It is just imposible to be the best of the best in everything. A big group start getting good in strking.....so the rest must train to combat strikers..thus neglecting takedown defense......fast forwad a year or two and in comes a really good wrestler or two and starts taking these striking oriented fighters down at will and estabilishing dominance. And the cycle continues.

That's part of it, but also at certain times there just happens to be fighters that are better at certain things. There are plenty of good grapplers right now, and plenty of them that can beat Bisping at MW, and likely some of those other champs too. The way championships have been changing hands, it's hard to take a snapshot of champions and really say it makes any strong reflections in terms of styles.

 

[welcometohavoc]

This type of thread is stupid because this question has been solved decades ago.

The only reason "strikers" like Bisping, Miocic, Aldo, Garbrandt etc are so good is because their wrestling and or BJJ is good as well.

Without those skills, guys like Bisping would get taken down (just like he has his entire career) by wrestlers (Chael, Hamill, Kennedy)

 

[BigMuffler]

Nunes is almost as much a grappler as striker, sure her striking is devastating but she beat Shevchenko and De Randamie with grappling, also took down Zingano and actually finished McMann and Tate with chokes - she is also a BJJ champion, she's a complete mixed martial artist.

Miocic is a wrestler and boxer equally, he beat Hunt and Overeem with wrestling and GnP, he beat Gonzaga with wrestling. He tried to use a lot of grappling on JDS but failed to do too much with it.

Johnson I don't even feel like going deeply into, he's as much as grappler as striker too, watch his last fight and his fight against Horiguchi for example.

Woodley is a wrestler who prefers to strike, but his takedown threat increases his striking's effectiveness by a lot.

DC... no need to elaborate.

There are fewer grappling purists succeeding yes, since most grapplers are developing good striking now too. The next evolution is probably specialists (of both kinds) being phased out more and more.

 

[ScarfaceJr]

TDD is the most important aspect of striking in mma