Russia vs. Brazil vs. United States - Which country has the best MMA fighters? (The Finals)

[SuperNerd]

U-S-A! U-S-A! #1!

 

[mister piscadinha]

Thats why i said it's about the pipeline. UFC belts have a very high turnover, you don't assess dominance by # of belt holders imo. Russia has high level contenders at 135, 145, 155, 170, 185, and 205. They used to have a couple at 125 (Askarov and Mokaev),..so there's literally only 1 division where they haven't made their presence felt (HW).

There was a time when Nigeria had 2 belt holders (Izzy and Kamaru), now they have zero belt holders. But Nigeria not only doesn't have beltholders they don't have anyone in the pipeline, so it was never a dominant region, just a flash in the pan. Same can be said for Georgia, this is their golden era, but where is the pipeline of Georgian killers in the UFC? It doesn't exist. And btw, you can't chalk it up to Georgia's size, Dagestan and Chechnya together have roughly the same population as Georgia. And pretty much all the Russian contenders are from Dagestan/Chechnya.

there are two russian contenders at HW, but your only counting dagis and chechis
going by that, listing only fighters with a chance of being champ:
there's one at LHW, one at MW, one at FW and one at BW
you see, people conflate the success of abdulmanap's team with all of dagestan/chechnya/russia
but thats really "just" a very good crop of fighters that train at a very good AMERICAN team

 

[Bend NvR Break]

Brazil. MMA is pretty much open to everyone. MMA in Brazil is like high school sports in the USA of my understanding is correct. There's a lot more opportunities for poor kids to get involved.
The USA is good but the amount of money it costs to eventually become a proficient MMA fighter is a lot and cuts a lot of people out the pool of talent just because of that. I wanted to do BJJ since 8th grade and my mom refused to sign me up for it even after my older cousin tried to talk to her about it. She just didn't have the money. And this was when training was $80 a month. So people who could be very good at MMA will never even get the opportunity to pursue it. MMA becomes a rich kid's club early on.
I've not naive about Russia. Russians have been in the UFC and Western MMA scene since practically the beginning. The truth is they just overwhelming lost more times than they won. They dagis coming over and competing isn't new. What's new is that they are actually winning.