So can Soccer Players make for good MMA fighters?

M

Mystic Mac Miller

Blue Belt
@Blue
Joined
Nov 16, 2022
Messages
552
Reaction score
714
Just came across this article to find that a lot of Brazilian UFC Fighters played World Football (Soccer as Americans call it) before joining the UFC. However, surprised to see that dudes like Kenny Florian and Conor McGregor played soccer as well.

I wonder if the balance, cardio, and footwork of soccer can transition over well into the Octagon compared to a lot of other sports out there, even the ones that get more physical. Your thoughts?

Oh and article in question

https://www.thesportster.com/ufc-fighters-played-soccer-before-mma/
 
Being athletically inclined in general is a pretty crucial aspect of being a fighter and all athletic endeavors have some amount of overlap or application. It really ends there, Jose Aldo didn't kick hard because of Soccer...the dude was a densely packed body if sinew and fast twitch muscle fibers.

All in all, guys are starting younger. If you look at fighters such as Cezary Oleksiejczuk he has a 14-4 amateur record and at like 22 is 10-2 pro, these Dagestanis are wrestling from 5 years old and cross over to Sambo, Judo, Sanda, Muay Thai etc as pre teens and begin their MMA careers as teenagers. Soccer isn't a good base for MMA, being freakishly athletic is and obviously having backgrounds in other martial arts and combatants is.
 
Nah bro true A level athletes only have one round of cardio and need to use an inhaler between rounds.

Good old Murrrican sportsball players are the only A level athletes and the only guys who can translate over to MMA and win belts with 3 months of padwork bro.

Whether it be the guys who put on padding to carry an egg past a line, or the guys who jump and put a ball in a hoop. No other athletes can compare bro.
 
It's like people saying shooting guns help you in MMA because Americans do so well at it (not hanging shit on those from the US for gun play here, hopefully you get my point)
 
I know this is purely anecdotal but at my last muay thai gym, one of the guys played high level soccer and was by far the hardest kicker for his size I've ever seen.
Kicking a soccer ball, twisting the hips into it translates well into a roundhouse.
 
I think a better way to ask that question is, "What skills and training from a soccer background can transfer over to an MMA toolkit?" That question can also be changed and explored for nearly every sport. My two cents, for what it's worth, is that simply the act of having a routine and cultivating the discipline to stick with a routine, being coached, learning to be coachable, and experiencing loss (whether it's losing a game or losing a match up inside of the game) are all useful skills that someone would learn in soccer that can transfer over to MMA. These are also all skills that you can learn in a number of other sports.

Of course, the more the venn diagram between the two sports can look like a circle, the better the pay off is likely to be, but I don't think there's such a thing as a total loss or starting from zero when crossing over.
 
Yes, you have already acknowledged some of the biggest reasons why.
Cardio
Dexterity
Body control
Footwork

If a good soccer player can get in some mitt work you've got scary striker on your hands
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Latest posts

Forum statistics

Threads
1,280,529
Messages
58,293,885
Members
175,997
Latest member
WingedC

Share this page

Back
Top