If you have been paying attention the UFC has actively been avoiding signing dominant, but boring wrestlers for a couple years now. So this lack of American wrestlers has been kinda manufactured.
This, this, and this...
I agree in theory, but am not familiar enough with collegiate wrestlers (or Russians, I guess) to know if there are any out there who have entered MMA and are really dominating. That dude from Bellator that beat Lima is one who immediately comes to mind, he reminds me of a throwback style. This guy on the new season of TUF had some pretty decent credentials as far as I remember.
Are there many guys out there putting up impressive W/L records with a wrestling heavy base that the UFC aren't signing? I'd figure they'd eventually pursue them just on hype alone
Where to start right? Let's talk just about contender series guys who won their contender series fights.
Julius Anglickas, Sidney Outlaw, Austin Vanderford, Justin Gonzales, Danny Sabatello, kyle Driscoll, Nick Maximov also didn't make the cut and then got resigned later after the Nate Diaz fight, but really only because he's Diaz's protege. Collin Huckbody was signed but released without a fight.
There's Nick Browne the LFA Champion. James Nakashima was doing very well until the Abbasov fight where Abbasov was like 15 pounds heavier haha, One FC things. He was also a LFA champ fwiw. Alex Polizzi was another LFA champion, now signed to Bellator.
There are also fighters the UFC had and then decided not to challenge bids on, including Ryan Bader, Corey Anderson, Phil Davis, Jordan Johnson, etc. Basically the reverse Michael Chandler, who is also a wrestler.
This gets into dicier territory because now we're talking about fighters signed to other promotions who, there may be underlying contractual issues. Champions clauses, things like that. Nevertheless, I'll just throw some names out there. 2 time PFL champion Lance Palmer, PFL Champion Ray Cooper III, PFL champ Louis Taylor (I can kinda understand this one because he's like 40), in this year's PFL players there's Chris Wade, Bubba Jenkins. Also Tyler Diamond, the aforementioned Rosholt, David Michaud. On to bellator... Juan Archuleta was recently a champ. Darrion Caldwell also was recently a champ. There's Raufeon Stots. A lot of prospects now in Bellator's rankings. US Greco team member Chris Gonzalez. Cody Law. Logan Storley. Joey Davis. Kyle Crutchmer. John Salter, who will fight Mousasi for the title in a month. Johnny Eblen. Romero Cotton. Ed Ruth. Dalton Rosta. Taylor Johnson. Tyrell Fortune. Davion Franklin. Recent HW title contender Tim Johnson. One has a few like Troy Worthen and Joey Pierotti as well. Wrestlers need to stop going to One. Their weight cut and drug testing is a joke, and it naturally hurts wrestlers more than strikers to be at a big weight disadvantage.
That's only if we are talking American wrestlers. Wrestling isn't inherently American, I root for wrestlers everywhere. For Non-americans, particularly from russian wrestling and sambo backgrounds, there's Magomed Magomedkerimov, a PFL champ. Current Bellator Champ Valentin Moldavsky. Current Bellator Champ Yaroslav Amosov. Current Bellator Champ Vadim Nemkov (he prefers striking, his wrestling comes out in some fights but not all). The other Fedor Camp guy, Anatoly Tokov, who might soon contend for the belt as well. There's the prospect who beat current TUF contender Lachinov, Shamil Nikaev. The last fighter to beat Petr Yan, Magomed Magomedov. I will say that the UFC has been more receptive to wrestlers from EEU, probably some Khabib effect, but guys like Movsar Evloev or Shakvat Rahkmonov, Islam Makhachev, Arman Tsarukyan, Alexander Romanov, etc.
You can look at these names and say "oh well it's PFL, it's Bellator, UFC is the big leagues, they'd never stand a chance in the UFC." Well, firstly, I think Anthony Pettis is becoming more and more embarrassing. But the snark aside, look, Bellator is more developed today than Strikeforce was at its acquisition, PFL maybe not as much but getting there. Many strikeforce roster fighters went on to be UFC champs. Daniel Cormier held 2 titles. Tyron Woodley defended his title 3 times. Both college wrestlers. Luke Rockhold held a title, he was also a community college wrestler, albeit briefly. Yoel Romero contended for a title and would have won one absent missing weight, he also needs no introduction. Even Derek Brunson, has had some embarrassing losses but has slammed the door shut on 4 straight prospects the UFC was high on and is maybe 2 fights from a title fight. So is every guy I just listed above a UFC title contender? Probably not. But if the UFC pursued wrestlers in the way they pursue jack-of-all trades brawlers then the landscape of the UFC would be indisputably different.
Dana doesn't want wrestlers. He's made that abundantly clear and you know what, it's his decision to make. It's his promotion, he can do what he thinks is best. And honestly, like every time the fight goes to the ground for 30 seconds or in a clinch position you start to hear fans boo, so I'm not sure that he's even wrong about what fans want. But I think to use that to draw conclusions about the state of wrestling in MMA is pretty disingenuous. Dana's created this ecosystem where fighters like Kevin Holland can get to very high levels of the sport without having their massive wrestling flaws exposed. And for entertainment purposes, that's fine. But when we're discussing the state of the meta of MMA, if people think "oh people know how to stop wrestlers now" or even "the meta is constantly shifting" it's really not.
