Isn't freestyle wrestling also better suited for MMA than greco roman wrestling?
Plus Cormier is also the much better striker, between the two.
That's a major point of debate in wrestling/MMA circles it seems. There are arguments in either direction, like freestyle wrestlers having a larger pool of techniques to draw on and being more accustomed to defending lower body attacks versus Greco guys being used to fighting out of a more natural upright posture akin to what one actually uses in MMA rather than the traditional hunched, hands-extended wrestling stance (and of course their mastery of the clinch).
What also has to be considered is where the wrestler comes from. It's entirely plausible to find someone with a Greco base who doesn't hail from a nation with a powerhouse wrestling circuit who would be largely ignorant of the lower body stuff as their time would have likely been entirely devoted to learning their sport alone as an Olympic discipline. Conversely, I personally feel that one of the "sweet spots" is a wrestler with an Olympic-caliber Greco-Roman game who previously came up being exposed to other styles of grappling. For instance, in the States a wrestler being GR only is all but unheard of. They generally come up learning folkstyle through middle school, high school, and college (which is far more like freestyle in its ruleset than Greco-Roman), often times competing in GR tournaments during the folkstyle off-season. If they were good enough in college and in said GR tournaments they might get a shot at the Olympic Trials. In the end you ultimately have a very well-rounded base for an MMA wrestler who's accustomed to both lower body attacks from years of folkstyle at the highest level and who likely has a dangerous clinch game and is accustomed to the upright posture while fighting/grappling.
This is actually how Randy's career happened: he was a standout in high school and applied for the Army's freestyle wrestling team. His paperwork got misfiled and he was placed in Greco-Roman tryouts and basically walked on with zero experience in that sport. His collegiate and Olympic wrestling career came after he got out of the military. And while he was ultimately known for his clinch work, body-lock takedowns, and dirty-boxing, he never forgot his roots. Every once in a blue moon he pulled out a high single-leg. Hell, he hit James Toney with an ankle pick that was downright
dirty.
And it's not just Americans, mind you. That was just a convenient example. A lot of Russian (or Russia-adjacent) Greco guys will have backgrounds in Sambo, Judo, Freestyle, Pankration, etc. to complement and round out their primary foundation. Movsar Evloev is a good example who's on fire right now.
I'm not saying that Greco is superior for MMA or even that I believe it is (in fact in a vacuum with no other styles to prop either up I think freestyle is probably the better base). We've seen tremendously successful guys with freestyle bases dominate. Cormier ragdolled guys from the clinch despite having minimal Greco experience. Khabib is one of if not the best MMA grappler(s) of all time. The list goes on. But just putting some food for thought out there as I think it's a more nuanced subject than it seems at first glance.
