Since Canada is going to be a large part of discussions on worldwide MMA stars, especially in the wake of GSP's departure and questions on how exactly is gonna fill his shoes among Canadian MMA fighters. And so while I know that Canada is not really on world level in wrestling or Judo, in that they don't really produce guys in amateur wrestling or Judo who are at the level of the most successful competitors in other nations, I was wondering what combat sports do they have individual men and women who are at the same level as elite competitors of other nations. For example, in Muay Thai, kickboxing, boxing, international point karate [not counting American point karate of course],knockdown karate, Japanese or Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and ITW or WTK Tae Kwon Do, is there any combat sport where Canada produces individual fighters who are as good as the most elite fighters from Japan, Russia and Europe?
Canada usually does all right in wrestling at the Olympics. Was once a boxing power but that has long passed.
Well we consider hockey a combat sport. At the olympic level, we've medalled in TKD (yea, yea, I know), boxing, freestyle wresting (best ever in greco-roman is 4th though), and judo, but I wouldn't say we're a powerhouse in any of those.
I have a feeling you could find athletes in men's and women's hockey in Canada who could transition to MMA and be future champs. Not saying a lot of them could, but I definitely believe that among Canada's hockey athletes you surely could at least find a handful of men and women who could if you looked hard enough. Don't feel bad about the TKD thing either; that sport is not getting hated on quite as with Pettis, Bendo, the Korean Zombie and now Cruikshank having notable success in it.
I could be wrong, but I think they had some dominant champs in shiny pants kick-boxing (Full Contact) in the 80's.
Hockey enforcers who cannot quite make into the minors or NHL somewhere will take up MMA and we will finally see at least B or C-level athletes for once.
Dunno how much they are relevatn, but at the 2013 World Combat Games in Russia Canada had 3 bronze medals in Savate, a silver medal in Sambo, a silver medal in Wushu and a bronze medal in Muay Thai
That is all relevant. If they are genuinely very good and powerful athletes, then I personally think you never really know who could surprise us in MMA even coming from Wushu, Sambo or Savate. I think MMA is getting big enough that we could at the very least see enforcers from the minor leagues who fall just short of being able to make the NHL go into MMA.
For laughs though, here's Georges Laraque wrestling with GSP. He's 6'3" and at the time would have had to cut about 10 lbs to make HW. Obviously anyone who actually crossed over would train a bit more than Laraque did. [YT]nJQkxuvJVhQ[/YT]
