Why didn't early MMA wrestlers like Tank Abbott utilize G&P as effectively as Mark Coleman?

Believe it or not, Tank was one of just a few early fighters that had more than one skill- wrestling along with strikes.

The reason early fighters got submitted so much was that no one else knew how to defend submissions in those days. That was before cross training.
 
They did. You just chose Tank for some weird reason. Have you never seen Ken Shamrock beat up Christophe Leininger or Brian Johnston? How about Dan Severn brutalizing Oleg Taktarov? Or even Dave Beneteau annihilating Asbel Cancio and Todd Medina? Tank had a wrestling background, but he wasn't a wrestler, hence your weird mystification.
 
Bullitt68 said:
They did. You just chose Tank for some weird reason. Have you never seen Ken Shamrock beat up Christophe Leininger or Brian Johnston? How about Dan Severn brutalizing Oleg Taktarov? Or even Dave Beneteau annihilating Asbel Cancio? Tank had a wrestling background, but he wasn't a wrestler, hence your weird mystification.
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Severn was pretty clueless despite entering the UFC later.
 
shockwave kicker said:
Yeah but he was good.. better than people know. Tank had a knee injury his entire career.
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you're not saying anything new. tank was nowhere near the same level of wrestler as marc coleman. a junior college level wrestler is nowhere near the same what marc coleman accomplished. and there's your answer to the thread.
 
Killer Kadoogan said:
you're not saying anything new. tank was nowhere near the same level of wrestler as marc coleman. a junior college level wrestler is nowhere near the same what marc coleman accomplished. and there's your answer to the thread.
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It's not relevant when it comes to defending against subs.
 
shunyata said:
Tank was in love with his hands and didn't wrestle that much. Coleman and Kerr had better mma wrestling by far for the early days.
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Not really true. Of course Coleman and Kerr wrestled better; they were on the world team; elite wrestlers and NCAA champs. Tank dominated fighters that didn't have lot of wrestling on the ground; Severn was really the only one that dominated him in wrestling/control, and Severn was also on the world team.

Tank beat up a number of guys up on the ground if you have watched all his fights; he went down on top of most non-wrestling grapplers like Oleg.

Also worth mentioning you are talking the same era- Coleman started at UFC 8 and Tank at 6.

Tank was good at GNP for his day, he just knew nothing of submissions.
 
shockwave kicker said:
I've always wondered why early MMA wrestlers like Tank Abbott were at a such a disadvantage on the ground against jiujitsu despite cross training BJJ.. Wheras later ones made a living out of it.

Why couldn't the early wrestlers learn the pitfalls and use their G&P to the same extent at later fighters like Coleman?

Was that phase of MMA simply not developed enough? Or were they too lazy?
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Good BJJ guys had been doing that for a long time before it become more well known from UFC1.

Also, Tank compared to Coleman: Coleman got to Olympic trials & tank wasn't at that level. Tank done wrestling, played football & boxed, so didn't focus on wrestling as much as Mark. Also, Tank loved getting tanked at bars & fighting there, so rack of disipren, grasshopper :-)

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Jose Beehive said:
Maybe, Khabib was amazing at staying in control from a GnP position, but the damage he let off with his GnP was fairly meh compared to other fighters i've seen, visually anyway.
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The best measure is if they can get out of it. They couldn't with Khabib.
 
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