Best no-BS martial arts for real combat + solo training?

[Pixel--Dude]

When it comes to the domain of grappling I myself have a different philosophy from most Jiujitsu practitioners. It is one which places wrestling at the center.

I believe that ideally a prospective grappler should acquire a proficient level in wrestling (freestyle or folkstyle) first. This is extremely feasible in countries like the US where wrestling is widely taught and practiced as a competitive sport from elementary school all the way to NCAA level. Wrestling offers a better grappling base than merely Jiujitsu in my view. Not only is it the most practical and most effective art for takedowns, throws and takedown defense but it also teaches how to control an opponent on the ground with unbelievable pressure and efficiency and allows one to develop good habits for Jiujitsu such as a heavy top-game and explosive scrambles. It is thought that a college-level wrestler has a level of ground control comparable to that of a BJJ brown belt albeit without the submissions or submission defenses. Wrestling is undeniably an excellent base for both MMA and submission grappling.

A proficient wrestler can learn Jiujitsu and advance through the belt system extremely quickly. He already has a deep knowledge of grips, body control, pinning techniques (usually with ungodly degrees of pressure) and transitional agility as well as a takedown game far superior to almost any pure Jiujitsu competitor, above-average athleticism and mental fortitude. A good wrestler who transitions into BJJ is often able to advance through the ranks in a matter of months rather than the normal time duration of years between belt promotions. A proficient wrestler new to Jiujitsu will typically dominate the Jiujitsu blue belts and purple belts positionally but get tapped out frequently due to his lack of knowledge of submissions. But as soon as he learns the basics of submissions and submission defense as well as the guard and how to pass it, he becomes almost unstoppable. It is easy for a proficient wrestler to add the principles of Jiujitsu to his existing wrestling base. It's like learning Italian when you already know Spanish.

If you are already a proficient wrestler and use this bolt-on approach to Jiujitsu, you don't even need a really high level of Jiujitsu for your submission game to be effective. You already have your elite level of ground control and body positioning through your years of wrestling practice. With even a blue belt or purple belt level of bolt-on Jiujitsu you'll be wrecking many pure Jiujitsu guys (many Jiujitsu guys hate rolling with wrestlers for this very reason). Your solid wrestling fundamentals will make your intermediate Jiujitsu much more efficient. So why spend half a decade or longer just to get to purple belt in BJJ like most people do when instead you can spend a half a decade intensively learning wrestling and then learn Jiujitsu in no time and be a more complete grappler with knowledge of both stand-up and ground and arguably better fundamentals all round?

Let's be honest about Jiujitsu schools. Most of them offer training programs that are inefficient as hell. Sure, some schools have some good grapplers, but there's a reason why it takes years for most people to obtain the higher ranks or even just a blue belt. BJJ training is often lackadaisical, lacks a defined scientific syllabus, and doesn't emphasize drilling anywhere near as much as it should. People just walk into the gym, leisurely roll with their buddies, and chatter endlessly with their training partners during drilling after the instructor has shown a few isolated techniques, given the typical talk about "hips" and then told his students to go away and practice them. Many Jiujitsu gyms are more like glorified social clubs. I find Jiujitsu training extremely boring for all of the above despite being a Jiujitsu purple belt myself. Training at Jiujitsu gyms with a bunch of BJJ fanboys always did my head in. That's one of the reasons why I decided to move more towards the MMA side.

Wrestling is also better for street fighting than Jiujitsu. Stand-up grappling can be used to control a fight and neutralize the strengths of a striker. It can also be used to keep the fight standing (against a Jiujitsu guy) and allow a wrestler with some rudimentary brawling skills to keep the fight in striking range. Many throws from wrestling are also brutally devastating on the pavement and can end a fight in an instant. Sure, a Jiujitsu guy might get the wrestler onto the ground -- usually by pulling guard -- and have an opportunity to use an armlock or a chokehold on the wrestler. But that's where basic bolt-on Jiujitsu comes into play. A proficient wrestler with blue belt level Jiujitsu is a completely different animal.

Also, you don't need that much Jiujitsu for street fights. Blue belt level is going to be more than enough 99% of the time. Purple belt level and above is necessary only for Jiujitsu competition itself against other expert ground fighters or MMA competition which features the submission game and these days requires a fighter to be rounded in all areas of combat.

So, in conclusion, my philosophy of grappling emphasizes the benefits of wrestling as the base and then bolt-on Jiujitsu training once one is advanced in wrestling. This is the approach which I would have taken had I grown up in an area where wrestling is commonly taught and practiced. Unfortunately I grew up in a place with only Jiujitsu (and basic Jiujitsu at that) and so it wasn't until my mid to late 20s that I began to train in wrestling too.

Also, it is important to note that BBJ isn't the only art of submission grappling. There's also Catch wrestling-influenced no-gi submission grappling schools, the Brazilian rival system of Luta Livre which is also no-gi and involves takedowns and leglocks, and also Eddie Bravo's innovative no-gi 10th Planet Jiujitsu offshoot. Some of these might be better options than Jiujitsu for a wrestler interested in learning submission grappling.

Most people here probably don't give a shit about wrestling, Jiujitsu or combat sports. Maybe only @WilliamSmith and @Pixel--Dude who's trained Muay Thai with me will care about my post.

I agree with your philosophy, though my knowledge of MMA isn't as broad in scope as yours. I think a combination of Thai Boxing, Wrestling and Jiujitsu give a fighter a broad range of both offence and defence in a fight, particularly against an opponent who also has knowledge of martial arts.

@WilliamSmith Lucas88 and myself used to have a fight club where we would meet and spar with each other down the local park. Lucas88 was also going to teach me some of the fundamentals of wrestling and jujitsu to expand my repertoire of fighting skills. Unfortunately, since his kundalini incident we have been unable to continue our sparring, but I'd like to continue soon.

Where solo training is concerned I think Thai Boxing is okay to practice alone. It isn't possible to practice wrestling or jujitsu without a human crash dummy to perform the techniques on. Where one can condition their knuckles and wrists for heavy impact during a fight and even Thai kick walls and posts to condition their shins and make the impact of those Thai kicks more forceful.

Which martial artists in particular do you guys think have the best skill set and application of those skills in a competitive fight? What do you guys think of Conor McGregor and his deadly left hander?

[Lucas88]

Which martial artists in particular do you guys think have the best skill set and application of those skills in a competitive fight? What do you guys think of Conor McGregor and his deadly left hander?

I don't follow the UFC much anymore and so I'm not too up to date with who are the best fighters today or even who are the current champions. I can only comment on athletes who were active a few years ago back when I still watched UFC events on a semi-regular basis.

George St. Pierre was an excellent all-rounder. He had precise striking and was extremely elusive due to his Kyokushin Karate background, had an uncanny level of wrestling with perfect technique despite having never wrestled even in high school, and was an excellent Jiujitsu blackbelt. George also practiced gymnastics throughout his fight career. Some have speculated that it was his gymnastics training that allowed him to get so good at wrestling in such a short period of time. George is also a man of honor. To this day he carries himself like a true martial artist.

Khabib Nurmagomedov was an excellent exponent of wrestling in the octagon. He would use chain wrestling to perfection in order to get all of his opponents down to the ground and then just smother them with otherworldly levels of pressure and ground control in conjunction with brutal ground 'n' pound and a high-level submission game. He wrecked absolutely everyone including Connor McGregor and various other dangerous competitors. Nobody ever came close to giving him problems. He just walked through everyone taking very little damage in all of his fights. Khabib recently retired with a record of 29-0.

Conor McGregor was unstoppable for a long time but in recent years was exposed as a one-trick pony. He has that left hand with the touch of death but because it relies on fast-twitch muscle contraction he is unable to knock anybody out with it if the fight goes beyond the second round. Fatigue sets in and he is unable to generate the same degree of explosive power. Eventually some fighters caught on to his game and realized that tiring him out with wrestling for the first few rounds was the key to rendering his offense ineffective. That's exactly what Khabib did to Conor. He smothered him with wrestling for the first two rounds, beat an already fatigued Conor on the feet in the third round, and them tapped him out in the fourth round.

Ronda Rousey was also a one-trick pony like Conor. She had that famous Judo hip throw and armbar and put loads of bitches away with it but as soon as she faced women with solid takedown defense and expert-level striking such as Holy Holm and Amanda Nunes her one-trick strategy was neutralized and she got her ass kicked.

[Pixel--Dude]

Which martial artists in particular do you guys think have the best skill set and application of those skills in a competitive fight? What do you guys think of Conor McGregor and his deadly left hander?

I don't follow the UFC much anymore and so I'm not too up to date with who are the best fighters today or even who are the current champions. I can only comment on athletes who were active a few years ago back when I still watched UFC events on a semi-regular basis.

George St. Pierre was an excellent all-rounder. He had precise striking and was extremely elusive due to his Kyokushin Karate background, had an uncanny level of wrestling with perfect technique despite having never wrestled even in high school, and was an excellent Jiujitsu blackbelt. George also practiced gymnastics throughout his fight career. Some have speculated that it was his gymnastics training that allowed him to get so good at wrestling in such a short period of time. George is also a man of honor. To this day he carries himself like a true martial artist.

Khabib Nurmagomedov was an excellent exponent of wrestling in the octagon. He would use chain wrestling to perfection in order to get all of his opponents down to the ground and then just smother them with otherworldly levels of pressure and ground control in conjunction with brutal ground 'n' pound and a high-level submission game. He wrecked absolutely everyone including Connor McGregor and various other dangerous competitors. Nobody ever came close to giving him problems. He just walked through everyone taking very little damage in all of his fights. Khabib recently retired with a record of 29-0.

Conor McGregor was unstoppable for a long time but in recent years was exposed as a one-trick pony. He has that left hand with the touch of death but because it relies on fast-twitch muscle contraction he is unable to knock anybody out with it if the fight goes beyond the second round. Fatigue sets in and he is unable to generate the same degree of explosive power. Eventually some fighters caught on to his game and realized that tiring him out with wrestling for the first few rounds was the key to rendering his offense ineffective. That's exactly what Khabib did to Conor. He smothered him with wrestling for the first two rounds, beat an already fatigued Conor on the feet in the third round, and them tapped him out in the fourth round.

Ronda Rousey was also a one-trick pony like Conor. She had that famous Judo hip throw and armbar and put loads of bitches away with it but as soon as she faced women with solid takedown defense and expert-level striking such as Holy Holm and Amanda Nunes her one-trick strategy was neutralized and she got her ass kicked.

Khabib is indeed a good fighter. I remember watching him proper smash Conor McGregor and pretty much dominate the entire fight. Conor started incurring a lot more defeats since then, as it seems many fighters adopted Khabib's strategy of tiring McGregor out in the earlier rounds.

Remember my idea for a TV Show which featured Conor McGregor travelling the country and smacking people in the face for a grand per punch?

I used to really like Ronda Rousey, she really kicked ass in the early stages of her career, she was unbeatable. I was gutted when she got tanned by Holy Holm in that fight. Was it a title fight which Holy won?

Are there any martial arts styles you think are completely impractical?

[Lucas88]

Khabib is indeed a good fighter. I remember watching him proper smash Conor McGregor and pretty much dominate the entire fight. Conor started incurring a lot more defeats since then, as it seems many fighters adopted Khabib's strategy of tiring McGregor out in the earlier rounds.

Nobody replicated Khabib's strategy against Conor probably because Khabib's style of wrestling is unique and on another level. Conor actually had three more fights after his defeat to Khabib. He won the first one with strikes against Donald Cerrone but in his next fight against Dustin Poirier he was put down with a punch from Dustin on the feet. He also lost the rematch against Dustin through a doctor's stoppage. Conor just wasn't the same fighter after his ass whooping at the hands of Khabib and his reckless lifestyle did him no favors either.

I used to really like Ronda Rousey, she really kicked ass in the early stages of her career, she was unbeatable. I was gutted when she got tanned by Holy Holm in that fight. Was it a title fight which Holy won?

Ronda was good but she wasn't the best. She was the UFC's female superstar and so she was protected throughout much of her career. The UFC knew that Ronda's win streak was money and so they kept feeding her journeywomen while keeping legitimate competition away from her. They could only do this for so long though and as soon as the UFC women's division was flooded with some high-level new talents and Ronda was forced to fight those women she soon got dethroned. Yes, the fight against Holly Holm was for the title and she lost via a pretty nasty head kick which turned her lights out. Ronda then had one more fight in the UFC against Amanda Nunes and got her lights boxed out in about 40 something seconds. After that Ronda was done and she went to pro wrestling instead.

Are there any martial arts styles you think are completely impractical?

I'd say that most traditional martial arts have limited practicality and some are almost completely impractical.

Aikido comes to mind. It uses silly wrist manipulation techniques which are wholly impractical in a real fight for the most part and its training resembles a dance in which one's training partner complies 100% with the technique and just flips himself over. There's virtually no convincing video evidence that Aikido is effective in a real fight yet we can find tons of video evidence of arts like boxing, Muay Thai and MMA working on the streets.

[Cornfed]

It uses silly wrist manipulation techniques which are wholly impractical in a real fight

On the subject of wrist locks, prisoner restraint techniques in NZ seem to have gone over entirely to using wrist locks and it does seem to work if you are accustomed to laying hands on people on a day to day basis.

[Lucas88]

It uses silly wrist manipulation techniques which are wholly impractical in a real fight

On the subject of wrist locks, prisoner restraint techniques in NZ seem to have gone over entirely to using wrist locks and it does seem to work if you are accustomed to laying hands on people on a day to day basis.

Do you mean two-on-one restraint techniques involving wrist manipulation of the prisoner? Or do you mean wrist locks used in one-on-one combat? If in the latter context, do those techniques only work on untrained average joes or do they also work on trained martial artists? Do you have any video footage of the techniques which you're describing?

Some wrist manipulation techniques do have application in a real fight but they are generally low-percentage techniques since they are hard to pull off against a resisting opponent. The majority of those which Aikido teaches however are highly unpractical and training in that art doesn't prepare the student for the realities of combat. Aikido just isn't a good investment for self-defense or practical combat ability.

I personally think that a year of wrestling, six months of boxing and six months of Jiujitsu is a much better investment than any traditional martial art and is enough to beat 99% of people your own size in a real fight.

[WilliamSmith]

Which martial artists in particular do you guys think have the best skill set and application of those skills in a competitive fight? What do you guys think of Conor McGregor and his deadly left hander?

I don't follow the UFC much anymore and so I'm not too up to date with who are the best fighters today or even who are the current champions. I can only comment on athletes who were active a few years ago back when I still watched UFC events on a semi-regular basis.

George St. Pierre was an excellent all-rounder. He had precise striking and was extremely elusive due to his Kyokushin Karate background, had an uncanny level of wrestling with perfect technique despite having never wrestled even in high school, and was an excellent Jiujitsu blackbelt. George also practiced gymnastics throughout his fight career. Some have speculated that it was his gymnastics training that allowed him to get so good at wrestling in such a short period of time. George is also a man of honor. To this day he carries himself like a true martial artist.

Khabib Nurmagomedov was an excellent exponent of wrestling in the octagon. He would use chain wrestling to perfection in order to get all of his opponents down to the ground and then just smother them with otherworldly levels of pressure and ground control in conjunction with brutal ground 'n' pound and a high-level submission game. He wrecked absolutely everyone including Connor McGregor and various other dangerous competitors. Nobody ever came close to giving him problems. He just walked through everyone taking very little damage in all of his fights. Khabib recently retired with a record of 29-0.

Conor McGregor was unstoppable for a long time but in recent years was exposed as a one-trick pony. He has that left hand with the touch of death but because it relies on fast-twitch muscle contraction he is unable to knock anybody out with it if the fight goes beyond the second round. Fatigue sets in and he is unable to generate the same degree of explosive power. Eventually some fighters caught on to his game and realized that tiring him out with wrestling for the first few rounds was the key to rendering his offense ineffective. That's exactly what Khabib did to Conor. He smothered him with wrestling for the first two rounds, beat an already fatigued Conor on the feet in the third round, and them tapped him out in the fourth round.

Ronda Rousey was also a one-trick pony like Conor. She had that famous Judo hip throw and armbar and put loads of bitches away with it but as soon as she faced women with solid takedown defense and expert-level striking such as Holy Holm and Amanda Nunes her one-trick strategy was neutralized and she got her ass kicked.

@Pixel--Dude that's a great question, but unlike more experienced @Lucas88 I don't have as much actual competitive experience to be able to say about the best fighters.
But just for fun and by impulse, here are the names I would have thought of first from the old VHS collection of early UFCs as guys I wanted to look into more (so this also shows my age and retro sentiments):

The Predator Don Frye: I noticed he has an old VHS instructional tape set out there. I saw some on youtube but the channel was gone when I went back to post it.
I believe his background was boxing and wrestling like so many American tough guys (and I mean freestyle or Greco Roman wrestling, not just Vince McMahon styled WWF "professional wrestling," LOL), and then he added judo, kickboxing, and later ended up in MMA...

I think Mark the Hammer Coleman and the guys he trained (Kevin Randleman was one of them) also had a freestyle wrestling background and he actually coined the term "ground and pound by saying "I'm going to ground him and pound the goddamn shit out of him" before his fight with Maurice Smith back in the day. (I think that particular fight actually had a controversial Coleman loss to Smith by decision, but nonetheless.)

Bas Rutten has a lot of MMA and street fighting instructional DVDs.
He was a lot of fun to watch all around: I have a DVD set of his early Japanese Pancrase, fights as well as watching him in later competition.
While not the only one, he was also awesome for knowing the power of the liver shot!!

I believe he started with boxing as an elementary school kid, then his parents let him learn some Taekwondo but he got attacked by the worst local bully in his town and used his skills to KO the bully and break his nose with the first punch, after which his parents apparently banned him from any further martial arts until he moved out in his early 20's and started kickin' ass from then onward.

Then he started kickboxing and doing some pro fights I believe here and there, and eventually got picked up by Japanese talent scouts for Pancrase and he got very big in there.

There was also Ken Shamrock, and I believe he too had mostly a wrestling background before going more heavily into other MMA and he was involved in Pancrase even earlier than Bas Rutten... (I didn't actually remember they all had a wrestling background until this trip down memory lane and doing a quick search, but I think we're on pretty firm ground that wrestling is a pretty damn good foundation for grappling.)

I don't know anything about Conor Macgregor because I ran out of time to keep staying on top of the MMA scene back around maybe 2008ish and was only watching Pride at that point, but I posted a thread about my Wavemaster Century BOB where I found an amusing YT vid of Macgregor knocking over BOB, and an even funnier one of an MMA student actually getting KO'ed by the BOB while it was on the rebound from a previous student's attack :
viewtopic.php?f=27&t=44950

[WilliamSmith]

I had a hunch about wrestling being at least good enough for me to do it instead of BJJ (which I personally just don't like very much even though I'm not qualified to compare like you are), but that was really interesting, and I'm glad my hunch wasn't wrong about wrestling being good for street fighting. I like the point about wrestling being better for keeping guys who seem more reliant on takedowns standing up so you can keep smashing them rather than letting them get you on the ground.

It sounds like you already had more than just a hunch about the effectiveness of wrestling in street fights. It seems like you've witnessed it first hand seeing some of your friends with a base in wrestling whoop others in the streets with their skills. We were all brainwashed in the 80s and even in the 90s into believing that fighting was all about fast open-handed strikes, flashy spinning kicks and elusive martial mysticism by over-the-top American and Hongkongese movies about legendary Kung Fu and Karate fighters. As awesome as those movies were, they didn't reflect reality. Those who watched the early UFC events from 1993 onwards and became involved with the primitive MMA scene of that time understood that solid American wrestling in combination with some basic boxing and some rudimentary Jiujitsu/submission grappling was the best way to beat people in actual fights and trumped any traditional martial art most of the time. The formula has been known for a long time.

Your friend who did wrestling and then MMA sounds like he knows more about fighting than me as well as being a naturally tough guy. I'm an okay martial artist with a purple belt in Jiujitsu, some basic knowledge of wrestling and Muay Thai, and a few years of consistent MMA training, but I don't consider myself an expert or anything like that. I missed out on good wrestling instruction since I grew up in a country with almost no wrestling schools vs. the US where many schools and universities offer pretty serious wrestling programs (this is another reason why I'm resentful of having grown up in the UK in addition to its subpar culture and its lack of female quality), and my striking training has lacked consistency. I have formidable purple belt level Jiujitsu and have some funky moves but my passion for Jiujitsu has been in the gutter for a few years now and I have no desire to take it further. In fact since about 2017 I mostly did MMA grappling at our local MMA school before it shut down and only went to my BBJ school from time to time since by that point I already hated Jiujitsu training for the most part as well as the whole BJJ cultural scene.

My training's direction in the future will depend on where I go and what's available in whatever given location. Where I live now used to have a broad selection of martial arts schools including a pretty high-level MMA gym (with wrestling coaches and expert MMA instructors) and a boxing club but a lot of things shut down and now there's only a couple of kickboxing schools, a karate club and my old Jiujitsu gym which I don't really like anymore. If I go back to Spain there's my old wrestling club as well as some Muay Thai gyms. If I go to Latin America I'll have to find out what martial arts training is available in my city/location.

Yes, the "hunch" part was just because I couldn't personally say about the overall strengths of wrestling vs a known highly effective grappling art like BJJ, but when it comes to wrestlers vs just random thugs who might try to get violent for no good reason but lack formal training, the trained wrestlers are pretty likely to come out on top for sure.

A number of old friends of mine were pretty tough, including that one who also had some MMA training, but I'm going to need to find some new partners for wrestling since the one I mentioned who beat the bigger and stronger guy (also a testo-poisoned alpha male brawler with only wrestling as his background but much tougher than average guys) is too messed up, and my other friend who I've had a drunk freestyle contest or two in places like an athletic field where we were drinking beer at night on the way home from the laundromat, or the gravel driveway outside my old hole-in-the-wall apartment, gets WAY too emo if he loses, which is a major pain in the ass if you're actually trying to get better with training partners. When training, I'm also in it to win, but I don't get emo and start being a drama queen at training partners if they beat me. (Though the worst 'episodes' I'm thinking of all involved too much alcohol, he might not be quite as silly if we were training while sober, but think it might be wiser to find some training partners where there's a bit more basic mutual respect but not quite so much "sensitivity"...)

My comparatively better strength has been for striking over grappling, but when I learned some basic sprawls and beginner level wrestling techniques I improved quickly enough in the basics that I'm definitely going to go with that, unless something unexpected happened like finding specific training partners who already had their own highly effective training techniques they'd teach me. The stranger and more counter-intuitive training drills I sometimes saw in MMA training sessions like stuff involving those Filipino bamboo sticks, or the somewhat gymnastic approach in the BJJ training, probably had merits but I didn't enjoy it much, and I like everything so far in boxing, wrestling, and (with less knowledge) kickboxing and Muay Thai even though I still haven't got enough experience yet.
I also started making much better progress every time I'd be training freely with sparring partners with other guys, and don't think I have much special talent but was still even getting the better of some students with a year or two more xp than me in the striking when we were doing open sparring (though not, unfortunately in the grappling, where I still didn't know what I was doing at first so made a lot of silly mistakes initially, LOL).

[Lucas88]

@Pixel--Dude that's a great question, but unlike more experienced @Lucas88 I don't have as much actual competitive experience to be able to say about the best fighters.
But just for fun and by impulse, here are the names I would have thought of first from the old VHS collection of early UFCs as guys I wanted to look into more (so this also shows my age and retro sentiments):

The Predator Don Frye: I noticed he has an old VHS instructional tape set out there. I saw some on youtube but the channel was gone when I went back to post it.
I believe his background was boxing and wrestling like so many American tough guys (and I mean freestyle or Greco Roman wrestling, not just Vince McMahon styled WWF "professional wrestling," LOL), and then he added judo, kickboxing, and later ended up in MMA...

I think Mark the Hammer Coleman and the guys he trained (Kevin Randleman was one of them) also had a freestyle wrestling background and he actually coined the term "ground and pound by saying "I'm going to ground him and pound the goddamn shit out of him" before his fight with Maurice Smith back in the day. (I think that particular fight actually had a controversial Coleman loss to Smith by decision, but nonetheless.)

Bas Rutten has a lot of MMA and street fighting instructional DVDs.
He was a lot of fun to watch all around: I have a DVD set of his early Japanese Pancrase, fights as well as watching him in later competition.
While not the only one, he was also awesome for knowing the power of the liver shot!!

I believe he started with boxing as an elementary school kid, then his parents let him learn some Taekwondo but he got attacked by the worst local bully in his town and used his skills to KO the bully and break his nose with the first punch, after which his parents apparently banned him from any further martial arts until he moved out in his early 20's and started kickin' ass from then onward.

Then he started kickboxing and doing some pro fights I believe here and there, and eventually got picked up by Japanese talent scouts for Pancrase and he got very big in there.

There was also Ken Shamrock, and I believe he too had mostly a wrestling background before going more heavily into other MMA and he was involved in Pancrase even earlier than Bas Rutten... (I didn't actually remember they all had a wrestling background until this trip down memory lane and doing a quick search, but I think we're on pretty firm ground that wrestling is a pretty damn good foundation for grappling.)

I don't know anything about Conor Macgregor because I ran out of time to keep staying on top of the MMA scene back around maybe 2008ish and was only watching Pride at that point, but I posted a thread about my Wavemaster Century BOB where I found an amusing YT vid of Macgregor knocking over BOB, and an even funnier one of an MMA student actually getting KO'ed by the BOB while it was on the rebound from a previous student's attack :
viewtopic.php?f=27&t=44950

I am also a fan of the old-school UFC events from the 90s and downloaded the first 25 events or so and watched through them all. I enjoyed the original style vs. style dynamic. I found it an interesting exercise to observe how each style squared up against the others and how MMA evolved in its early days.

I like a lot of the fighters who you mentioned. Mark Coleman was one of the first guys to combine wrestling with vicious brawling and ground 'n' pound. Ken Shamrock was also a pioneer who combined wrestling and basic submissions. Shamrock actually used the G 'n' P strategy even before Coleman and used it to expose Royce Gracie during their rematch at UFC 5. Bas Rutten was the UFC's first well-rounded deadly striker with his kickboxing and karate background but, let's be honest, he got mauled by the wrestler Kevin Randleman in his debut and shouldn't have been declared the winner. Those guys' fight was another example of how wrestling can be used to neutralize a high-level striker.

There were also many other great fighters who were less famous and also some rare gems who weren't given much exposure in the UFC. Oleg Taktarov always stood out to me as a good all-rounder who used his Sambo and developed submission game as well as his superior conditioning and old-school Russian mindset to take out a variety of opponents who were after much bigger than him. Marco Ruas only made a few appearances in the UFC but he was another well-rounded fighter with expert-level submissions and leglocks due to his Luta Livre background. Marco would have kicked Royce's ass. Royce was kept away from most of the expert killers. It's clear that he was protected.

That brings me to another point. The earliest UFCs were a farce to promote Jiujitsu. Royce was expected to win from the beginning. They handpicked his opponents so that he would come out on top. As soon as more of the expert killers came to the UFC Royce bowed out of the competition. But the goal of creating a certain mystique surrounding Jiujitsu was already complete. The Gracies had set the foundations for a very lucrative business endeavor.

If we analyze the evolution of the MMA prototype since UFC 1 in 1993, we can identify an interesting pattern. Jiujitsu fighters such as Royce dominated the fight landscape in the first few years when the strikers had no idea about takedown defense and the wrestlers had little knowledge of submissions but once the veteran wrestlers began to add some basic Jiujitsu skills and striking to their game Jiujitsu was nowhere near as dominant as it has initially been and wrestling was shown to be an invaluable component of fighting. After the hype surrounding Jiujitsu had died down it was the wrestlers who came to dominate the fight landscape. Of course, much further evolution would also take place throughout the next decades and now in modern MMA expertise in all areas of fighting is necessary in order to compete at the elite level.

[galii]

@Pixel--Dude that's a great question, but unlike more experienced @Lucas88 I don't have as much actual competitive experience to be able to say about the best fighters.
But just for fun and by impulse, here are the names I would have thought of first from the old VHS collection of early UFCs as guys I wanted to look into more (so this also shows my age and retro sentiments):

The Predator Don Frye: I noticed he has an old VHS instructional tape set out there. I saw some on youtube but the channel was gone when I went back to post it.
I believe his background was boxing and wrestling like so many American tough guys (and I mean freestyle or Greco Roman wrestling, not just Vince McMahon styled WWF "professional wrestling," LOL), and then he added judo, kickboxing, and later ended up in MMA...

I think Mark the Hammer Coleman and the guys he trained (Kevin Randleman was one of them) also had a freestyle wrestling background and he actually coined the term "ground and pound by saying "I'm going to ground him and pound the goddamn shit out of him" before his fight with Maurice Smith back in the day. (I think that particular fight actually had a controversial Coleman loss to Smith by decision, but nonetheless.)

Bas Rutten has a lot of MMA and street fighting instructional DVDs.
He was a lot of fun to watch all around: I have a DVD set of his early Japanese Pancrase, fights as well as watching him in later competition.
While not the only one, he was also awesome for knowing the power of the liver shot!!

I believe he started with boxing as an elementary school kid, then his parents let him learn some Taekwondo but he got attacked by the worst local bully in his town and used his skills to KO the bully and break his nose with the first punch, after which his parents apparently banned him from any further martial arts until he moved out in his early 20's and started kickin' ass from then onward.

Then he started kickboxing and doing some pro fights I believe here and there, and eventually got picked up by Japanese talent scouts for Pancrase and he got very big in there.

There was also Ken Shamrock, and I believe he too had mostly a wrestling background before going more heavily into other MMA and he was involved in Pancrase even earlier than Bas Rutten... (I didn't actually remember they all had a wrestling background until this trip down memory lane and doing a quick search, but I think we're on pretty firm ground that wrestling is a pretty damn good foundation for grappling.)

I don't know anything about Conor Macgregor because I ran out of time to keep staying on top of the MMA scene back around maybe 2008ish and was only watching Pride at that point, but I posted a thread about my Wavemaster Century BOB where I found an amusing YT vid of Macgregor knocking over BOB, and an even funnier one of an MMA student actually getting KO'ed by the BOB while it was on the rebound from a previous student's attack :
viewtopic.php?f=27&t=44950

I am also a fan of the old-school UFC events from the 90s and downloaded the first 25 events or so and watched through them all. I enjoyed the original style vs. style dynamic. I found it an interesting exercise to observe how each style squared up against the others and how MMA evolved in its early days.

I like a lot of the fighters who you mentioned. Mark Coleman was one of the first guys to combine wrestling with vicious brawling and ground 'n' pound. Ken Shamrock was also a pioneer who combined wrestling and basic submissions. Shamrock actually used the G 'n' P strategy even before Coleman and used it to expose Royce Gracie during their rematch at UFC 5. Bas Rutten was the UFC's first well-rounded deadly striker with his kickboxing and karate background but, let's be honest, he got mauled by the wrestler Kevin Randleman in his debut and shouldn't have been declared the winner. Those guys' fight was another example of how wrestling can be used to neutralize a high-level striker.

There were also many other great fighters who were less famous and also some rare gems who weren't given much exposure in the UFC. Oleg Taktarov always stood out to me as a good all-rounder who used his Sambo and developed submission game as well as his superior conditioning and old-school Russian mindset to take out a variety of opponents who were after much bigger than him. Marco Ruas only made a few appearances in the UFC but he was another well-rounded fighter with expert-level submissions and leglocks due to his Luta Livre background. Marco would have kicked Royce's ass. Royce was kept away from most of the expert killers. It's clear that he was protected.

That brings me to another point. The earliest UFCs were a farce to promote Jiujitsu. Royce was expected to win from the beginning. They handpicked his opponents so that he would come out on top. As soon as more of the expert killers came to the UFC Royce bowed out of the competition. But the goal of creating a certain mystique surrounding Jiujitsu was already complete. The Gracies had set the foundations for a very lucrative business endeavor.

If we analyze the evolution of the MMA prototype since UFC 1 in 1993, we can identify an interesting pattern. Jiujitsu fighters such as Royce dominated the fight landscape in the first few years when the strikers had no idea about takedown defense and the wrestlers had little knowledge of submissions but once the veteran wrestlers began to add some basic Jiujitsu skills and striking to their game Jiujitsu was nowhere near as dominant as it has initially been and wrestling was shown to be an invaluable component of fighting. After the hype surrounding Jiujitsu had died down it was the wrestlers who came to dominate the fight landscape. Of course, much further evolution would also take place throughout the next decades and now in modern MMA expertise in all areas of fighting is necessary in order to compete at the elite level.

Lucas man you are my favourite poster in HA Flat Earth.

Rewatch the fight between Bass and Kevin you might change your mind about who had won.

[WilliamSmith]

Bas Rutten was the UFC's first well-rounded deadly striker with his kickboxing and karate background but, let's be honest, he got mauled by the wrestler Kevin Randleman in his debut and shouldn't have been declared the winner. Those guys' fight was another example of how wrestling can be used to neutralize a high-level striker.

Hmmm, I remember that match! That was my take the first time I saw it, but not the second time after I'd done some MMA myself, and I seem to recall Rutten as on his back but much of the match had Randleman keeping him mostly on the ground but not actually able to get the better of Rutten, who continuously pounded Randleman's blond-died hair with so many dozens of punches his hair was full of blood, so it was a tough call when it went to decision.... Maybe we can find that match again, but meanwhile here's a badass highlight reel of some of Rutten's best moments in Pancrase.
Most clips on YT add other music, but this one is way better because they use the original audio, and the Japanese crowds are much quieter than American counterparts so you can actually hear the loud auditory impact of heavy punches and kicks, among other things.

[WilliamSmith]

I am also a fan of the old-school UFC events from the 90s and downloaded the first 25 events or so and watched through them all. I enjoyed the original style vs. style dynamic. I found it an interesting exercise to observe how each style squared up against the others and how MMA evolved in its early days.

Me too, the first few were such wild-ass events where the fighters didn't know what the hell hit them and it was really a hell of a lot of fun. I'll dig up some clips soon.

I like a lot of the fighters who you mentioned. Mark Coleman was one of the first guys to combine wrestling with vicious brawling and ground 'n' pound. Ken Shamrock was also a pioneer who combined wrestling and basic submissions. Shamrock actually used the G 'n' P strategy even before Coleman and used it to expose Royce Gracie during their rematch at UFC 5.



There were also many other great fighters who were less famous and also some rare gems who weren't given much exposure in the UFC. Oleg Taktarov always stood out to me as a good all-rounder who used his Sambo and developed submission game as well as his superior conditioning and old-school Russian mindset to take out a variety of opponents who were after much bigger than him. Marco Ruas only made a few appearances in the UFC but he was another well-rounded fighter with expert-level submissions and leglocks due to his Luta Livre background. Marco would have kicked Royce's ass. Royce was kept away from most of the expert killers. It's clear that he was protected.

Yeah, I remember Oleg Taktarov as a name that was on my list of guys I was really impressed with! I'll refresh my memory soon. Mirko Cro Cop the "Croatian Sensation" I think they called him was another fighter who had some great striking victories in Pride (the Japanese MMA, not the globohomo kind of "pride" LOL), if I remember right.

That brings me to another point. The earliest UFCs were a farce to promote Jiujitsu. Royce was expected to win from the beginning. They handpicked his opponents so that he would come out on top. As soon as more of the expert killers came to the UFC Royce bowed out of the competition. But the goal of creating a certain mystique surrounding Jiujitsu was already complete. The Gracies had set the foundations for a very lucrative business endeavor.

If we analyze the evolution of the MMA prototype since UFC 1 in 1993, we can identify an interesting pattern. Jiujitsu fighters such as Royce dominated the fight landscape in the first few years when the strikers had no idea about takedown defense and the wrestlers had little knowledge of submissions but once the veteran wrestlers began to add some basic Jiujitsu skills and striking to their game Jiujitsu was nowhere near as dominant as it has initially been and wrestling was shown to be an invaluable component of fighting. After the hype surrounding Jiujitsu had died down it was the wrestlers who came to dominate the fight landscape. Of course, much further evolution would also take place throughout the next decades and now in modern MMA expertise in all areas of fighting is necessary in order to compete at the elite level.

That's interesting, I don't know about the background of that or if there were $$'s passed around behind close doors to over-promote BJJ or not, but apparently Ken Shamrock said he signed up for UFC #1 actually under the misapprehension it was a professional wrestling event (!!) but then he realized it was actually full contact after the announcers talked about some brutal elbow knockout, LOL. But on wrestlers vs BJJ: Shamrock also said he really didn't know who Royce was, and mistook him based on the gi they were as some kind of a karate guy who wasn't expecting him to have good grappling skills.
That led to a fun rivalry between them for a long time.

Yeah I'm for wrestling myself, but that, BJJ and other submission fighters definitely frustrated the hell out of a lot of dangerous strikers who weren't prepared for ground fighting yet for a long time, I remember it well! Some of those big sluggers like Tank Abbott were PISSED when they had to tap out!

[Lucas88]

That's interesting, I don't know about the background of that or if there were $$'s passed around behind close doors to over-promote BJJ or not, but apparently Ken Shamrock said he signed up for UFC #1 actually under the misapprehension it was a professional wrestling event (!!) but then he realized it was actually full contact after the announcers talked about some brutal elbow knockout, LOL. But on wrestlers vs BJJ: Shamrock also said he really didn't know who Royce was, and mistook him based on the gi they were as some kind of a karate guy who wasn't expecting him to have good grappling skills.
That led to a fun rivalry between them for a long time.

Basically, from what I've heard, UFC 1 was Rorion Gracie's brainchild and it was his intention to promote his own family's Jiujitsu as an unstoppable art. The Gracie fights were mostly likely not fixed since every one of Royce's victories looked like the expected result of a Jiujitsu expert going against an opponent without knowledge of grappling. They all look realistic. Rather Royce's opponents were handpicked by the promotors so that he had the highest chance of winning the tournaments while more skilled and dangerous opponents were not invited. Apparently Ken Shamrock was an outlier. Rorion assumed that Ken was simply a fake pro wrestler and was completely unaware of his real martial arts background which included wrestling (freestyle) and a rudimentary level of submission skills. All of the rest posed little threat to Royce. The plan worked excellently. Royce walked through everybody in the first four events (even though Shamrock was a legitimate dangerous opponent for him) and Jiujitsu was positively showcased to the public. Royce however would bow out of the competition as soon as more dangerous talents started being brought in post-UFC 5.

Here is a video which talks about Rorion Gracie's commercial agenda with regard to UFC 1:




Bill "Superfoot" Wallace speaks about UFC 1:

Bas Rutten was the UFC's first well-rounded deadly striker with his kickboxing and karate background but, let's be honest, he got mauled by the wrestler Kevin Randleman in his debut and shouldn't have been declared the winner. Those guys' fight was another example of how wrestling can be used to neutralize a high-level striker.

Hmmm, I remember that match! That was my take the first time I saw it, but not the second time after I'd done some MMA myself, and I seem to recall Rutten as on his back but much of the match had Randleman keeping him mostly on the ground but not actually able to get the better of Rutten, who continuously pounded Randleman's blond-died hair with so many dozens of punches his hair was full of blood, so it was a tough call when it went to decision.... Maybe we can find that match again, but meanwhile here's a badass highlight reel of some of Rutten's best moments in Pancrase.
Most clips on YT add other music, but this one is way better because they use the original audio, and the Japanese crowds are much quieter than American counterparts so you can actually hear the loud auditory impact of heavy punches and kicks, among other things.

I'll have to rewatch that match to be able to make a better judgment. When it comes to situations like this some judges give more weight to striking while others give more weight to grappling. Those in the striking camp argue that a greater volume of strikes merits a victory even if these are thrown from a non-dominant position and cause little damage while those in the grappling camp emphasize ground control as well as the pressure which the dominant grappler inflicts on his opponent (remember that pressure can affect a guy's ability to breath).

[WilliamSmith]

@Lucas88 interesting history on the Gracie background of early UFC! Another interesting controversy that arose was in Pride where that very popular big Japanese champion (Takada I think his name was) and Royce were the top-billed match and were having a big fight, but there was some controversy where Takada messed up and seemed to tell the ref that Royce had tapped when he actually hadn't. I believe they had a rematch with lots of drama surrounding that controversy, but I forget how it all played out...

[WilliamSmith]

Fun Don Frye highlight reel!
4:45 in are the highlights of one of my alltime favorite slugouts: Fry and Yoshihiro Takayama, man those two guys were !@#$ing badass. Look at 'em wailing away on each other, LOL!



Nice, here's the full match: