Making the switch from powerlifting to fighting

[ChickenBrother]

No just showing an at least supposedly not fake one with similar size difference

I have seen 130 lb blue belt pretty easily beat a novice white belt who had at least 50 lb on them. Little guy was a smoker too.

In my post above, I mentioned having tapped a 300 lbs powerlifter multiple times during his first week of class when I was a 170 lbs new blue belt. I kept hitting an arm drag back take on him and he had no idea what I was doing or how to stop it. I eventually felt sorry for him and let him start from top side control after showing him how to do an arm triangle. He then cracked my neck 3 times with brute force and I had to tap from the pressure even though he didn't have it fully locked.

The 150 lbs dude in your video is 1000 times better than I am but like the 300 lbs noob I tapped, the big guy he's subbing was rolling friendly and wasn't spazzing out. Against guys like that, closing a 100+ lbs weight difference with blue belt+ skill shouldn't be news to anyone.

On the other hand, I've had my nose broken at least twice from incidental headbutt, flailing shin to the dome, powerbombed out of a triangle by white belt spazzes much smaller than 300 lbs. And this was doing BJJ where they at least knew not to purposely throw elbows or punches.

Even if he doesn't have grappling experience, a huge, pissed off dude with a massive size + strength advantage who decides to go apeshit without regard for his own or your safety is probably going to do some damage even if you get the sub. Against a woman, that would be an even more dramatic strength disadvantage and commensurate likelihood of injury.

 

[cincymma79]

As a 330lbs blue belt I routinely smashed anyone that wasn't the instructor regardless of size or belt rank. I had very good technique though and my state is very slow to promote belts. I'd probably be a purple elsewhere with 7+ years on the mats.

Sound about right. That's skilled enough to power out of subs

 

[ChickenBrother]

As a 330lbs blue belt I routinely smashed anyone that wasn't the instructor regardless of size or belt rank. I had very good technique though and my state is very slow to promote belts. I'd probably be a purple elsewhere with 7+ years on the mats.

I believe it. IIRC from some other F13 threads you put up some big numbers in the big 3. If you're like the (now 285ish) powerlifter blue belt at my gym, you were probably smash passing 90% of guys into bolivian if you were going 100%. The big guy at my gym also loves the John Wayne sweep off his back. If he hits it on someone under ~180 lbs he has to do it with less strength or he launches the other guy completely clear.

 

[Swepingright]

I know grappling is technical, but I still think someone that's big and strong enough could rag doll a BJJ black belt as a novice. I'm talking about someone like Brian Shaw. He would need minimum training to beat some of the best heavyweight BJJ guys in the world.

Ngannou proved this with very basic BJJ and wrestling. he still doesn't do it right and he still defends against it

 

[cincymma79]

In my post above, I mentioned having tapped a 300 lbs powerlifter multiple times during his first week of class when I was a 170 lbs new blue belt. I kept hitting an arm drag back take on him and he had no idea what I was doing or how to stop it. I eventually felt sorry for him and let him start from top side control after showing him how to do an arm triangle. He then cracked my neck 3 times with brute force and I had to tap from the pressure even though he didn't have it fully locked.

The 150 lbs dude in your video is 1000 times better than I am but like the 300 lbs noob I tapped, the big guy he's subbing was rolling friendly and wasn't spazzing out. Against guys like that, closing a 100+ lbs weight difference with blue belt+ skill shouldn't be news to anyone.

On the other hand, I've had my nose broken at least twice from incidental headbutt, flailing shin to the dome, powerbombed out of a triangle by white belt spazzes much smaller than 300 lbs. And this was doing BJJ where they at least knew not to purposely throw elbows or punches.

Even if he doesn't have grappling experience, a huge, pissed off dude with a massive size + strength advantage who decides to go apeshit without regard for his own or your safety is probably going to do some damage even if you get the sub. Against a woman, that would be an even more dramatic strength disadvantage and commensurate likelihood of injury.

 

[ChickenBrother]

Size and strength will always be factors in grappling. But so are skill, mobility and cardio. As per OP, anyone coming from a strength/powerlifting background would start with a size and strength advantage but would still need to acquire actual skills.

Skills take longer to develop than strength (barring elite strength athletes) and if they want to last the duration of a fight or match, a grappling or MMA competitor wouldn't be able to retain strongman level size + strength anyway.

For this reason if you wanted to build the most successful openweight fighter/grappler, IMO you'd have more success starting with large grapplers and increasing their strength training and PED regimen (which is already happening) than trying to build a strongman into a grappler from scratch.

 

[cincymma79]

Size and strength will always be factors in grappling. But so are skill, mobility and cardio. As per OP, anyone coming from a strength/powerlifting background would start with a size and strength advantage but would still need to acquire actual skills.

Skills take longer to develop than strength (barring elite strength athletes) and if they want to last the duration of a fight or match, a grappling or MMA competitor wouldn't be able to retain strongman level size + strength anyway.

For this reason if you wanted to build the most successful openweight fighter/grappler, IMO you'd have more success starting with large grapplers and increasing their strength training and PED regimen (which is already happening) than trying to build a strongman into a grappler from scratch.

Yeah I don't think shaw could transition to a similar level of success at his size but he could be competitive. I think stamina would always be an issue for top levels.

I do think the strength could make up for some but an absolute novice still gets beaten easy

 

[No Skill Gap]

Yeah I don't think shaw could transition to a similar level of success at his size but he could be competitive. I think stamina would always be an issue for top levels.

I do think the strength could make up for some but an absolute novice still gets beaten easy

As Gabi Garcia? Well yeah because she's a woman on steroids who is also way bigger than almost everyone else. And she's good at BJJ probably I'd imagine.

Shaw is a day 1 whitebelt with maybe some rudimentary knowledge because doing hobbyist BJJ is now a powerlifting youtube fad or something. If you gave Brian Shaw ~2 years to train seriously then he would be a fucking force I'd imagine, in no gi easily. It's what Nicky Rod did basically with a d3 wrestling base.

I think you are underestimating Shaw's athleticism (college basketball player?) and even his cardio. I agree he won't dominate like Garcia because there's still probably not even going to be that same gap between Garcia and other women grapplers vs Shaw and the best HW grapplers, and he's just so far behind the curve and old.

 

[cincymma79]

As Gabi Garcia? Well yeah because she's a woman on steroids who is also way bigger than almost everyone else. And she's good at BJJ probably I'd imagine.

Shaw is a day 1 whitebelt with maybe some rudimentary knowledge because doing hobbyist BJJ is now a powerlifting youtube fad or something. If you gave Brian Shaw ~2 years to train seriously then he would be a fucking force I'd imagine, in no gi easily. It's what Nicky Rod did basically with a d3 wrestling base.

I think you are underestimating Shaw's athleticism (college basketball player?) and even his cardio. I agree he won't dominate like Garcia because there's still probably not even going to be that same gap between Garcia and other women grapplers vs Shaw and the best HW grapplers, and he's just so far behind the curve and old.

His size will hurt him in long matches. Eventually he has to deal with their weight and his. He wouldn't be used to it. Having said that look how good brock did with piss poor striking and barely existent bjj in the UFC. Hard to say if the skill caught up to him or if his illness ruined him, or both.

 

[ChickenBrother]

Shaw is a day 1 whitebelt with maybe some rudimentary knowledge because doing hobbyist BJJ is now a powerlifting youtube fad or something. If you gave Brian Shaw ~2 years to train seriously then he would be a fucking force I'd imagine, in no gi easily. It's what Nicky Rod did basically with a d3 wrestling base.

Agree Shaw might have been competitive had he transitioned earlier - he's 39. But he'd have a lot of skill gap to make up for and would have to give up a lot of size to be able to go hard unless he wants to be gassing out like Kimbo and Dada 5000. He'd probably be like Teddy Riner who competes at 6' 8" 300 lbs, but without the 10 years of mat time when he won his first world championship.

And I'm not sure if it's intentional, but I hope you're not implying that "~2 years of training" is equivalent to a strong D3 wrestling base. Nicky Rod is a specimen who came up wrestling in NJ (very tough wrestling state) and at the D3 level, you're still talking top <5% of HS wrestlers. Even at that level for the one year he competed, he went 23-4 which is very impressive, narrowly missing NCAAs.

The average varsity HS wrestler is a better athlete, a better competitor and has more mat time than the average BJJer and I don't think it's close. Wrestling is the most successful base in MMA for a reason. College wrestlers are just about the toughest MFers around outside of MMA who are still young enough to make the jump.

 

[cincymma79]

Agree Shaw might have been competitive had he transitioned earlier - he's 39. But he'd have a lot of skill gap to make up for and would have to give up a lot of size to be able to go hard unless he wants to be gassing out like Kimbo and Dada 5000. He'd probably be like Teddy Riner who competes at 6' 8" 300 lbs, but without the 10 years of mat time when he won his first world championship.

And I'm not sure if it's intentional, but I hope you're not implying that "~2 years of training" is equivalent to a strong D3 wrestling base. Nicky Rod is a specimen who came up wrestling in NJ (very tough wrestling state) and at the D3 level, you're still talking top <5% of HS wrestlers. Even at that level for the one year he competed, he went 23-4 which is very impressive, narrowly missing NCAAs.

The average varsity HS wrestler is a better athlete, a better competitor and has more mat time than the average BJJer and I don't think it's close. Wrestling is the most successful base in MMA for a reason. College wrestlers are just about the toughest MFers around outside of MMA who are still young enough to make the jump.

Jiu jitsu is the best single art. Wrestling is better once you have a decent defense built up for bjj. After that you need muay thai. If you can defend muay thai you cna start using karate and other arts, even dare I say it aikido

 

[No Skill Gap]

Jiu jitsu is the best single art. Wrestling is better once you have a decent defense built up for bjj. After that you need muay thai. If you can defend muay thai you cna start using karate and other arts, even dare I say it aikido

I mean this is the S&C forum but we've talked about this shit on the grappling forum obviously...

Aikido is a fake martial art mainly, like sure there might be very few techniques that have some merit but for MMA I'll straight up say zero merit in aikido.

Karate is another mainly fake martial art now a days, I think it's also not a "good" base. There's some effective practitioners like Wonderboy and GSP, but the latter didn't even really have a karate style just used reactions and credited it. Machida/Wonderboy did far more karate esque shit. It can work but rarely.

MT works and is good but it's weird to single that striking art out. Boxing and kickboxing have basically risen to the top. Muay Thai is legit as fuck not saying it isn't, but boxing is more important at this point...learning to kick isn't exclusive to MT. Muay thai's actual style is kind of retarded for MMA too, it's just standing there and eating shots lol. Not to say actual boxing works either because they rely on big gloves to block and the lack of takedowns/kicks because they don't exist in the sport itself.

I'm mainly a BJJ guy, but I'd say wrestling is easily "the best" to have a base on. If you had one single skill to master then yeah I agree with you BJJ and we saw that with UFC 1. But learning like adequate submission grappling especially in no gi takes a fraction of the time mastering black belt gi shit does imo and a ton of wrestling crosses over for that, so for MMA...yeah. We see tons of wrestlers in MMA succeed for a reason

 

[cincymma79]

I mean this is the S&C forum but we've talked about this shit on the grappling forum obviously...

Aikido is a fake martial art mainly, like sure there might be very few techniques that have some merit but for MMA I'll straight up say zero merit in aikido.

Karate is another mainly fake martial art now a days, I think it's also not a "good" base. There's some effective practitioners like Wonderboy and GSP, but the latter didn't even really have a karate style just used reactions and credited it. Machida/Wonderboy did far more karate esque shit. It can work but rarely.

MT works and is good but it's weird to single that striking art out. Boxing and kickboxing have basically risen to the top. Muay Thai is legit as fuck not saying it isn't, but boxing is more important at this point...learning to kick isn't exclusive to MT. Muay thai's actual style is kind of retarded for MMA too, it's just standing there and eating shots lol. Not to say actual boxing works either because they rely on big gloves to block and the lack of takedowns/kicks because they don't exist in the sport itself.

I'm mainly a BJJ guy, but I'd say wrestling is easily "the best" to have a base on. If you had one single skill to master then yeah I agree with you BJJ and we saw that with UFC 1. But learning like adequate submission grappling especially in no gi takes a fraction of the time mastering black belt gi shit does imo and a ton of wrestling crosses over for that, so for MMA...yeah. We see tons of wrestlers in MMA succeed for a reason

I've seen muay thai vs boxing and it's hard to watch. Boxers get manhandled but can win here and there. That leg kick may as well be a gun

 

[Deleted member 512089]

I mean this is the S&C forum but we've talked about this shit on the grappling forum obviously...

Aikido is a fake martial art mainly, like sure there might be very few techniques that have some merit but for MMA I'll straight up say zero merit in aikido.

Karate is another mainly fake martial art now a days, I think it's also not a "good" base. There's some effective practitioners like Wonderboy and GSP, but the latter didn't even really have a karate style just used reactions and credited it. Machida/Wonderboy did far more karate esque shit. It can work but rarely.

MT works and is good but it's weird to single that striking art out. Boxing and kickboxing have basically risen to the top. Muay Thai is legit as fuck not saying it isn't, but boxing is more important at this point...learning to kick isn't exclusive to MT. Muay thai's actual style is kind of retarded for MMA too, it's just standing there and eating shots lol. Not to say actual boxing works either because they rely on big gloves to block and the lack of takedowns/kicks because they don't exist in the sport itself.

I'm mainly a BJJ guy, but I'd say wrestling is easily "the best" to have a base on. If you had one single skill to master then yeah I agree with you BJJ and we saw that with UFC 1. But learning like adequate submission grappling especially in no gi takes a fraction of the time mastering black belt gi shit does imo and a ton of wrestling crosses over for that, so for MMA...yeah. We see tons of wrestlers in MMA succeed for a reason

- Aïkido is a very unrealistic martial art as you said. Thing is they don't do resistance sparring so how could they make their techniques work ? There is a YouTube channel out there called "martial arts journey" made by a former black belt aikido instructor. He's now training in both mma and bjj and says that 99% of his aikido training is useless in real combat. Check it out you might like it.

- The tricky thing with Karate is that it's a very broad term. There are a million different style affiliated to it. Shotokan, Shotokai, Goju-ryu, Wado-ryu, Shito-ryu, Kyokushin, Seidokaikan... And that's from the top of my head an without counting the ones who went independent like Kudo, Shidokan, Zendokai... Some styles even have splits inside of them like goju-ryu that has competition for point matches and another for full contact with ground fighting. But if we restrict it to the point fighting styles that have become Shotokan/Wado-ryu etc. then I'd agree with you that they'll mainly be useless for mma, unless you're a one in a million genius like Machida was. But I wouldn't say that for a style like Kyokushin. It's a very hard style that I respect a lot. They would transition better to mma than shotokan guy (GSP was kyokushin btw). The only downside is that they don't punch to the head in competition so they need an adaptation period but in exchange for that they have amongst the best kicks, leg kicks, knees and body conditioning in all martial arts.

- I agree that MT's traditional footwork isn't suited for mma. If there is any footwork at all. Boxing has the best footwork overall and dutch kickboxing style might have the best footwork to transition to mma. That being said Muay Thai teaches you something invaluable that the two other arts do not : fighting in the clinch. Elbows, collar tie, knees, even a bit of wrestling. Sure wrestling/judo is great for the clinch but imo being proficient at the MT gives you an incredible edge in mma. The two Silva/Franklin fights come to my mind every time i think about that. So muay thai clinch + boxing/kickboxing at range seems the best.

- I like the discussion of "if you could train only one style which one would be the best". Excluding pseudo mma styles like combat sambo. Wrestling & BJJ are both good answers obviously. I'd say if we narrow it to one style maybe Judo can have a place in that discussion. Limited ground game and limited standing grappling also. But you have a bit of both. Sanda/Sanshou would be a good pick too because you'd have a kickboxing base very suited to mma, sprawling, timing your takedowns etc.

 

[Jkillah]

What do y'all think are probable paths to victory for a BJJ guy to defeat Brian Shaw and who are some names that you think could beat him? Strictly talking about BJJ.

 

[cincymma79]

What do y'all think are probable paths to victory for a BJJ guy to defeat Brian Shaw and who are some names that you think could beat him? Strictly talking about BJJ.

Anyone with 6 months training. With a gi he'll get choked fast. No gi he gets his back taken and choked. If we allow leg attacks those will get him

 

[Deleted member 512089]

What do y'all think are probable paths to victory for a BJJ guy to defeat Brian Shaw and who are some names that you think could beat him? Strictly talking about BJJ.

I already gave you name for that but you ignored them

He wont out grapple Werdum, Roger Gracie, Marcus Almeida or Rodolfo Viera.

And any athletic purple belt HW seriously.

 

[No Skill Gap]

Ngannou proved this with very basic BJJ and wrestling. he still doesn't do it right and he still defends against it

Obviously you're a troll account but did you miss the first fight where Stipe absolutely raped Ngannou with wrestling/grappling?

Ngannou also obviously had basic BJJ/Wrestling at that point like 6+ fights into an MMA career, probably 10 fights in and existing in 2018-2020 during the time where every MMA gym is going to train mma grappling/wrestling

 

[No Skill Gap]

- Aïkido is a very unrealistic martial art as you said. Thing is they don't do resistance sparring so how could they make their techniques work ? There is a YouTube channel out there called "martial arts journey" made by a former black belt aikido instructor. He's now training in both mma and bjj and says that 99% of his aikido training is useless in real combat. Check it out you might like it.

- The tricky thing with Karate is that it's a very broad term. There are a million different style affiliated to it. Shotokan, Shotokai, Goju-ryu, Wado-ryu, Shito-ryu, Kyokushin, Seidokaikan... And that's from the top of my head an without counting the ones who went independent like Kudo, Shidokan, Zendokai... Some styles even have splits inside of them like goju-ryu that has competition for point matches and another for full contact with ground fighting. But if we restrict it to the point fighting styles that have become Shotokan/Wado-ryu etc. then I'd agree with you that they'll mainly be useless for mma, unless you're a one in a million genius like Machida was. But I wouldn't say that for a style like Kyokushin. It's a very hard style that I respect a lot. They would transition better to mma than shotokan guy (GSP was kyokushin btw). The only downside is that they don't punch to the head in competition so they need an adaptation period but in exchange for that they have amongst the best kicks, leg kicks, knees and body conditioning in all martial arts.

- I agree that MT's traditional footwork isn't suited for mma. If there is any footwork at all. Boxing has the best footwork overall and dutch kickboxing style might have the best footwork to transition to mma. That being said Muay Thai teaches you something invaluable that the two other arts do not : fighting in the clinch. Elbows, collar tie, knees, even a bit of wrestling. Sure wrestling/judo is great for the clinch but imo being proficient at the MT gives you an incredible edge in mma. The two Silva/Franklin fights come to my mind every time i think about that. So muay thai clinch + boxing/kickboxing at range seems the best.

- I like the discussion of "if you could train only one style which one would be the best". Excluding pseudo mma styles like combat sambo. Wrestling & BJJ are both good answers obviously. I'd say if we narrow it to one style maybe Judo can have a place in that discussion. Limited ground game and limited standing grappling also. But you have a bit of both. Sanda/Sanshou would be a good pick too because you'd have a kickboxing base very suited to mma, sprawling, timing your takedowns etc.

yeah I definitely think muay thai is "Good" and has it's place for sure. Wasn't trying to shit on it. But to me like your example basically reinforces, it's more of a "silver age-golden age" MMA style that was dominant. It's more like late 90s into that 2003-2012 range or whatever it is where we saw it dominate and be propped up as one of the best arts. I'm not sure that's the case today and I found it odd that someone suggested it as the best striking art. It's still good or whatever...

But clearly MMA has evolved into this boxing/kickboxing movement based meta. Just like ATT kind of innovated and popularized the wall walk on the cage, CityKickboxing and probably someone before that innovated calf kicks. Cruz and Sandhagen and even O'Malley are examples of really creative strikers with footwork and attacks.

The only real Muay Thai guys I can think of are Aldo and Yan? Who just literally plod forward and stand there to be hit, blocking shit and returning. Obviously there is more and MT again is good, but I think it's clearly less popular now in MMA and probably less effective than a decade ago

edit: and the "Age" shit I kind of just made up. I consider like Vale Tudo pre-UFC and early UFCs to be bronze age shit. Silver age is basically like Tito-Chuck-Randy, Hughes, Tanner-Franklin whatever in my mind. And Golden age is when GSP became champ and Jones flew on the scene and we had prime Silva. That's how I view the eras...if that makes sense.

 

[Deleted member 512089]

yeah I definitely think muay thai is "Good" and has it's place for sure. Wasn't trying to shit on it. But to me like your example basically reinforces, it's more of a "silver age-golden age" MMA style that was dominant. It's more like late 90s into that 2003-2012 range or whatever it is where we saw it dominate and be propped up as one of the best arts. I'm not sure that's the case today and I found it odd that someone suggested it as the best striking art. It's still good or whatever...

But clearly MMA has evolved into this boxing/kickboxing movement based meta. Just like ATT kind of innovated and popularized the wall walk on the cage, CityKickboxing and probably someone before that innovated calf kicks. Cruz and Sandhagen and even O'Malley are examples of really creative strikers with footwork and attacks.

The only real Muay Thai guys I can think of are Aldo and Yan? Who just literally plod forward and stand there to be hit, blocking shit and returning. Obviously there is more and MT again is good, but I think it's clearly less popular now in MMA and probably less effective than a decade ago

edit: and the "Age" shit I kind of just made up. I consider like Vale Tudo pre-UFC and early UFCs to be bronze age shit. Silver age is basically like Tito-Chuck-Randy, Hughes, Tanner-Franklin whatever in my mind. And Golden age is when GSP became champ and Jones flew on the scene and we had prime Silva. That's how I view the eras...if that makes sense.

Yeah i pretty much agree. Mma has evolved into its own striking and footwork. Interesting to note that Aldo and Yan both have very strong boxing base and influence, so muay thai needs boxing in mma and vice versa.

I still think that the muay thai clinch needs to be mastered and adapted if you want to be good in mma. It's an area that pretty much only muay thai trains outside of mma.

And love the age shit haha will probably use myself

PS: look up Dany Bill if you want to see a nak muay with a dynamic footwork style