What Martial Arts Do Mma Fighters Use
It's called MMA which means Mixed Martial Arts. There are guys who have a base in TaiKwonDo, Karate, Wrestling, Jujitsu, MuayTai, kick boxing, and loads of other martial arts from around the world. Eventually your training has to evolve in to all areas so you can use all the styles if needed. MMA gloves or grappling gloves are small, open-fingered gloves used in mixed martial arts bouts. They usually have around 4–6 oz of padding and are designed to provide some protection to the person wearing the glove, but leave the fingers available for grappling maneuvers such as clinch fighting and submissions. MMA and UFC fighters do not wear any protective head gear, and are therefore susceptible to head injuries. Though fighters are not allowed to strike another fighter’s head or face with a 12-6 (straight up-and-down) elbow, or hit the top or back of another fighter’s head and neck, other head and neck hits are still allowed.
Like most fans who witnessed 19-plus minutes of high-level martial arts action in the bantamweight title fight at UFC 259, Aljamain Sterling wasn’t happy with how it ended. By MMA Fighting. Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ) BJJ is the best martial arts you can learn for a street fight. The whole point.
From strikers like Conor McGregor to wrestlers like Khabib Nurmagomedov, every style of fighting exists in the UFC. To be a successful fighter, however, many will mix and match different styles and use them when necessary. However, some styles are more effective than others.
Specialists
These fighters are rare and they rarely succeed. A specialist is a fighter who is an expert in one fighting style but largely incompetent in everything else. Specialists were more common back in the earliest days of the UFC when people didn’t know what Brazilian jiu-jitsu, or BJJ, was.
Because of that ignorance, BJJ, which is a submission-based martial art, reigned supreme. Men like Royce Gracie didn’t care if a boxer wanted to knock them out, they were going to break that boxer’s arm unless they tapped out.
However, many fighters started learning BJJ, including how to defend against it. By doing that, the era of specialists went away as fighters started learning multiple martial arts and combining them to great effect.
Nowadays, while many fighters tend to excel in one style, they’ll also be competent in others. Thus, it’s hard to say which fighting style is the most effective, as every fighter learns about every fighting style. However, there is a common denominator between every successful UFC champion.
Wrestling
Arguably the most powerful single martial art in the UFC is wrestling. A simple look at who the current UFC champions are and you’ll see that the majority are great wrestlers.
Henry Cejudo, champion of the flyweight and bantamweight divisions, is an Olympic gold medalist in wrestling. Nurmagomedov, the lightweight champion, is a life long wrestler who wrestled bears as a kid.
Kamaru Usman, the welterweight champion, Robert Whittaker, the middleweight champion, Jon Jones, the light heavyweight champion, and Stipe Miocic, the heavyweight champion, are all great wrestlers too.
Wrestling is important because it allows the fighter to choose where the fight goes. Nurmagomedov can’t stand and strike with McGregor, so he took him down and choked him out. Usman didn’t want to get submitted by Demian Maia, so Usman used his wrestling to keep the fight standing and beat Maia up.
However, as Ben Askren proved when he got knocked out by Jorge Masvidal in five seconds, a UFC fighter can’t specialize in just wrestling and ignore everything else. A great UFC fighter needs to combine all those skills together.
The best combination of fighting styles for the UFC
Every champion that was mentioned has mixed in striking and BJJ into their skillset. They aren’t the best strikers or submission artists in the UFC, but they’re good enough so that they won’t be outmatched.
That’s why a strong wrestler who can strike and do BJJ is the best combination of fighting styles out there. Like Nurmagomedov showed in his fight against Dustin Poirier, if he couldn’t do BJJ, then Poirier might’ve choked him out.
Do Any Mma Fighters Use Kung Fu
And like Nurmagomedov showed against McGregor, if he didn’t know how to strike, then he wouldn’t have landed that punch that knocked McGregor down.
Striking isn’t all about hitting the other person either, it’s also about not being hit in the first place. Because Nurmagomedov did know how to strike, he was able to avoid McGregor’s best punches and kicks.
Of course, not every fighter needs to do what Nurmagomedov does to succeed. McGregor is not a wrestler, but he has good defensive wrestling. That’s why he’s been able to keep the fight standing against most fighters.
Other fighters who fight like McGregor, like Israel Adesanya, are also very successful. If fighters like McGregor and Adesanya can keep fights standing, then they can easily knock their opponents out.
However, as the UFC rankings show, very few people can deal with the wrestling of the current champions, and that’s why wrestling is simply the best style right now.
