Is the tide turning away from the wrestlers?
We all know to exceed in MMA you need a well round game, but I have always had the belief that the best base to build off was wrestling, it allows you to dictate the range a fight takes place at, if you want it standing you can keep it standing Ala chuck liddel, if you want it to go to the floor you can take it there, ala matt hughes,
But lately it seems the champions are coming from a different background, a lot of the guys coming out of brazil seem to be Thai and BJJ experts who only study wrestling in order to keep the fight standing
4 of the belt holders in the ufc now are Thai boxers who also have BJJ blackbelts or have won state championships but who seem to want to keep it standing and manage to do so without a vast background in pure wrestling, watching Barao and Aldo defend takedown after takedown with such ease, and watching Anderson in the second round simply shrug off Sonnens best attempts after nullifying all his attacks off his back for 5 minutes has made me wonder, maybe the brazilin camps have the right idea: get very good at stand up, and very good at ground work, and then add in takedown defence, it seems easier for them to do this than for a lot of pure wrestlers to become very comfortable with striking
Of course three of the champions are still former college standout wrestlers but are the days of wrestlers dominating the top tire of the sport gone?