fighterlluitador's blog

 There’s an old adage that you never pick a fight with a wrestler.

Combat sports fans love to debate. Some praise the sweet science of boxing, the strategic patience of jiu-jitsu, or the raw brutality of Muay Thai. Each discipline has its loyalists, champions and culture. But when you strip away the branding and focus purely on outcomes, toughness and competitive integrity, one truth stands out: wrestling is unmatched.

Not only has it produced more MMA champions than any other discipline, it also demands the most from its athletes. It is the most globally practiced, historically rooted and competitively honest combat sport in existence.

I wrestled Division I at Harvard. That meant I wasn’t just making weight and grinding through two-a-days. I was doing it while studying for finals, hitting deadlines and carrying a full academic load in an environment that didn’t cater to athletes. There were days I’d be cutting weight on zero calories while preparing for an exam, knowing I’d have to sprint straight from a lecture hall to the weigh-in room, then compete the next day against someone who didn’t face those same pressures. There were no excuses and no safety net. You learned to suffer and you learned to do it quietly.

What’s often misunderstood by outsiders is how battle-tested elite wrestlers are by the time they reach their peak. It is the only fight sport offered in high school and college and the average top-tier wrestler will have competed in over 1,500 matches before even reaching the world or Olympic level. That’s thousands of one-on-one battles without teammates, or shortcuts and without margin for error. From peewee tournaments to senior-level trials, wrestling demands constant engagement with the best competition. The schedule never relents. Weekends bring tournaments, weekdays bring dual meets and the calendar cycles through state championships, national championships and world championships. Year after year.

Unlike striking-based sports, where sparring must be limited to prevent injury, wrestling is trained at maximum intensity nearly every day. There are no pads, no light rounds. Every session is a sprint at full speed. You practice in stifling heat, drenched in sweat, lungs burning, body aching. Training through injury and exhaustion is the norm. You return the next day without complaint. That is the baseline and the culture.

This is what wrestling instills in you. It is why wrestlers thrive in MMA. Sixty percent of male UFC champions have a foundational background in wrestling. In reality, the true number may be even higher.

The UFC, like many promotions, often downplays wrestling’s influence because it lacks the visual excitement of striking. Knockouts are easier to market than takedowns. Many fighters are branded as strikers even though they wrestled competitively for years before ever learning to throw a punch. I know some of them personally. The numbers don’t just show dominance, they obscure it.

Here is a general breakdown of UFC champions’ primary martial arts bases:

• Wrestling: approximately 60 percent
• Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ): approximately 25 percent
• Striking (Boxing, Muay Thai, Kickboxing): approximately 10 percent
• Other (Sambo, Judo, Karate, Taekwondo, hybrids): approximately 5 percent

Wrestling’s dominance comes from control. Wrestlers dictate where the fight takes place, on the feet or on the ground. They determine the pace, neutralize submissions, smother striking, break opponents physically and mentally. No other style gives that kind of authority over every phase of a fight.

As MMA continues to evolve, we now see a new generation of athletes raised on mixed disciplines. These fighters are fluid, well-rounded and dangerous in all areas. Even so, one truth remains clear. No foundation is more reliable than a legitimate wrestling background.

That’s because wrestling builds more than just technique. It develops pace, grit, timing, pressure and mental resilience. Once you’ve been through years of wrestling, learning jiu-jitsu or striking becomes far less intimidating. The hardest lessons: discipline, endurance and humility are already part of you.

This explains why wrestlers not only excel in the cage but also rise in other high-performance environments. Elite military units like the Navy SEALs, Army Rangers and Green Berets are filled with former wrestlers. Their instructors often say these athletes outperform everyone else. They are steady under pressure, comfortable with discomfort and never rely on external motivation. That mindset is forged in sweat, failure and repetition.

What’s most remarkable is that many of the wrestlers dominating MMA today are not even the best our system has produced. In the United States, the most elite wrestlers often pursue Olympic and World Championship dreams. Those paths bring prestige, not wealth. Many MMA wrestlers come from the second or third tier, All-Americans or national qualifiers, not NCAA champions. Yet they regularly outperform world-class strikers and submission experts.

On the rare occasion that an elite wrestler transitions into MMA, the results are explosive. Look at Jon Jones, Daniel Cormier, Henry Cejudo, Bo Nickal. These fighters didn’t just succeed; they accelerated through the ranks. Not because they were more athletic, but because wrestling gave them a deeper foundation.

Reaching the top in wrestling is brutally difficult. Every year, over 300,000 high school wrestlers compete in the United States. Fewer than 2,400 go on to Division I. Only ten win an NCAA championship. That’s a 0.0033 percent chance. Internationally, the challenge is even greater. Each nation sends just one wrestler per Olympic weight class. Only six weight classes exist per gender. Contrast that with boxing or jiu-jitsu, where multiple world champions exist across various organizations. Wrestling allows no such inflation. One champion, one podium and one gold medal.

This scarcity makes wrestling the toughest and most honest path in combat sports.

It is also the most democratic. In Iran, wrestling is a national treasure. In Russia and Dagestan, it is a cultural institution. In Japan, it’s currently dominating the men’s and women’s Olympic stage. In Cuba, it thrives without money or resources. In the United States, it’s thriving and growing. Wrestling is available to anyone. It does not require wealth, private training or specialized equipment. You only need a mat and the will to endure.

This accessibility is expanding for women too. Over 49,000 girls now wrestle in American high schools, a number that has grown dramatically over the past decade. Colleges are launching new programs. Countries like Japan, the United States, and Canada have built dominant women’s freestyle teams. What began as a male-driven sport is evolving fast and the future of women’s wrestling is rising behind it.

Wrestling has no proverbial safety nets. You compete hurt, when your tired, when your mind is scrambled and your body is spent. No one hands you anything, every inch is earned and you come out the other side a different person.

That is what I experienced. That is what I know. This is why I believe wrestling is the most dominant and most underappreciated combat sport in the world.

That belief comes with full respect for all martial arts. Every fighter knows the moment before battle. The walk to the mat, the ring or the cage. The fear in your chest paired with supreme confidence and the quiet tension before the noise. Competing takes real courage. This perspective is not about dismissing other styles. It is about telling the truth. The data supports it. So does lived experience.

Wrestling may not sell like knockouts. It may not look glamorous. But when it comes time to find out who the best really is, more often than not, it is a wrestler standing in the center with their hand raised. If we sent our best, the wrestler would almost never lose.