Best Base for MMA

[jread]

It's a good intellectual exercise to decide what would be the best art, but really it's a moot point. Unless you have the time and money to travel anywhere to train, you have to find the best of what's in your area. A better way to focuss is to work on finding the best training in your area that addressed standup, clinch, and ground in a competitive training against resistance type of atmosphere. Personally, I focuss on delivery systems and don't worry alot about what art they come from.

Excellent point!

I found an academy here that is very active in competitions, with champions in BJJ, boxing and kickboxing/Muay Thai. They have classes in all of these arts as well. I went to the school, saw the adequate facilites, saw the very well-conditioned fighters, saw the seriousness of the place, and decided that it was my best bet.

[CKD]

You don't get those things unless you do those things.

If its all included in the art you do.

[Nick]

...

What I mean is, it's easy to wait it out on the ground in one position or to get into a more dominant position and then get up rather than to leave yourself more vunerable going for a submission. This is plain fact.

Later...

[bewing77]

Having practiced a bunch of different arts my conclusion is, like so many else stated, it is not the art that makes the fighter, it's the other way around. When I started out I had never even heard of MMA, and took up Judo because basicly it was the only MA I knew of in my area, and because I had a friend who trained it. That was 19 years ago. After only practicing Judo for 7 years I wanted something with striking and kicking. I had wanted this for several years, but the TKD club in my area didn't allow persons under 15 to train there. So there I was, picking up TKD (ITF style), again because it was the only stand up MA in my area. Luckily, that dojang has a great aproach to the art, and is not at all kicking focused, but included striking, takedowns, grappling and submissions. 7 years later (5 years ago) I found myself getting more and more interested in MMA, so I dropped the TKD (was getting tired of that anyways ) and started training Muay thai, and one year later I was in my first MMA competition. Today I focus mostly on Muay thai and striking, while I still practice Judo mostly to keep my skill level up.

Interestingly enough, even though I have by far most experience in Judo, I still prefer striking. For this, Judo to me seems to be the perfect "grappling" sport: Great defense against takedowns, allowing you to keep striking, while still having evil takedowns on your own, and is more than capable once you go to the ground. Still, BJJ may be better if you want to focus more on groundfighting/submissions.

About the age thing; I started with MA at an early age, wich of course is an advantage, but I didn't start competing in MMA until I was 23. Still, it will probably still take some years of practice before you can be competitive, but with your boxing and fighting experience you already have a head start there, and could focus on getting some ground, and especially takedown defence skills. Personally, I would recomend you to take up Judo, but I am of cource biased

[Ronson]

Nothing really deep to add to this thread, only that I'm digging the intelligent posts on here.

It's cool that their are Sambo, BJJ, Judo, MT, and Boxing nuthuggers here - at least the common denominater is that these arts train/fight with fully resisting partners/opponents.

At least this thread hasn't been hijacked into those dumbass "but MMA isn't the street or real fighting" bullshite.

Carry on...

[kid-do]

In my opinion the best MMA u can have is either Muay-Thai and BJJ or Boxing and BJJ becuase if u cant get the opponent down to the ground then u can beat them standing with knees and punches and then once their weak it'll be easy to take them to the ground and get them in a submission becuase they are already beat up from being kneed and punched so they wont have energy to try to get out of a submission

[jubaji]

If its all included in the art you do.

"all included in the art" = 20 min/week practice with unskilled classmates. Good luck with that.

[CKD]

"all included in the art" = 20 min/week practice with unskilled classmates. Good luck with that.

So mma gyms, sambo gyms and jeet kune do gym and any other art that combines striking and grappling styles is that? By the way this is going to be my last post for a while so any questions might have to wait.