Best Base for MMA

[toshiro]

too old?

I'll be 30 soon and I am still competing. I think that the bumps, bruises and strains are taking a little longer to heal but as you age you learn to take less of those during training, and save the rest for the ring or the mat. Sure you have to train hard, but train smart. You can't avoid injuries completely, but you have to train alot more often than you compete and you can't compete if you don't train or your hurt.
There is alot to be said for competion. It's a great learning process. Win or lose you will come out of it ahead in the long run.

hey what about shooto for a MMA base?

[CKD]

Shooto seems o.k. But I believe training with a gi(and what ever those sambo people wear) makes you a more technical grappler. Besides that from my experience with Shooto was it wasn't a great art. Especially the Bart Vale people. People from the arts I mentioned also have a higher success rate in mma, even in Shooto the champions all come from the arts I mentioned.

[toshiro]

Sambo, Judo and Juijitsu are supposed to be some of the base arts of Shooto as far as I know. I've never met Bart Vale or anyone that has trained with him so I can't say anything about those folks. I was thinking more along the lines of Erik Paulson and what he teaches. Alot of the early MMA guys got their start in Japan (pancrase) which was heavily influenced by shooto. I'll have to admit though I'm not 100% sure on the facts, just what my understanding has been.

[wardancer]

I am geting confused.
Vanderley Silva (Chute Box from Pride) is Muy Thai boxer?

[CKD]

Sambo, Judo and Jiu-jitsu do have some role in Shooto. But I do think that training in a gi or kurtka makes a fighter more technical. Erik Paulson seems pretty good. But I do not know much about him. But Shooto could be a decent base for mma. I am thinking of actually ranking my top the top 3 bases in order just to start more conversation. So for the sake of more talk here it goes
1.Sambo
I know this probaly suprised some people. The reason I ranked this as #1 was because I feel its well rounded. I used to have doubts about this system but they were turned around by the recent success of Sambo based fighters in mma and by what I learned about the system. The groundfighting is equal to bjj and many sambo fighters are winning in bjj tournaments. Sambo also has great takedowns and clinch and if you can't take your opponent down nowadays in mma, you are done. Just take a look at Renzo vs Henderson and Royler vs Sudo and Ismail vs the dude that held onto the fence and Sperry vs Zinoiev and Carlson vs Lewis and a billion other matches. Beisdes that good takedowns can enable you to end up in a dominant position instead of just being stuck in the persons guard. Also the striking techniques of Sambo is much better than the ones I have seen in BJJ and judos atemi waza. Striking is also practiced more. Sambo training is also pretty touph. To get a blackbelt you have to beat two people at once. Another thing is the competetions. There are Commando Sambo competetions that allow striking and will provide a more realistic format for going into mma. The last reason is that Sambo has retained its Combat aspect while BJJ and Judo are losing theirs.
#2BJJ and Judo
Did not want to waste the time to figure out which one would be a better base. Judo has good takedowns and most schools practice limited ground. BJJ has good ground and most practice sparring from the knees and are not good at standup grappling. They both seem to be losing there combat aspects. I used to think BJJ was the best base in the early days of mma until I realized other grappling arts were not well represented. There were some o.k judo people and Oleg Taktarov came in from Sambo and he started beating everyone even though he was looking for an acting job rather than concentrating mostly on fighting. He was a great fighter and made everyone recognize Sambo, unfortunately no one knew the power of the up kick and he got caught by suprise with that and then everyone realized its power. Then there was the Goodridge fight were he showed good striking prowess but I did not try to take Goodridge down which probaly would have gotten him a victory. Wrestling soon was getting good representation and after they studied the guard and submissions they did well such as the Kerr vs Gurgel. They got the most reps besides bjj. Oh and Silva is a muay thai fighter with a blackbelt in bjj.

[pstevens]

The best base for MMA are gyms that teach you EVERYTHING. Gyms that specialize in MMA training. These days just training judo, then adding boxing isn't enough. You need to know what everyone else is doing.

You may have 20 years of BJJ, but still lose to someone who knows defend the ground, then knock you out. The same guy probably only trained BJJ for a total of 1 year. Likewise, you can be an experienced boxer, only to get tapped out.

The best base for MMA is MMA.

[Nick]

...

It always seemed to me that starting out striking and supplementing grappling. Being defensive in grappling is easier than being offensive, meaning it's easier to avoid being taken down/submitted than trying to do it yourself, so if a striker can develop a decent sprawl and ground knowledge, it'd be easier to make the grappler play their game than the other way around.

Later...

[jubaji]

Being defensive in grappling is easier than being offensive, meaning it's easier to avoid being taken down/submitted than trying to do it yourself, ...

........................................


Says who?

[CKD]

The best base for MMA are gyms that teach you EVERYTHING. Gyms that specialize in MMA training. These days just training judo, then adding boxing isn't enough. You need to know what everyone else is doing.

You may have 20 years of BJJ, but still lose to someone who knows defend the ground, then knock you out. The same guy probably only trained BJJ for a total of 1 year. Likewise, you can be an experienced boxer, only to get tapped out.

The best base for MMA is MMA.

Thats why I chose sambo as the #1 art. It has a good mix of striking and grappling. I remember someone from Sherdog saying Sambo is MMA. Most Sambo schools I have been too have an mma class also. But mma gyms are hard to find and a lot of times are just a big mix of stuff. I believe in gaining a base in one art. If you look at most of todays competitors they have a base in oe art and then moved onto others. Fedor, Silva, Rua, Sperry, Russian Top Team, Brazilian Top Team all those people gained a base in one art and then crosstrained.

[IPON]

I remember someone from Sherdog saying Sambo is MMA.

I would say No becuase these techniques are found in Sambo as part of the style.

[CKD]

I would say No becuase these techniques are found in Sambo as part of the style.

He meant more that is was a good stlye with the best from several arts. He then said you get the groundwork equal to bjj, wrestling and judo takedowns, and decent striking. I think that will make more sense.

[toshiro]

I found an interesting link to some history about Sambo or Sombo as they are refering to it. I just thought that it was realtive to the thread.

http://stratfordsombo.tripod.com/articles/history-2.html

Here are 2 paragraphs from the site in case your not up to reading the whole article.

" The founders of SOMBO sifted deliberately through all of the world’s martial arts to augment their military’s hand-to-hand combat system. One of these men, Vasili Oshchepkov, taught judo and karate to elite Red Army forces at the Central Red Army House. He had earned his nidan (second degree black belt) from judo’s founder, Jigaro Kano, and used some of the Osensei’s philosophy in formulating the early development of the new Russian art.

SOMBO, however, was born of native Russian and other regional styles of grappling and combat wrestling bolstered with the most useful and adaptable concepts and techniques from the rest of the world. As the unfortunate buffer between Europe and Asia, Russia had more than ample opportunities to sift through the martial skills of various invaders. Earlier Russians had experienced threats from the Vikings in the west and the Tatars and Genghis Khan’s Golden Horde from Mongolia in the east. The regional, native combat systems included in SOMBO’s genesis are Tuvin kuresh, Yakuts khapsagay, Chuvash akatuy, Georgian chidaoba, Moldavian trinte, Azeri kokh, and Uzbek kurash to name a few. The foreign influences included Dutch Self-Defense (a European version of Javanese Pentjak Silat), various styles of Catch-as Catch-Can wrestling, savate, muy thai, wu shu, jujitsu, and other martial arts of the day plus the classical Olympic sports of boxing, Greco-Roman and free-style wrestling. SOMBO even derived lunging and parrying techniques from fencing."

Would appear that Sombo is definately a MMA, thought that it was interesting that one of the founders had a BB in Judo as well.

Hey CDK what part of the world are you in? I was just curious, sounds like there are alot of sombo schools there. I'm in Minnesota and I don't think that we have any here. I heard there is a local judo club that has a sambo class but I'd be surprised if they if they taught any of the striking aspects of the art.

I'd recomend a base MA in what ever style that you could find compent instruction. I mean you might live in an area that had very good Muay Thai and a couple of crappy Judo clubs or whatever. I think that Muay Thai can be a good MMA base to if it fits your personality, of course you need to supplement with grappling too.

[CKD]

I live in Virginia but I end up travelling a lot. There are about 2 sambo schools here, one of them is the one that article came from. But since I travel a lot I see different schools. I have started out in traditional arts like Shaolin Kung fu and I also did a lot of Reality Self defense arts. I heard of BJJ and went to try it and I thought it was a great art. I did it for a long time and noticed some flaws in it, weak takedowns, and all the strikes were not meant do to damage just serve as a distraction. I went to a seminar teaching some Russian Reality Defense and was really suprised by its effectiveness. When they said this system was just a shortened down version of the Combat aspect of Sambo I checked a school out. Another reason that told me to check it out was the recent success of Sambo fighters in mma. In the early days there was no one for Sambo but now that they started entering them they were doing great. I thought the groundfighting of Sambo would be weak but found out that it had all the groundfighting of bjj and a lot of lower body submissions that I have been missing. It also had the takedowns I learned in judo and wrestling plus some new ones taken out of other regional Russian and former Soviet wrestling styles. It also had the strikes of muay thai and boxing along with eye gouges and other illegal taics. The art also included weapon defense and multiple opponent training. So now I am deciding to start concentrating on Sambo. Thats a brief history.

[jubaji]

He then said you get the groundwork equal to bjj, wrestling and judo takedowns.

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

[doubleouch]

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.