What do I need to have good MMA wrestling? For someone that never wrestled! (Like GSP

Actually Stipe was trying to avoid the clinch, which is how he got knocked out.

DC got the clinch with a modified 1-2-3 combo. But instead of a left hook, he goes for a collar tie. Then he limp arms to an underhook.


Not minding the clinch is not exactly the same as looking to stay in the clinch.

Stipe didn't mind clinching with Cormier on his terms (he was beating him up against the cage for instance), and he wasn't allergic to falling into the clinch either (which would have influenced the character of striking exchanges, see for instance Thompson vs Woodley).

If someone gets an advantageous position on you escaping and resetting things to neutral is generally a safe low risk tactical approach.

Stipe decided to push out when Cormier got an underhook; Cormier, as he mentioned himself however, had done homework, and knew that in past bouts Stipe had a habit of not throwing off the break like many fighters, some defensive irresponsibility, and trusted that if he took a big shot it would pay off, totally reversing the course of a fight that up to then even in the first few minutes looked like he was barely hanging onto.
 
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Chael Sonnen says that the single leg is disappearing from mma and that it will only exist for real wrestlers. The double is the money maker. The single might be more for fun for you.

You will want a couple of sprawl counters, like the sit-out, or an alternate finish for your double you can do when you get sprawled on but maintain your posture.

Guess I was wrong about this.
 
Guess I was wrong about this.


It's rarely ever anything so dramatic given the time frames, but i don't think he's totally wrong either.

You gotta look at it generationally; people mostly tend to keep doing what they've been doing to a large degree, barring a few exceptions. You usually have to wait till one cohort retires and a new one takes the top slots to see the true extent of the ignorance and degeneration, hard won traditions of knowledge and wisdom and experience accrued painstakingly over long years suddenly lost what new changes might have actually happened in how people do things once they start coaching.
 
The level of wrestling in MMA is relatively high. Everyone is telling you to just go practice wrestling which is obvious, but specifically you need someone who can teach you chain wrestling.

Being able to transition from one technique to another is key to having effective wrestling in MMA because even the fighters at the lowest levels of MMA know how to execute basic offensive and defensive wrestling techniques.
 
George has been training with Canadian Olympic wrestlers for 10 years, not sure how many years wrestling before that, and he is a off the charts for strength/conditioning/athleticism. I don't know if we will ever see another non-wrestler that can out wrestle people like GSP can. So just train as much as you can with the best people you can for several years and good things happen.
Yeah man. GSP may not have wrestled as a kid but he went way out of his way to make up for it. Not only did/does he train with the top freestyle team in Canada, but he spent a lot of time in a DI wrestling room here in the states as well (University of Northern Colorado). On top of that he had private lessons with world champ and Olympic medalist Guiva Sissouri. Combine that with world class bjj training and a deep bag of tricks from kyokushin karate. He really is/was an amazing wrestler.
 
Also how to do various rides, also more of a US folk thing (AFAIK, I could be wrong, but I've seen very little riding in the international styles).
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No, your right. No riding in Olympic style wrestling. In those sports the top and bottom wrestlers have very different objectives than American folkstylers. In Olympic style the guy on top has a few seconds to turn his opponent with a gutwrench, leg lace (FS only), front headlock, etc. The guy on bottom really just has to stay belly down and wait for the stand up.
 
I don't know if we will ever see another non-wrestler that can out wrestle people like GSP can
The only guy that is comparable that I can think of are Damian Maia. But like GSP he was already a world class grappled/combat athlete and like GSP he had access to world class training. Maia spent a lot of time at Edge wrestling with NCAA/Freestyle champs and a lot of time at Overtime Wrestling with some of the best coaches and wrestlers in the country. Robert Whittaker is also putting in the work but until we see more offensive wrestling we don't know how much its paying off.
 
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