How would Bas Rutten do in MMA today?

JustBleed69

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How would he have done against the modern HW and LHW divisions of today?

He would definitely have to work on his TDD, but Bas was a bad dude. One of the best strikers in the sports history.
 
If he gets to keep those boots on he gets in the top 5 no doubt.
 
Awesome stand up, slick submissions but piss poor TDD. With a good camp to help with the wrasslin he would be one to watch.
 
Would do well at MW I'd say.

He's not a terribly big guy by todays standards so he wouldn't be a HW, although a pretty good athlete aswell as striker. I mostly watched his Pancrase KO's, so I don't know how good he is in the Submission Wrestling category.

I do know that his grappling game was pretty bad when first started in Pancrase... although to be fair, he was doing, basically a derivative of MMA back in the NHB days...
 
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Complete fighter for his time... might need some wrestling. But a contender if not champion in a weak division.. Thinking in 2018 he would fight at 205.
 
good

the divisions are weak and have been for some time so hes top 5 easily
 
Is this assuming he is a healthy young version with old training or healthy young version with modern training?
 
Hardly any at LHW or HW ever try to grapple these days. Everyone wants to stand and bang and that is his realm, so I would say he would do pretty good.
 
it's a different era. the talent pool is crazy deeper than when bas fought. he'd have zero chance
 
He'd bangadabang on these motherfuckers.I can see him jump right in for Volkan and take out Gustafsson.
 
I often ask myself what if they took the gloves out of MMA and made it pure bareknuckle? But don't do it like Pacnrase, where you could only slap.

I say, let dudes punch at their own discretion. Potentially break your hand, or hurt your opponent with a well placed shot.

It's not like the elbow, knee or shin/foot is protected, so why the hand? Makes it a more dangerous weapon by making it more durable, doesn't it?
 
Bas would do well and could beat most in the UFC except Khabib. Khabib has too much GNP for him.
 
Bas is such an OG.

He started in Japan 2 months before the UFC was a even a thing.

You could say he was doing MMA before MMA existed.
 
I know people want to think he would somehow do super well, but if we have learned anything from watching MMA over the years it’s that each new cohort of fighters is almost universally better than any of the previous cohorts in terms of pure skill level. The only exception to that would be the current cohort of fighters. I think they are actually less skilled than the previous one, but are typical much larger than they are. But that’s a debate for another time.
 
if he came up training he would be top 10 at MW/LHW
 
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