I think pretty much everyone agrees that if you had one background upon which to create The Perfect Fighter, he’d start off being an elite national competitor in collegiate wrestling. This is due to a few main factors, I think, but I could be missing some.

First, wrestling is in the subconscious of the entire USA culture. Most people don’t know the rules, except that someone is trying to pin someone else. But pretty much every high school has a wrestling program, so everyone has some exposure to it during their formative years. Also, complain all you want, but the toughest guys are generally not balling in the winter months of high school, they’re out on the mats. That garners recognition right there.

Second, wrestling is the ultimate Meat Grinder for removing people who don’t have strong willpower and a minimum athletic makeup. If you’re not at least average strength, you’ll fail in wrestling. If you’ve got poor cardio, you might as well not strap on the headgear. It doesn’t seem like much, but six minutes locked in mortal combat with someone who is at least as physically gifted and determined as you are is more than the vast majority of people are capable of enduring. So the wrestling base ensures that the person has a minimum athletic profile, a strong will to maintain the work ethic required to maintain competitiveness, and a basic background in hand-to-hand combat.

Third, and this is something I’ve only recently formulated into words (at least in a way I can convey to others), wrestling is about controlling your opponent. It is literally about subjugating another person’s entire body (and mind) to your will in order to dominate them as completely as possible. This is a mindset which we see play out time and time again in the octagon, or whatever the designated terrain. Wrestlers can control, and in fact revel in controlling, the terrain of the fight. So many times we see a fighter say “Wherever this fight goes, I’m ready. If it’s on the ground, I’m dangerous there, if it’s on the feet, I’ll knock him out” blah blah blah. You very rarely hear a wrestler say this, and why? Because the wrestler is focused on actually controlling where the fight takes place. At its core, BJJ is a style which answers the questions “What do I do if I find myself in a terrible position? How can I achieve victory from a position of weakness?” Wrestling answers the question “Can you make sure you are always in a position of strength, regardless of your opponent’s abilities?”

I know that’s a tirade, and I’m sorry. Bottom line, wrestling is the best base for a fighter, if for no other reason than the different mentality which wrestling confers. But there are specimens like BJ Penn for whom the background is utterly irrelevant. He is a gifted physical specimen (flexibility like his actually grants abnormally high strength, since the muscles are capable of contracting that much further) and has the heart of a fighter. He succeeds because of who he is. Lyoto Machida succeeds with the abnormal backgrounds of Karate and Sumo because of who he is.

I hate BJ’s personality, but that man is a pleasure to watch fight.