As long as someone is active on the ground I enjoy watching the ground game and find the fights interesting and exciting.

Too damn good!

He made a controversial attention-getting statement to start the article, then backed away from it by the end. Cheap, but he got us to read it.

He’s definitely not calling for wrestlers to stop wrestling. It sounds as though he’s saying “hey, this phase of wrestling domination is getting boring, so get some takedown defense.”

His definition of “martial arts” is weird. A system of techniques used to beat people up is a martial art. e.g. Wrestling.

It’s the same cycle the sport has always followed. A style dominates, people figure out how to avoid it, that style has a lull (doesn’t become ineffective, just isn’t as dominant), a new style emerges, and the cycle repeats.

It’s the way wrestling is viewed by judges that makes it a little disconcerting:

In a landscape where decisions like the Bas Rutten-Kevin Randleman fight seem almost mythically impossible, I worry how the “casuals”, upon whom MMA’s development and growth crucially rely, will view the second Era of the Wrestler (following Mark Coleman, et. al). I’ve lately heard, “If you don’t want to be taken down, learn takedown defense.” But a great kickboxer could drill TDD for two, maybe three years and would still be at the mercy of a GSP or King Mo. While I don’t accuse the aforementioned of doing so, what’s to stop world-class wrestlers from coming into MMA and laying on top of well-rounded, elite athletes who just don’t have the same wrestling and still taking victories?

Could this discredit the sport? I don’t think so, but it would certainly regress the action-packed reputation that has facilitated MMA’s growth. People might say wrestling can be dynamic and exciting, which I won’t dispute, but I would add that you certainly don’t see the NCAA Wrestling Championships doing gangbusters on PPV. GSP vs. Hardy could never have done for MMA what Griffin vs. Bonnar did, despite the exponentially higher skills on display in the former matchup

I read Schiavello’s article.All it did was confirm for me what I always long suspected-that he’s an elitist snob.“Hey look,I know the names of these obscure martial arts guys,and the proper Japanese terms for submissions.What,you don’t?You TUF newb!!!”

Schiavello sounds like he wishes for MMA to be just Shootboxing ? Pretty much kickboxing with MMA gloves/5oz gloves

especially because he actually comes to BE, he has in the past shown a bias for K1. I think this article betrays some of that bias as well.

One of the things that made Machida’s win of the LHW title so great was that made people question, at least for a while, what skill sets were really necessary to be a champion MMA fighter.

For every great wrestler who want to take a fight to the ground and dominate from that position, there are guys like Chuck Liddell who used legendary takedown defense to keep the fight standing and KTFO people.

Similar to what Brent said above, its both cyclical and evolutionary.

I’m not talking about high school age, I’m talking about 5-7 years old. Most top level, dominant, wrestlers start when they are very young and the work ethic, toughness, and will get instilled in them as the years go on. Now, only the elite wrestle beyond the high school level in either freestyle/greco folympic wrestling or college level wrestling, but for those who don’t they still have the basics that they have practiced everyday; takedowns, sprawls, and dominating position on top.

Wrestling as a base is also easier to start with because it is easier to get started in. Kids wrestling clubs aren’t expensive and once kids are in high school wrestling is supported by their school and their coach is paid by their school and usually is a teacher or has another full time job outside of the school system. It seems to me that most Boxing, BJJ, karate, tae kwan do, and judo instructors use their school as their main base of income and that means that to attend these classes it cost more for the parents of the kids, hence; wrestling is more accessible to the masses and more people will have this base if they choose to get involved in MMA.

*This is in regards to most wrestlers who have had success in MMA, Rampage didn’t start until high school and GSP didn’t start focusing on wrestling until what? the past 3-4 years? There are others who have picked it up at a later age in life but most of the wrestlers in MMA (i.e. Koscheck, Matt Hughes, Jon Jones, Matt Hammill, Chuck Liddell, Frank Edgar, Tito) started when they were real little.

The current dominance of high-level wrestlers is just part of the evolution of the sport. It’s similar to what we saw with upper-level BJJ in the early days of the UFC. An elite BJJ player could dominate a lot of opponents who lacked knowledge/skill in BJJ. However, as the sport developed over the past several years, nearly every upper-level fighter in MMA has at least some functional understanding of BJJ, at least from the perspective of defending against subs and positional advances. Eventually fighters who don’t have an extensive wrestling background will have to develop a certain level of competency, at least in whatever aspect of wrestling best complements the rest of their game, or they will not be able to reach the highest levels of MMA competition.

So the question is just wrong to begin with.

The only way wrestling or boxing isn’t a martial art is if you define a martial art as a war skill designed for killing. Such a definition would also exclude BJJ, kickboxing, muay thai, etc, since those are primarily sports. Only military training would then be a true martial art.

No knees to the head bring another problem… you can shoot over and over for a single / double and you don’t get much punishment from missing them. I recall in Pride where a good sprawl would put the lazy double leg attempt in a bad situation where you would start eating knees after knees to your mouth.