MMANation's Luke Thomas spoke with the United States' great wrestling talent Jordan Burroughs. There has been a lot of discussion regarding if or when Burroughs would consider making the transition to MMA. Burroughs was able to seamlessly transition from college wrestling to the international scene and is the very definition of "world class". Luke asked Jordan his thoughts on the current crop of wrestlers in MMA and if he had any intentions of becoming a fighter in the future. 

Luke Thomas: Talk to me about wrestling in MMA. We had a guy who fought recently in Strikeforce. He was a little bit older, Yoel Romero, Cuban guy who won the [silver] medal in the Olympics. He couldn't take down a guy who had no wrestling background whatsoever. In your judgement, why does that happen?

Jordan Burroughs: I'm not sure. I mean, other people excel at different positions. Maybe that wasn't a strong point, sticking on his feet. Maybe just because he was an Olympic medalist doesn't mean he's great on his feet. He might keep good positioning and be hard to score but wasn't very offensive. It's one of those things, we've got guys that are very offensive and can take down anyone and we've got guys that don't shoot at all but are very hard to take down. It's one of those things, you've got to decide what you're good at.

Luke Thomas: I'm gonna ask you this point blank. Do you have interest in MMA? Maybe you want to win a gold medal and some Olympic world titles first. I'm not asking for a timeline. Do you have interest as a potential career move to fight in mixed martial arts?

Jordan Burroughs: Yeah, definitely, I definitely want to fight after I'm done wrestling. I want to wrestle ‘til 2017. John Smith from Oklahoma State was the greatest American wrestler of all time. He was a four time world champ and two time Olympic champ so  for me, in order to catch him or surpass him, I'll have to wrestle every Olympics and every world championship from now to 2017 and that's the goal to win all of those and once I'm done with that, to try and get into MMA.

If Jordan is serious and giving wrestling another five years before making the transition there will be some questions about how well he'll develop as a fighter. While wrestling is the best base to begin a MMA career, there will be a massive crop of fighters that will be extremely well rounded. He obviously has the skills to get the fight to the ground but how he'll survive with a high level grappler is unknown.