How Would Today's Top Kickboxers Do In MMA?

Based on their styles in kickboxing?
Saki has quick hips, he might have good “natural wrestling”.
Kyotaro has this hit and run style that might work.
Hari fights kind of flat footed, so he would probably land on his ass often.
Spong looks like he can do whatever and be good at it.

It’s hard to tell, really. They all would probably do better in boxing. Petrosyan, Kyshenko have great hands, Floyd Maywether Senior already said that he can make a star out of Spong.
Thai fighters probably wouldn’t try to crossover ( I can think of two who did: Malaipet not successfully, Rambaa Somdet somewhat successfully).

He was really great in MMA (probably a top five heavyweight all time) but he wasn’t necessarily an elite kickboxer (even though he has some pretty dope wins).

Assuming that the top kickboxers will be the successful ones isn’t necessarily the case. We see a lot in MMA that guys who are elite in one sport (grappling or striking) don’t necessarily have as much success are guys who are elite at that discipline in the sport of MMA.

Cro Cop did what a lot of Mirko’s kickboxing contemporaries couldn’t do, stuff Coleman and beat the fuck out of him.

The different weight classes mean a guy like Spong who already trains MMA guys might have more chance for a title, and some of the quicker dynamic guys like Kemayo and Karaev would be exciting. Just looking at the 2010 final for example though alot of those guy like Schilt, Aerts, Mighty Mo, Le Banner seem to be either too old or put off by some bad MMA experience, or would rather do Pro Wrestling and get a paycheck that way instead-fair enough to em but better a bad Mixed Martial Artist than a bad pro wrestler. I can’t remember who but there was an interview on BE not long ago saying that striking in MMA hadn’t really advanced as much as grappling, perhaps that’s one reason why wrestling is seem as such a good base.

Seeing some of the variation in KOs with dynamic kicks that just wouldn’t seem appropriate in the recent past, as well as guys who are supposed to have fantastic striking exposed by people with for example, great footwork and fight strategies maybe shows there’s still a long way to go in that department

….I assume he has no ground game, but keep him away from the wrestlers and he would be KO’ing some people for sure….

Raymond Daniels got choked out by a basically unknown fighter in something like 2 minutes.

And he is a bad, bad mofo.

Check out his highlights

The guys he’s KOing in the point fighting matches are high level black belts and Olympic medalists in Kempo/Tae Kwon Do/Shotokahn etc.

It sucks but I think only a few guys, like Spong who actually train with or even have access to world class MMA camps with great high level MMA wrestlers have a chance.

There are a lot of seriously elite level kickboxers who have talked about making this transition in the past year – Tyrone Spong, Gokhan Saki, Andy Souwer – and while I would hate to lose any of them from kickboxing, it would be interesting to see someone like that in MMA.

One good example to watch is Cosmo Alexandre. He’s a Muay Thai fighter from Brazil – very good and among the elite in the world in his weight class (77kg). He’s been training MMA and was signed by Bellator last year where he’s 1-1. I’m intrigued to see how he does from here.