Unlike in other combat sports in which this practice is normally discouraged, in MMA right handed southpaws are remarkably common. In fact if I were to compete I too would be a right handed southpaw. In my case I'm heavily left footed and so prefer to have a left leg as my power leg and my right hand for a quick jab. However, there must be other reasons for this phenomenon. There are many right handed southpaws such as Anderson Silva, Lyoto Machida, Chael Sonnen and many others. Can anyone think of any other examples and reasons why?

I know that as Machida is from a karate background it's likely that he's good in both orthodox and southpaw and his stance is more well suited to his kicking, but for other guys I'm not really sure. Perhaps due to the southpaw stance being the right handed stance in both wrestling, BJJ and Judo. This would suggest to me that many of these fighters would be more comfortable fighting out of the stance that they are used to rather than switching stances permanently to the more kickboxing/boxing way of thinking, though I know that some fighters i.e. Matt Hughes were well known to switch to Southpaw when he wanted to do takedowns sometimes.

Please leave your opinions in the comments.