The 10 Best Traditional Martial Artists That Failed In MMA

Mixed martial arts is a sport that requires you to learn a multitude of different disciplines. Long gone are the days where a single high level grappling skill will get you a win over an experienced kickboxer. In the past 2 decades, the quality of mixed martial artists has gone through the roof, with the sport evolving extremely quickly.

You will not see a single champion on the roster who is not an exceptionally well rounded martial artist. This is not to say that you won’t have a former kickboxing world champion or former college wrestler doing well. But if they stick to these skills and do not brush up on the weaknesses of their game, things will not go too well for them in the cage.

From the list below, you can see that there are some very talented strikers and grapplers who failed to succeed in MMA, despite being the best, or near the best in the world at their own discipline. This should be a wake up call for those who think that transitioning to MMA is easy if you already have a solid skillset. Mixed martial arts is not just about learning different martial arts, but also combining them and knowing the right moments to grapple, strike, and anything else that may be necessary.

The Top 10 Traditional Martial Artists Who Failed In MMA

Wei Rui

A 64-3 kickboxer nicknamed demonblade, Wei Rui is certainly not a man many people would want to fight. Born into a poor family, Wei Rui turned to combat sports at a young age and excelled in both traditional Chinese Sanda, as well as kickboxing.

In his exemplary record, Rui has only ever been stopped once in a kickboxing bout and lost on decision twice. As kickboxing does not pay too well in Asia, it made sense at the time for Rui to take a shot at MMA.

As pretty much a pure striker, Wei Rui can blame the promoter for matching him against an unknown Iranian wrestler named Adib Nazrishoev which resulted him in being taken down and tapped with relative ease. Had Wei Rui been put against other strikers early on, he could have eased into his MMA career, rather than losing to an experienced wrestler.

Alexey Ignashov

Alexey Ignashov is a Belarussian kickboxer with an 86-22 record. There is no doubt that Ignashov has supreme power in his arms and legs having knocked out 41 of his kickboxing opponents and 1 in MMA.

Not too surprisingly, Ignashov looked like a fish out of water on the ground against opponent Shinsuke Nakamura who finished him extremely easily. The submission used was an uncontrolled forearm choke which could have been escaped by anyone who had a basic knowledge of how to regain guard whilst on the ground.

Alexandre Dantas

Having beaten BJJ legends such as Marcelo Garcia, Demian Maia, and Fernando Terere, it does not really get much better than this in sport jiu-jitsu. However, this just shows that BJJ on its own is simply not good enough to beat an experienced mixed martial artist.

Sporting a 0-3 record in MMA, Dantas got TKO’d in all 3 fights, albeit against very tough opposition. Dantas is yet another case of a skilled martial artist in his own field, being thrown in at the deep end of MMA against veterans. Needless to say, if you show up for your UFC debut, things aren’t going to go well for you when matched against someone with over 40 professional fights.

Istvan Majoros

There is a long list of super successful Olympic wrestlers who have done extremely well in the UFC, often becoming champion. This rarified atmosphere includes the likes of Daniel Cormier, Colby Covington, and Henry Cejudo. Istvan Majoros, whilst not an American, was still a gold medal winning Olympian.

Yet again, Majoros could well have been another fighter with a successful career who was put against a 14-1 Norifumi “kid” Yamamoto for his debut. As so many wrestlers have fared well in MMA, Istvan could have been built up but was instead put in against an experienced striker who wasted no time dropping him and stopping the fight from the turtle position.

Cesar Gracie

Best known for teaching the likes of Jake Shields and the Diaz brothers, Cesar Gracie is not the most famous of his family, but still relatively well known within the grappling community. Regardless of any competition experience, Gracie clearly knows how to train his fighters on the ground when it comes to an MMA setting.

With that being said, Gracie was clearly out of his depth and past his best by the time he turned 40. It was at this age when he was put up against the legendary Frank Shamrock, a man who is widely considered one of the best fighters of his generation. It didn’t take Shamrock long to end the fight either, dropping Gracie with a right hook and finishing him within 20 seconds.

Ricardo Mayorga

A two-weight boxing world champion, at one point in his career Mayorga had a 25-3 record, stopping 24 of these men without having to go to a decision. His MMA record is nowhere near this impressive with 0 wins and 3 losses.

Rather unsurprisingly, it was the grappling martial arts that led to the downfall of Mayorga. He never got to showcase any of his knockout power and was instead submitted in 2 out of his 3 fights.

This highlights the importance of a talented striker learning defensive wrestling to stay on their feet at the very least.

Minoru Kimura

Minoru Kimura is a very talented striker. Of his 36 wins, 28 of these have come by TKO, which won’t surprise you as he is the protege of MMA knockout legend Wanderlei Silva.

Kimura found himself in the unenvious position of being in the middle of a crossfire between Silva and Charles “Krazyhorse” Bennett. This feud between the two fighters led to Kimura having his MMA debut against the 60 fight vetera, who was well past his best at this point.

The actual fight was one of the quickest ever finishes with Kimura trying a flying knee at the start of the match, only for Krazyhorse to punch him in the face midair and win the fight by TKO.

Gokhan Saki

After having an extremely solid kickboxing career with 81 wins and 16 losses, the move to MMA looked like a natural progression for Gokhan Saki, especially when considering that he was able to TKO Anderson Silva within this ruleset.

However, as you may have already guessed, the MMA career of Saki did not go to plan. Despite there being considerable hype around his UFC signing, Saki went 1-1 in the promotion and 0-1 in another.

Not only was it his poor MMA record, but also the fashion in which Saki lost that surprised fans. He was not taken down by wrestlers and submitted, but instead was dropped by punches from a kickboxing style. 3 fights were enough to show that Saki was not cut out for MMA despite being a great kickboxer.

James Toney

Former IBF, WBU & IBO title holder James Toney had a very short stay in the world of MMA. For some reason, Toney decided he would like to try MMA for the first time aged 44 and even more bizarrely decided that this would be against 30 fight veteran and former heavyweight champion Randy Couture.

As you would expect, things did not go well for Toney, who was quickly taken down to the floor and submitted via head and arm choke. Even if Toney had trained MMA for several years, it’s extremely unlikely he could have ever reached the skill level of Couture, so to jump in against him as a debut fight was purely insane.

Marcelo Garcia

There is no doubt about it that Marcelo Garcia is one of the greatest BJJ practitioners of all time. Having won ADCC 4 times, as well as worlds 5 times. Not only this, Garcia has a reputation of being able to beat fighters who are a lot bigger and stronger than him by getting underneath them with X-guard and choking them from the back.

Surprisingly, however these skills did not translate well to MMA. In his only MMA fight against Kim Dae-Won (who has an 11-7 record), Garcia was able to take him down very easily and get to his back. Instead of the finish everyone was expecting, Garcia was unable to secure a rear naked choke and could not finish the fight. In the second round, Kim came out swinging and hurt Garcia badly. Unfortunately one of his blows caused a cut so bad that Garcia could not continue.

This is a stark reminder that BJJ is not a be-all and end-all skill in MMA. Garcia is one of the best grapplers on the planet and was unable to finish a mid-level fighter despite his vastly superior skills.