The 13 Most Influential Fighters In Mixed Martial Arts History
Mixed martial arts is still a very young sport that is evolving every year. Just a few decades ago, martial artists who entered the UFC typically had a single style they trained in, whilst knowing a few basics from other disciplines. At the start of the UFC in particular, almost nobody knew how to fight on the ground or wrestle, with most competitors being almost pure strikers.
Until the popularity of mixed martial arts grew, there was a general perception in the west that a good boxer was the ultimate fighter, with no other skills being necessary. Over time, we have seen this change as modern day fighters are now experienced with at least some competence in striking, stand-up grappling, and groundwork.
The fighters listed below have been pioneers in either a single or multiple forms of martial arts. Whilst some of them are not the greatest fighters of all time, they are all extremely accomplished. This does not mean they are the best within their art either, but it does mean that they were either the first, or amongst the first people to change the landscape of MMA. Many of the fighters listed have inspired other fighters from future generations to evolve the sport even further.
Please note that although each fighter on the list is clearly a mixed martial artist, some of them are more well rounded than others. This is not to take away any of their skills, but each fighter has been rated on which style they represented the most. You cannot become a modern UFC champion without having a mixed skillset, but this does not mean you will not have a dominant style you are most comfortable with.
Table of Contents
The Most Influential Mixed Martial Artists By Each Style
Oleg Taktarov – Sambo
Whilst sambo is a relatively well known martial art by fans of fighting, the general population has no idea what it is. Back in 1995 at UFC 6, Russian martial arts were still very secretive due to the lack of internet and language barrier, so nobody really knew what to expect.
When Taktarov defeated the much larger Tank Abbott by rear naked choke to win the tournament, people were not as shocked as they were in UFC 1, but still stood up and paid attention. Sambo combines a mixture of throws that were not really used by western fighters at the time, with leg locks which are still somewhat under utilized in MMA, but gradually becoming more popular.
Taktarov has 17 wins, 6 of which came by way of leglock, which is an incredibly high percentage. Whilst Khabib Nurmagomedov is often touted as a sambo specialist, he uses far more freestyle wrestling. Not only this, but Taktarov was the first fighter who highlighted the skills and lethality of sambo on the world stage for the first time.
Ronda Rousey – Judo
Before Ronda Rousey entered the Octagon, everyone already knew that judo was a fairly effective martial art, but they didn’t know just quite how good it was. There have been many martial artists in MMA history using judo to great effect, but none more so than Ronda Rousey.
A former judo Olympian, Rousey had already had success outside of the cage but was extremely dominant during her stint in the UFC. Coached by the legendary duo of Gene LeBell and Gokor Chivichyan, it’s really no wonder that a woman with the talent of Ronda Rousey rose to the top of the rankings undefeated.
Rousey had an extremely one-dimensional style in the cage which was both her success and downfall. Almost every opponent she faced would receive a variation of a hip throw and then be armbarred on the floor in the first round. Whilst this had been done in MMA before, it requires a much more advanced skillset for you to know what your opponent is going to do and have them do it anyway.
Ultimately the striking of Rousey was simply not good enough to stay as the UFC champion, but nevertheless, she will be remembered as one of the greatest female fighters of all time who generated a lot of interest in the sport.
Cung Le – Taekwondo & Sanshou
Taekwondo was regarded as a relatively useless martial art in MMA before Cung Le began to beat UFC legends with the style. Famous commentator Joe Rogan detailed how he used to be laughed at when he told others that spinning kicks would be very useful inside the octagon.
In the modern era we see a variety of spinning techniques, which are somewhat medium risk with a very high payoff if they connect with the desired target. If it were not for Cung Le, it’s possible that these movements would still be regarded as traditional styles only and not used in the cage.
Successful modern fighters such as Conor McGregor and MVP have used spinning kicks to great effect, as well as many other fighters at the lower levels of MMA. Had there not been a mix up with the drug testing of Cung Le in the UFC, he could well have had a longer career and performed many more spectacular knockouts with his spinning techniques.
Wanderlei Silva – Muay Thai
Aptly nicknamed “The Axe Murderer”, Wanderlei Silva was a brutal fighter as this name would suggest. His aggressive, yet controlled style of Muay Thai was not really something mixed martial arts had seen before. Due to his toughness and knockout power, Silva was much more willing to trade blows with an opponent than simply try and not get hit. Of course, this is a very unusual style in a sport that ends the moment you get knocked out.
This is highlighted in his professional record which features only 13 decision of submission wins/losses out of a total of 50 fights. The other 37 were all stopped by KO or TKO to either Silva or his opponent.
Unfortunately, due to his super aggressive style of Thai boxing, Silva has been diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy. Even though his style was both groundbreaking and entertaining, this may be a lesson to other fighters about what their objectives are in both the cage and life.
Bas Rutten – Kickboxing & Leglocks
One of the most well rounded oldschool fighters, Bas Rutten ended his career with a 22 win streak after being fed up with losing to submissions. A pure kickboxer, Rutten spent time studying submission grappling after being tapped 3 times and never lost again.
Rutten was hugely influential in many ways, the first of which being his open handed palm strikes. Closed punches were mostly illegal throughout various Japanese promotions at the time, so this was not an option. However, this did not stop Rutten at all who managed to knock out several opponents with palm strikes and knockdown many others. There were not many people who could hit as hard as Bas Rutten who is one of the most deadly strikes in the history of MMA, even when compared to modern day fighters.
The most infamous strike of Rutten was the liver shot, which causes the shutdown of the body’s autonomic nervous system. Whilst this is widely known in a variety of combat sports now, during the 1990’s nobody really knew about the physiology behind such strikes.
Perhaps most impressive was that Rutten was one of the first westerners to utilize leglocks. In modern jiu-jitsu, heel hooks have only really become popular in the late 2010s, whereas Rutten was tapping opponents in MMA in 1995, so was truly ahead of his time.
Lyoto Machida – Karate
A true traditional martial artist, Lyoto Machida was a truly unique UFC champion and almost a modern fighter mixed with a throwback to the origins of shotokan karate. By knocking out Randy Couture with a crane form kick, Machida cemented his place in the history books and did something which people thought was somewhat impossible.
This was not just a one-off incident either. Machida defeated numerous MMA legends with a variety of extremely high level karate techniques that simply weren’t really used in the sport. Trained by his Japanese father, who himself was a shotokan master, Machida mastered a variety of movements and a style that nobody else had.
Fighters were already accustomed to each other managing distance, as well as defending a brainless barrage of non-stop punches. However, Machidas style was neither of these and sat somewhere in the middle. He was effectively able to make very measured and controlled rushes in and out of his opponent’s range which allowed him to knock so many people unconscious.
There will likely not be another fighter like Machida since his style was so original and unusual. For a while, he changed the way people fought in the UFC as there was nobody quite like him.
Khabib Nurmagomedov – Sambo & Freestyle Wrestling
Perhaps the most dominant UFC fighter of all time, Khabib Nurmagomedov was a true mixed martial artist with the strongest skill set of grappling ever seen inside a cage. During his career Nurmagomedov had a perfect record of 29-0 and only ever lost a single round on the judges scorecards in all of his fights.
Most commonly associated with sambo, Nurmagomedov actually used more freestyle wrestling than he did sambo to dominate his opponents, but could switch seamlessly between the two martial arts.
Nurmagomedov is one of the most influential fighters ever due to his relentless and unstoppable takedowns. Whilst most modern day fighters prefer to use kickboxing as an attack and wrestle defensively, Khabib did not care about this. Regardless of how good his opponent’s wrestling defense was, he always found a way to drag them to the mat, keep them there and end the fight with either a submission or ground and pound.
In short, Khabib was not a one dimensional fighter, but it was no secret what his game plan was going into each and every fight. Regardless of this, he was still able to dominate in 100% of his fights and almost make it look easy. Never before has a wrestling style been so dominant in the UFC.
Anderson Silva – Everything
Despite having a nose dive at the end of his career, Anderson Silva is without a doubt one of the greatest mixed martial artists of all time. Nicknamed the spider, Silva could attack you with any of his limbs and was extremely efficient in Muay Thai, Wing Chun, Taekwondo, Wrestling and Brazilian jiu-jitsu. For a fighter that had the majority of his matches during the 2000s, there simply were not any other men that were able to combine this many martial arts into a winning style at the highest level.
When you think of Anderson Silva as a fighter, he cannot be pinned down to one specific martial art. Therefore he has become somewhat of both an idol and role model to aspiring fighters for learning many different disciplines, as well as how to put them together efficiently.
If there was any doubt about Silva as a mixed martial artist, he still holds the record for the longest reign of any champion which included 16 wins over a 2457 day period.
Kazushi Sakuraba – Catch Wrestling
After UFC was viewed around the world, people began to realize that grappling (specifically on the ground) was an extremely useful skill set within mixed martial arts. The success of the Gracie family and Royce in particular had put Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu on the map and people from all over the world were looking to learn it.
Sakuraba was trained by legendary catch wrestler Billy Robinson and was able to defeat Renzo, Royler and Royce Gracie, as well as many other very large opponents. He was able to do this by nullifying some of the positional advantages that BJJ fighters mistakenly thought they had by specifically using the kimura (or double wrist lock) grip.
Not only this, but at the time Sakuraba was fighting, leg locks by conventional BJJ fighters were very primitive and Sakuraba was able to out maneuver almost all of his opponents on the floor, particularly with kneebars.
Overall Sakuraba was a fan favorite and had an extremely entertaining style, often trying to jump over the guard of BJJ players and trying to kick them in the head! Sakuraba is responsible for the evolution of submission grappling in mixed martial arts to a very high degree.
Jon Jones – Everything
Jon Jones is without a doubt one of the greatest fighters of all time. Despite his legal troubles and what you think of him as a person, he has been a supremely dominating fighter with a 26-1 record. His only loss comes from a series of 12-6 elbow strikes which many fans, commentators, and even fighters did not know was illegal until they took a closer look at the rules.
If you watch the fights of Jon Jones or even look at his finishes, you are able to see he is an extremely well rounded fighter – or arguably the most well rounded fighter the world has ever seen. His wrestling, striking and ground abilities are all at the highest level. Almost inhuman, Jones does not really possess any weaknesses at all. Many opponents have tried to find a chink in his armor, but none have prevailed.
Overall, Jones pioneered and mastered the art of not being taken to the ground. His defensive wrestling alongside his striking ability make him fearsome to just about every other fighter in the UFC. It took 14 fights for Jones to be taken down – which is simply unprecedented. In modern day MMA many fighters look to replicate this style and keep fights standing as much as they can.
Dan Severn – Wrestling
Dan Severn fell into mixed martial arts after twice falling short of reaching the US Olympic wrestling team. At the time, wrestling was not considered to be a combat sport worth mentioning and Severn practically had to beg the UFC to be included on one of their cards. By the time Severn competed, it would be the UFC who were begging him to come back, eventually retiring with a 101-19 record.
Severn was the first amateur wrestler to win a UFC title. After this, there have been countless wrestlers, both from the USA and other countries who have dominated in the UFC for many years. Thanks to Dan Severn, wrestling is now considered to be a 100% essential skill whilst in the cage. This does not necessarily mean it has to be used offensively, but if fighters are not able to shut down a competent wrestler, they spend all of their time on the ground and lose the fight.
Without Severn, wrestling would have very likely appeared at some point in the UFC but would have taken a lot longer to catch on as a primary attribute of all fighters.
Frank Shamrock – Everything
Although most of his fights were in the mid 1990s, Frank Shamrock was one of the first men to understand that he must train across a variety of martial arts in order to be the best.
Shamrock trained at his brothers’ infamous Lions Den gym, shoot fighting, jeet kune do, kickboxing, and a variety of leglocks. Other than the aforementioned Bas Rutten, nobody at this time was really a clear cut mixed martial artist. Many men knew how to box or grapple, but they did not really know both and a combination of other martial arts.
In summary, Frank Shamrock is an influential martial artist since he and others changed the way fighting was done in the mid 90’s. Without people like Shamrock, MMA would have likely remained a fighting style with a specialized skillset rather than a broad diverse one for a very long time.
Royce Gracie – BJJ
Before Royce Gracie entered UFC 1, unless you were an MMA fan of PRIDE, it’s very unlikely you would have heard of Brazilian jiu-jitsu. Not only this, but if you’d never trained a grappling martial art, you may have thought it was a complete waste of time – and you wouldn’t have been alone.
The casual fan was extremely shocked when Royce Gracie won UFC 1 and then proved this was no fluke by winning both UFC 3 & 4.
If you weren’t watching at the time, it is quite difficult to put into words just how much these results shook up the world of combat sports. Since then there have been multiple UFC champions who were specialists in BJJ, as well as every current fighter having competence in the martial art which nobody outside of Brazil knew in the 1980s.
When looking at martial arts from a historical perspective, the rise of Brazilian jiu-jitsu is meteoric and happened extremely quickly. Not all of the credit can go to Royce Gracie, but there is nobody really any more influential than him due to the massive exposure of his tournament wins.
