What martial arts does Kamaru Usman know?

Kamaru Usman is a household name within the MMA world. Also known as The Nigerian Nightmare, he made a name for himself for his incredible wrestling skills. Usman would use these abilities to become the UFC Welterweight champion and defend his title multiple times well into his 30s.

With over 20 professional wins, he forced his name into the conversation of UFC greats. In fact, some even claim that Usman is the best MMA fighter of all time. Although this claim is often contested, it shows just how good he is at fighting. In this article, we shall go over the martial arts skills that Usman uses to win his bouts.

Wrestling

By far, Kamaru Usman is best known for his wrestling and has wrestled for most of his life. He began during his sophomore year in college where he finished with an impressive 53-3 win rate. Such was the dominance of his wrestling, is that he even did trials for the US Olympic team. Sadly for Usman, he failed but this led to his eventual MMA career.

If you’ve watched Usman’s fights then you’ll often see that they follow a familiar pattern. This is because he can easily out-wrestle his opponents due to his superior technical advantages. Typically, he opts for double and single-leg takedowns and can make them look effortless at times.

This could be seen with his title defense against Jorge Masvidal where he successfully took down Masvidal again and again. Due to his power and strength, this makes his takedown abilities even stronger. In true, modern MMA fashion, Usman mixes up his takedowns with striking to keep his opponents guessing.

One of the main benefits of using wrestling is that it can give you endless cardio due to the intensity of the training. Furthermore, it also develops a tough mindset that means wrestlers will never quit or give up. This is particularly important for Usman’s title fights as they often go five rounds deep, instead of the typical three used in normal UFC bouts. Overall, it’s fair to say that Kamaru Usman’s fighting style is based on freestyle wrestling.

Boxing

In his earlier UFC career, Usman was seen as a one-dimensional wrestler who was great at grappling but struggled in other martial arts. Like all MMA greats, Usman would go on to develop the weaker areas of his game, such as boxing. Although he wasn’t known as a great boxer, this is probably the one area that Usman improved the most.

In his final fight against Masvidal – he successfully knocked out the Cuban and proved his versatility in the process. This was shocking to some as Masvidal was known for his iron jaw and was notoriously tough to knock out. Up until then, most of Masvidal’s defeats had happened by decision or submission. Having said this, he also defeated Gilbert Burns by TKO. In other words, it would be unfair to dismiss Usman’s boxing skills.

So, even though Usman isn’t the best boxer ever – he is still decent at striking. Sometimes with champions, people overlook their game and underplay certain aspects of it.

Kamaru Usman is a BJJ black belt

Interestingly, Kamaru Usman’s one career loss was by a rear naked choke against Jose Caraces which hints that BJJ may be his weakness. He has also only ever won by one submission throughout his career. However, since then he has achieved a black belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.

Although Usman very rarely uses his BJJ to submit his opponents, he does use it to control on the ground. As the famous BJJ saying goes, position before submission. This is taken literally by Usman who will very rarely finish his opponents but knows how to hold dominant positions on the floor, such as mount or side control. So, why go for a submission if you can win by ground and pound and risk losing a top position? This is very much the philosophy of Kamaru Usman who has a modern, risk-free approach to BJJ in the cage.

In his first fight against Leon Edwards, he was also caught in a triangle choke but calmly defended it by maintaining good posture. The fact he has only been submitted once in his career also speaks volumes about his defensive BJJ. In short, Usman’s BJJ may not be particularly exciting but it’s certainly effective when it counts.

Conclusion

To sum up, Kamaru Usman is a versatile martial artist who has worked on perfecting his craft over tens of years. However, it wasn’t always the case. For many years, he was primarily a wrestler. This shows his open-minded approach to martial arts and how he’s stayed at the top of the game as a champion. At the same time, if you were to pigeonhole Usman’s main style then he would always be described as a wrestler before anything else.

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