Gable Steveson has recently described a shift toward what he calls “MMA wrestling” – a hybrid skill set that blends takedowns, cage work, foot sweeps, and submission awareness into one system.
Here is what he had to say on the topic:
I feel like when a lot of guys, a lot of D1 wrestlers come to MMA, they kind of don’t make the switch of how to take the right shot and how to finish the right shot and how to use your feet to trip their feet out on the cage.
And if you get stuck in a guillotine, how do you move from that spot?
For Steveson, fighters like Islam Makhachev and Khamzat Chimaev embody this evolution:
I think you see the guys that are doing it best, the Islams, the Khamzats, are really going out there and attacking and making sure that people can understand that hey, you got to fear this and then next I’m going to come with the hands.
That dual threat, he believes, is what separates elite MMA wrestlers from pure specialists:
You are that bad dude, but when you show them hands now, you got to have to respect both.
I’m a big fan of Khamzat. I love his style. I love his intensity. His intensity is the best thing ever.
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