Khadzhimurat Gatsalov won gold at the 2004 Athens Olympics; along the way he beat Daniel Cormier in the semis. When they met in 2003, Gatsalov beat Cael Sanderson handily in overtime. And Gatsalov won the world freestyle championship five times, in 2005, 2006. 2007, 2009, and 2013.
Cormier brought Gatsalov into his camp at AKA to prepare for Jones, which led many to wonder how he would do in mixed martial arts. Gatsalov is thinking about it, via Twitter:
?????????? ??????? @HGatsalov
A lotta people asking me, am I going to try MMA? I tell you this: if I come I don’t wanna just come and try, I wanna come anddominate.
There have been disappointments when decorated wrestlers tried their hand at MMA. Karam Gaber won gold in the same Olympics that Gatsalov did, in Greco, but was crushed when he tried MMA, vs. Kazuyuki Fujita. However, if Gatsalov is managed and trained by the world class team at AKA, his career in MMA would very likely be a very different story.
The primary base for MMA at present is Folkstyle wrestling. There are 10 divisions in the UFC. Of the ten champions, seven have Folkstyle as their original base. Ronda Rousey (Judo), Anthony Pettis (Taekwondo), and Jose Aldo (BJJ/Dutch Kickboxing) are the outliers.
At the 2014 World Championships, the US men’s team placed 10th in Freestyle and didn’t crack the top 10 in Greco. In short, although Folkstyle is different than fs and Greco, the USA does not have the best wrestlers in the world, or anything close to it. If the best wrestlers from Russia and the Caucasus region are properly brought into mixed martial arts, it will in all likelihood be a game changer.
