MMANiagara.com

Kazushi Sakuraba (Catch wrestling)
Josh Barnett (Catch wrestling)
Dong Hyun Kim (Judo)
Fedor Emelianenko (Sambo)
Karo Parisyan (Judo and Hayastan grappling)
Rumina Sato (Shooto)
Yoshihiro Akiyama (Judo)
Satoko Shinashi (Judo and Sambo)
Hidehiko Yoshida (Judo)
Oleg Taktarov (Sambo)
Frank Shamrock (Catch wrestling)
Ken Shamrock (Catch wrestling)
Minoru Suzuki (Catch wrestling)
Masakatsu Funaki (Catch wrestling)
Takanori Gomi (Catch wrestling)
Kamal Shalorus (Catch wrestling)
Hayato Sakurai (Shooto and Judo)

To be honest, there’s a lot of cross-pollonation going on, and grappling systems all influence one another. Due to the influence of Catch, Shooto, and Sambo, for example, BJJ has started including more leg locks; at the same time, the above systems have started including more guard work. I didn’t include any fighters with a Luta Livre background because cross-pollonation with no-gi BJJ is so entrenched.

chael sonnen. he has said on sevral occasions that bjj is worthless.

NO CHAEL SONNEN DOES TRAIN BJJ..

. I AM PRETTY DAMN SURE EVERY FIGHTER UNDER ANY LARGE FIGHT PROMOTION WILL ATLEAST TRAIN BJJ (OR SOME SUBMISSION GRAPPLING ART) DEFENSE.

Fighters will learn EVERY type of major martial art when they get big…they have to in order to know what they are doing in MMA.

Some people like Chael Sonnen will have limited BJJ as he came from a pure Wrestling background, but he still gets taught BJJ, Judo, Karate, Boxing, MT, KB…etc. Chael must know BJJ in order to defend it.

Its tough to say "No BJJ training" because in reality if someone does submission wrestling someone is going to say it is BJJ influenced… in reality that is far from true, Judo, Sambo, Catch, Shooto, and submission wrestling in general all have submissions, and defenses, in the case of Judo the vast majority BJJ’s submissions come from Judo, and Catch is influenced by Judo as is Sambo, and Shoot is influenced by catch.. But all this is semantics.

But lets just go with fighters who have no BJJ belt… of that there are a ton.

Josh Barnett, Fedor Emelianenko, Randy Couture, Frank and Ken Shamrock, Karo Parisyan, Rampage Jackson, Dan Henderson, Sakuraba, Gomi, Bas Rutten, Yushin Okami, Ryo Chonan, to name a few off the top of my head.

I am sure if I was to go looking around I can find a lot more.

The people listed above are either Judokas, Catch Wrestlers, or Shootists, and don’t do BJJ training.

You could technically add a ton more of people who are just Judokas, but aren’t as well known such as Yoshida, Kaz Nakamora, Satoshi Ishii, etc.

Yeah… No one here knows what they’re talking about except for MAYBE the last guy. First off no MMA fighter NEEDS to learn BJJ. There is no rule that states you NEED BJJ to fight, it all depends on what the fighter wants to learn. Yes BJJ is a HUGE part of MMA and many many many MMA fighters have BJJ under thier belt but they don’t NEED BJJ. Also they don’t need BJJ to be an effective fighter, they could wrestle, or do Judo, etc. And why do you only refer to "MMA training"? GSP is one of the best pound for pound fighters in the world and he doesn’t do "MMA training" He separates training of many martial arts instead of mixing it all together to do "MMA training" I do the same. Basically there is no set regiment of training, how to do it, or what you need to learn.

You need strict definitions on what you mean to get a clear answer. You say ‘if its MMABJJ its not real BJJ’.

_Many_ fighters have little or no experience grappling with the gi. Quite a few learn only no-gi grappling.