The times in which most of these fighters have fought were much, much different. Back then, they were earning much less money than modern fighters, and they were far less known to the public. To make matters worse, most of these legends have fallen into oblivion. It’s really a shame that millions of new MMA fans who follow MMA don’t know much about them.

There are always going to be possible accidents, which are simply part of life in general. However, there is a difference between some martial arts and others when it comes to safety.

In reality, MMA is all about being fast, agile, and having great endurance. And MMA fighting is one of the few sports where big muscles don’t play a vital role and it’s actually counter productive to have big muscles. As such fighters tend to be skinny to be conditioned for fighting than bulky physique.

Some martial arts are for exercise which is non-combat art such as Tai Chi. Therefore, being a martial artist in non-combat arts will not prepare anyone for real-world fighting.

In the case of the people on our list today, their paths all differ. Some are multi-sport athletes, others even played football professionally. Regardless of their run, they ended up in MMA after playing football.

Even though Sambo has been around since the 1920s, it wasn’t receiving much attention from the public until Sambo trained fighters started winning major fights in MMA. Sambo, in some way, resembles modern MMA fighting. It stands for a unique mixture of the best techniques from different martial arts like judo, jujutsu, and various styles of wrestling.