MMA’s striking is horrible. Plain and simple. How you can give MMA’s striking a higher rating than their BJJ is beyond me. Besides Overeem nobody in MMA has ever proven their striking is truly that great. Take a look at Marcus Davis, welterweights “great” striker. As a boxer, he was just a journeyman and a horrid one at that.

MMA’s BJJ though. You have Lister, Maia, Pezaon, etc. World champions.

Judo is never going to be truly applicable in MMA because there is already no-gi Judo, called Greco.

As a Judo person myself, obviously I love to watch a good throw in an MMA bout. I agree also, that Judo will, and needs to be more key in MMA. It’s funny that most ground/Jiu Jitsu moves are now called by name, but almost any good throw is called at as “a great Judo throw.”

As a note, one of the other things we have started to see a little in the Octagon is a lesser known piece of the Judo game: Ashi Waza. This means “foot technique.” If you have ever seen two guys in the clinch, and all of a sudden one of them kicks the others legs out from under him, not with force, but in a surreal sort of way, so the guy almost looks weightless, like their fighting underwater or something, that’s ashi waza. I think that MMA has gotten pretty damned good at striking (B+), and really good and the ground game (B), and is the absolute dominant art at ground and pound (A+), I think that in throws (C), and ashi waza (D) they still need to expand. We are staring to see some of this With Karo, Sokaju, John Jones (not a Judo guy, but still… holy crap), and others. I eagerly watch to see it advance. We’ll see how the fights are tomorrow