Has anyone here adapted Judo to MMA?

Question

Karo Parisyan style. Judo is my favorite martial art and I am very interested in taking it. I'm also interested in becoming a mixed martial artist and I'm wondering how much time and practice it takes to adapt Judo to a no-gi situation.

Answer 1

Any individual martial art you study is going to have to go through serious adaptations for MMA. Getting crazy good at 1 art takes a long time, look at Karo he has been doing Judo most of his life or Matt Hughes with his wrestling, again most of his life. Once you are that good at 1 art it makes other arts easier for you to adapt your own style and it makes it easier to adapt to new styles. If you really like Judo then do Judo, but try to find a school that does no gi and keep in mind that while Judo does include submissions and ground control it isn't as complete at that as jiu jitsu is, so you may want to find someplace where you can do both or just go straight to a MMA gym. Don't forget that you will have to learn to do some striking and need to learn how to evade, deflect and block strikes as well.

Answer 2

I couldn't tell you on how long it will take, but adapting Judo to the MMA world is a good idea, as long as you follow it up with also taking Brazilian Ju-Jitzu, Greco-Roman and Freestyle wrestling, Kick-Boxing and Tae-Kwon Do as well. (As alot of MMA fighters use thoose styles and you need to understand them well to beat your opponent). Having the ability to understand street fighting, Judo and Kempo Karate would only make you that more dangerous in the MMA world. You don't have to black belt all martial arts..but you'd better at least have a brown belt in the ones you don't before your first match in MMA. (if you are going to commit to being an MMA fighter...you need 2 to 3 years of hard training before the first fight of your career....seriously, and some would probably recomend more...as in 3 to 5 years of training). You have to fully commit to it, knowing that you won't be able to eat junk food, party with friends, get drunk...and severely limit your time with your family for training...so it's going to be hard on your relationships with them because of the time you need to take to train. If you are willing to do it though....and put all of you into it...then yes...MMA could be a good future for you. Just understand what you are getting into before you commit to it.

I wish you the best, and hope that you have great success should you step into the Octogon or Ring (depending one what company you go with).  

Answer 3

Karo Parisyan is very good at adapting it to MMA, a good judo instructor should do no-gi as well as gi, find out about that by visiting schools in your area.  

Answer 4

As Machowolf notes, you need a lot of different skills in MMA. You need to know wrestling, grappling, and some form of striking. Judo is very impressive, and certainly is useful in its place, but is pretty narrow as far as utility is concerned.

I'm more familiar with the issue of gi/no-gi as it applies to jiu jitsu. And I'm not sure which way I'd suggest. Well, actually I'd suggest learning no-gi, but there are difficulties either way. With gi, you learn all sorts of techniques that are really great, but you can't do them no-gi. You can watch the people who've trained primarily with gi looking lost, kind of grasping at thin air when fighting no-gi. On the other hand, it takes some adapting if someone's been trained no-gi to learn that a gi offers all sorts of abilities and advantages. (My son, who started off no-gi, feels like he's in a strait jacket when competing with a gi.)

So, certainly try Judo. But recognize that you'll have to supplement it with a variety of other skills, too.

Hope that helps.

Answer 5

Very few people have successfully adapted it ala Karo Parisyan, but his techniques do work.  Check out his training videos and try it for yourself.  Every technique he demonstrates can work, especially if your opponent is unfamiliar with judo.

If you're wanting to compete in MMA, judo is honestly not the way to go to begin with.  There are techniques that are great that can be derived from judo for MMA, but they are few because MMA lacks the gi.  You can add the applicable techniques to your arsenal later.  Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, wrestling, Muay Thai, etc. are the best bases for MMA.