Whos is a better fighter?

Question

The wrestler or the trained Brazilian Jujitsu fighter

I think Bjj is submission wrestling but I've seen all over the internet that submission wrestlers are better then Brazilian Jujitsu fighters and seem to get the advantige

so

Submission wrestling or Brazilian jujitsu

To avoid the answer I'm expecting what if say we took a baby and cloned it. Now we have 2 babys that are the same in every way. Now we make the babys live the same ways and do every thing the same. Only difference is one grows up on Bjj and the other on wrestling or submission wrestling. Who will win the fight. Don't say it could not happen....lighten up

Answer 1

it really depends on the teacher. a submission wrestler is not used to being on his back so if he does not work sweep defense he will lose. this go's with the other possibilities to. how ever if you look at the(please forgive spelling) Sharuto verissimo fights were he fought frank trigg and matt hughes he had them in tight tight triangle that they slipped out of due to sweat. so if they were wearing pants verissimo would have subbed them both. so the clothes make a factor to. there are to many factors to come to a complete conclusion. how ever I do give the edge to the submission savvy wrestlers

Answer 2

In terms of MMA? If they have only ever trained in either wrestling or BJJ, then you can check this empirically, as the early UFC brought up two notable examples:

UFC IV: Dan Severn (wrestler) loses to Royce Gracie (BJJ)

UFC IX: Don Frye (wrestler) defeats Amaury Bitteti (BJJ)

Severn against Royce is arguably a pure style match-up, though Severn was much bigger. Frye, on the other hand, had a fair bit of boxing in his background as well as wrestling, and it was striking that was most notable in his victory over Bitetti (who was the Mundials champion at the time, so certainly a high level representative of BJJ). Which shows that adding striking to wrestler makes it a great combination, but without those punches, less useful (in terms of finishing a fight, at least: still good for surviving one).

In short, a wrestler is going to be good at getting on top of his opponent and staying there. Problem is, as Severn showed, that doesn't mean a whole lot if you're not able to throw some solid shots from that position. Mark Coleman and Mark Kerr demonstrated how a wrestling base with some strikes could be a good combination, but both of those guys were huge, plus Kerr did a lot of cross-training, including some BJJ IIRC.

He did beat Enson Inoue at the Pride Grand Prix 2000, who I guess you could call a BJJ guy (at least that's where he started), but I don't think you could count Kerr as a pure wrestler.

Pure BJJ had lots of success in the early UFC, Royce walking through almost everyone because nobody had any idea how to stop him. He also beat Severn, but that's largely because Severn didn't know how to use strikes:  if he had, then that fight would have been very different, given that he had the top position and Royce crowded up against the fence for most of the fight.

So I think I'd have to say that the BJJ fighter would come out on top. The wrestler would be able to establish a solid top position, but if the old style versus style match ups are any kind of indicator, the BJJ fighter will be able to work to guard, then submit the wrestler from there.

If the wrestler knows how to punch on the ground, then they would most likely win (or from off the clinch, like Couture does so well: however, like Frye, he had some boxing in his background), but that's not a skill set you would get from just training wrestler, unlike the submission skills you will get from purely training BJJ.

Unless of course by 'wrestling' you're also including people like Sakuraba, which completely changes things. I'm assuming by 'wrestling' you mean free-style, Greco-Roman etc, rather than catch or shooto?

My usual long-winded answer, but hopefully something useful in there. ;)