Ask fans which martial art makes the best foundation for MMA and you will start an argument that never ends. But one of the most credentialed voices in the sport's history has a clear answer. Demetrious Johnson — widely regarded as one of the greatest pound-for-pound fighters ever — keeps coming back to the same one: wrestling. And his reasoning is less about violence than about control.
Why wrestling is the foundation: it dictates where the fight happens
Johnson's core argument is deceptively simple. In MMA, the most valuable skill is not striking or submissions — it is the power to decide where the fight takes place. A great wrestler owns that decision.
If you can take an opponent down at will and stop their takedowns when you want to stay standing, you control the entire texture of the fight. Facing a dangerous striker? Drag them to the mat where their hands matter less. Facing a slick grappler off their back? Keep it standing and make them chase you. That optionality is the rarest thing in the sport, and it is why elite wrestlers so often beat more "skilled" specialists.
This is the part casual fans underrate. Wrestling in MMA is not really about scoring takedowns for points — it is about threat. The constant possibility of a takedown forces strikers to fight tentatively, kills their forward pressure, and quietly drains the danger out of a far more explosive opponent. The wrestler sets the terms; everyone else reacts.
"The easiest sport to become a champion in"
Johnson has also made a more provocative claim — that MMA is, in a sense, the easiest combat sport in which to become a champion. It sounds absurd until you hear the logic.
His point is about specialization. In boxing, you only have boxing, so the margins between elite boxers are razor-thin and there is nowhere to hide a weakness. Same with high-level jiu-jitsu, where everyone is an expert at the one thing being contested. MMA is different: it blends so many disciplines that a fighter can ride one or two truly elite skills — say, world-class wrestling and a granite chin — while carrying real deficiencies elsewhere, and still reach the top.
In other words, MMA is a forgiving sport. You do not have to be great at everything. You have to be great at something that lets you impose your game, and good enough everywhere else to survive. A specialist who controls the location of the fight can mask glaring holes that would sink them in a single-discipline sport.
His own career was the proof
This is not armchair theory for Johnson — it is his biography. He came up with a solid amateur wrestling background from high school before he ever put on MMA gloves, and he leaned on it heavily in his early years training under coach Matt Hume at AMC Pankration. That wrestling base bought him time to round out the rest of his game, and it became the spine of a record-setting title reign. He did not start as the best striker or the best grappler in his division. He started as the best wrestler-athlete, and built everything else on top of that platform.
The counterpoint: a base is not a ceiling
It is worth being fair to the other side. A wrestling base wins you the location battle, but it does not finish fights by itself — plenty of elite wrestlers have stalled out because they never developed offense once the fight got where they wanted it. And the modern meta has produced takedown defense so good that some strikers have effectively neutralized the wrestling threat, flipping the control equation back the other way.
The honest version of Johnson's argument is this: wrestling is the best starting point, not a guarantee. It gives you the highest floor — the most reliable way to stay competitive against any style — while you build toward a higher ceiling. That is exactly why so many champions across history share a wrestling or grappling origin story.
See the "control" theory for yourself
This is one of the most satisfying ideas to test in a simulation, because it lets you isolate the variable. In our fight simulator, pit a pure striker against a fighter with an elite wrestling base and watch how often the grappler's ability to dictate location flips a striking disadvantage into a win. Then do the reverse — give the striker elite takedown defense — and watch the whole calculation invert.
If you want to go deeper on the names that embody Johnson's point, our breakdown of the best wrestlers and grapplers in MMA is the natural next read — and the most complete fighters in MMA shows what happens when that base is paired with everything else. Or build the perfect wrestle-first prospect from scratch in Build a Fighter and run them up the rankings in Career Mode.
Johnson's take will keep starting arguments, and that is the point. But the underlying idea is hard to dispute: in a sport that rewards controlling where the fight happens, the skill that controls it is the best place to start.