[QUOTE=dnooman]
The top UFC and PRIDE guys change every so often, but they are always very, very, formidable.
[/QUOTE]
Define “every so often”. Fedor has been champion for the last 4 years. Ortiz held Light heavyweight for 3 years until losing to Liddell who kept if for 2 years until Jackson beat him. Wanderlei Silva held pride middleweight for 7 years until recently. Hughes held ufc welter for 5 years until recently. I left out Lightweights and Pride Welterweights because they’ve only recently been added in the last couple years but both pride/ufc champions are still holding the belts when the division opened. Gomi for Pride and Sherk for UFC (pending his drug test anyways) and Henderson for Pride welterweight. UFC Middleweight has a turnover rate but it’s weird weight division in my opinion. Welter being 170 and light heavy being 205, they can fight in either division.
[QUOTE=dnooman]
MMA guys train to either KO someone, or make them say “uncle”. Ninjitsu guys, and certain other martial arts train in limb breaking, eye gouging, headbutting, presure points, small digit manipulation, and various other things that MMA fighters are trained not to do. The ingraining of the rules would hamper an MMA fighter in a true “anything goes” match.
[/QUOTE]
Most competitive MMA fighters are multi disciplines. Small joint manips, eye gouges, and pressure points are taught in many generic “karate” schools. My own TKD school taught it to anyone above purple belts. Brazilian juijitsu is widely studied by UFC/Pride/MMA fighters and it teaches the use of pressure points.
Some of these are champions, some are not.
Liddell - Kempo, Brazilian Juijitsu, Koei kan karate
Couture - US army, 3 time Olympic team alternate, 3 time NCAA all american, Muay thai, juijitsu.
Franklin - Brazilian jui-jitsu, Muay Thai, boxing
Saint-Pierre - Kyokusin karate, Brazilian Juijitsu, wrestling, boxing.
Parisyan - Judo, Sambo, catch wrestling, greco roman, and muay thai.
Kang - boxing, jui jitsu
Herring - Sambo, wrestling, muay thai
There have been many incidents of limbs breaking in MMA due to refusal to tap out and failure of the referee to intervene fast enough. Sure they aren’t trained to do it specifically but if you don’t tap out for the referee to see, you’ll get your limb broken. Just off the top of my head, Sakauraba breaking Gracies arm and Mir breaking Silvias arm. I won’t even include the amateur league ones that are available on liveleak or break.com. I can only think of one incident when an MMA fighter actually stopped himself from it was Hughes vs Royce. He had a side mounted armbar and released it because he did not want to break Royces arm.