Crossing from Wrestling to Mixed Martial Arts

There has been an increasing number of professional wrestlers crossing over to mixed martial arts in recent years, which is the reverse of a trends seen in the late 90s. There are many different reasons for this emerging trend, and why there have been fewer mixed martial artists becoming wrestlers. The foremost of these is that there has been a massive increase n the popularity of mixed martial arts, to such an extent that it now becoming a bigger sport and wrestling.

It used to be the case that for the most part, professional wrestlers could make a lot more money doing that than they could from fighting. However in the last few years the popularity levels of the two sports have begun to switch, and for some there is now more money to be made in mixed martial arts. In some ways the physical requirements for mixed martial arts contracts are also not as grueling, as they are usually for a certain number of fights, rather than on a yearly basis. This can mean that someone can make more from only a few fights per year than they could from a whole year of wrestling every week.

One of the biggest reasons that many wrestlers tend to make the switch is that they can often command lucrative contracts before they have even fought a single bout. The reason being that they are often famous from having been on TV regularly, and have many fans who follow them to mixed martial arts. For the promoters this tends to be a good result however good the former wrestler tends to be. If they succeed, then their name will tend to gather more and more fans to the sport because of their name recognition. If they lose, then it reaffirms the idea that mixed martial artists are tougher than wrestlers.

Since the world of mixed martial arts became more lucrative, the number of wrestlers who have crossed over has been on the rise. These wrestlers used to tend to be middle or lower card athletes who just liked to fight, such as Tank Abbott. However more recently there have been a number of higher profile departures from professional wrestling, such as Brock Lesnar or Bobby Lashley.

In the mid to late 90s, the trend of wrestlers leaving to compete in mixed martial arts was not so prominent, and in fact was often seen in reverse. The likes of Ken Shamrock being a particularly high profile fighter at the time who competed in the then WWF, becoming a champion and making a lot of none in the process. Many mixed martial artists will still wrestle in Japanese promotions, such as Josh Barnett, although in the United States, there is now often not as much to be made from wrestling as there once was.

The reasons for the reverse in trends regarding wrestlers and fighters jumping ship is mainly due to the diminishing popularity of wrestling and the growing demand for mixed martial arts. Many of the fans of both wrestling and boxing who had grown tired of these sports are now fans of mixed martial arts, which is still a fairly new concept. Much of this in the case of wrestling is due to the fact that the WCW was sold to the WWE, essentially creating a massive monopoly on wrestling. The lack of competition however has meant that the WWE has become rather stale, and the new ideas that come from having to compete haven't been flowing as readily.

When there was less money in the sport of mixed martial arts, professional wrestlers would generally not tend to cross over as much. However the fact that wrestlers generally have competitive personalities tends to mean that many of them are interested in fighting rather than putting on a show as they do in wrestling. For many the only reason that they became professional wrestlers after their college competitive wrestling careers were over is simply because there is little money to be made in the Olympic or greco roman circuits.

The training for wrestling and mixed martial arts is rather different, although is usually easy for the athletes to get used to. After all wrestlers are used to having to work out every day, and in fact most of them originally come from either a collegiate wrestling background or successful sporting background means that the are already used to staying in good shape. Some of the most successful wrestlers of all time in fact are from other sports where they sustained a career ending injury. For example The Rock and Goldberg used to play football, and Kevin Nash used to play basketball.