Who would adapt best?

[Sophist]

How the **** did we get to this many posts with nobody mentioning Francois Botha?

He's not going to make the all-time Boxers' Hall Of Fame, but he fought Tyson for five rounds, faced off against Lewis and Klitschko in title fights and generally had a pretty distinguished boxing career.

Then he ended up in an MMA match against a very much lighter judo guy (Yoshihiro Akiyama's first MMA fight), and stayed on his feet for a scant few seconds before being taken down, punched repeatedly from on top and then submitted.

We pretty much know by now that pure strikers have lots of trouble in an MMA context, and while the Japanese still like to set up striking-grappling fights, the striker's pretty much always coming in with a heavy weight advantage to make things a little more fair.

And wataboxa, if you think the winners of MMA fights are usually the better strikers, you definitely need to watch many more fights. The majority of fights are still ending through submission or ground and pound, not stand-up striking. The only reason that stand-up striking became a viable main tactic in MMA was because strikers cross-trained the ground game and takedowns to the point they were capable of escaping from grappler clutches; the early years of MMA saw a lot of strikers slammed and submitted.

[alex]

you have gotta be shitting me if you think that botha in his current form is anything close to top level boxing.

And wataboxa, if you think the winners of MMA fights are usually the better strikers, you definitely need to watch many more fights.

i would have agreed with you a few years ago but now... well look at the title holders for the divisions and the top level fighters. cro cop, gomi, silva (big and little) GSP, lidell, etc. Id say that while more fights are ended with subs and GnP a lot of the higher level fights are ended by striking with GnP as a follow up. not sure what that really means.