Who has been the greatest Judo expert in MMA history?

Ronda is a bronze medalist in Judo. Factoring gender into it she isnt even that great of a Judoka compared to many of her male peers. She was able to implement it more successfully due to how weak WMMA was at the time. I don't think even a top notch male Judoka would have been as dominant even in the very early days of MMA which is pretty sad if you think about it. Look at how quickly Gracie was figured out even in the early days of the UFC.

Shevchenko stacks up far better to some of her male counterparts as far as talent and fight IQ is concerned.

 

Can't hold it against Ronda that Gegard rag-dolled her. Gegard is huge, a man, and has serious judo chops himself.

In terms of best credentials in sport judo, its probably between Hidehiko Yoshida (Olympic gold medalist, several World Champhionship medals), Naoya Ogawa (four World Championship gold medals, Olympic Silver), and Satoshi Ishii (Olympic Gold Medal). I'd probably tip my hat to Yoshida, since he was TOUGH and he fought mma in the gi and Ezequiel Choked Royce Gracie in Royce guard (gangster move).

Ogawa had some awesome hardware but loses points for wasting his prime years in pro-wrestling, while Ishii has had some fishy looking losses.

In terms of who applied judo the best in MMA? I'd probably give the nod to Karo Parisyan. He's at least in the running. He was the best embodiment of the Hayastan system, which fused the best elements of Judo and Catch Wrestling. he out grappled Nick Diaz, Matt Serra, and plenty of other guys.

 

Ronda also said she could beat Cain under the right circumstances so I would take whatever she says with a grain of salt.

 

Akiyama showed great effective judo in many of his fights, as well. He threw Jake Shields around beautifully a couple of times, despite losing the fight.

 

True. That's a good addition to the list

 

Jigoro Kano

Edit: Probably Masahiko Kimura, actually

 

Yoshido was probably the best and most accomplished judoka to fight mma but I think Sexyama and Nakamura used there skills better and were more successful in mma