Which fighter has been the greatest at fighting off his back?

Royce n Blowjob Penn

 

say what you want about royce but he was ****ing good at this.. He rarely if ever took severe damage on his back.
maia is up there too. everyone goes in thinking ill just put him on the ground and bash him up but its like trying to nail jelly to a tree..

 

In MMA? It has to be Maia. People saying Penn are out of their minds. He's been vulnurable several times on his back throughout his career. He's been beaten to the point of having to quit and also crucifixed. He's also never, not once, submitted someone off his back.

GSP is very good off his back. Why can we say this, we haven't seen him there very much. While this is true, I'd have to watch all the fights again to get them really fresh in my memory, but I don't believe he's taken one significant punch while he's been on his back going all the way back to possibly UFC 74. He had a torn abductor ligamin and Thiago Alves couldn't even hold him down. Jon Fitch who has stifiling top control was unable to hold GSP down for barely longer then a minute (while also inflicting minimal...and I do mean minimal damage).

So, I guess you also have to include in your list of factors, guys who are not great at fighting off their back because they don't try...they get up. B.J. does this but at times has great difficulty doing this. Guys like GSP and Liddell are fantastic at this and thus don't really have the oppotunity to do much else.

The criteria for such a decision is very difficult.

 

Nate Diaz is fun to watch work from his back. Always looking for subs & switching between them.

 

Fedor and Big Nog come to mind immediately.

Joachim Hellboy Hansen is another good shout out, he won decisions over Gomi and JZ Calvancante for his offense off his back.

EDIT: How did I forget Magic Pants Aoki?

 

Cause the pants were stronger then Aoki in your mind, obv.

Shoulda let him use those freaky things against Melendez...would gone all Dream on his ass.

And yes, holy crap, to the Fedor and Nogueira. Two prime examples of how to fight off your back. Excellent, sir. Very nice.

Jason MacDonald isn't bad, but maybe I biased...he was involved in one of my favorite fights ever...(Maia vs. MacDonald at UFC 87...****ing INSANE fight!)

 

i said blowjob penn not bj penn. hes another fighter. u guys dont know him :roll:

 

Nog, but he did play a very open guard which meant he took a lot of punches, he had the chin for it and made it work though.

Evan Tanner had the most triangles in MMA, more a random fact. Jeremey Horn probably has the most sub wins off his back. Nino Schembri used a high guard similar to rubber guard before Eddie Bravo, and he invented the gogoplata

Mir has had some amazing subs off his back.

Miguel Torres, Aoki, Shaolin, Bibiano Fernandes, Werdum, Maia, there are just so many.

 

I'm going to throw DEEP Bantamweight Champion Masakazu Imanari's name into the mix. The guy basically made a career off of rolling for leg locks and fighting off his back.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkM9psCL9ec[/ame]

 

BJ Penn never fights off his back. He's a top game fighter through and through. The fighter that first springs to mind is Minotauro Nogueira. Until he fought Fedor - he was submitting everyone in his guard.

 

I don't think the art of fighting off your back has been perfected yet. People think fighting off your back in BJJ but not enough people are striking. Sure, gravity ain't on your side but guys still need to try and muscle by holding guys heads and punching and elbowing them. Mix that with BJJ subs and sweeps and you got a dangerous guy.

If someone scores a weak td where you almost fell over but the guy on his back strikes the **** out of you 4 or 5 times and then sweeps or gets up then he should win that exchange.

 

Probably Butterbean.

 

Certainly has the best "fighting from a baseball slide" attack in MMA.