Karate fighter Thompson enters UFC 143 62-0

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Originally Posted by David Stager

That dude is going to get crushed the next time he steps into the ring. Stiglitz, or whoever that was he just fought was way too obliging. I'm thinking Thompson's next opponent is gonna blitz the hell out of him and his TMA style.

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He's a BJJ Black Belt under Carlos Machado, so I've heard. But another page says he is a blue. Regardless, Carlos Machado is his brother-in-law and he says he's been training BJJ for a long time. I can't see him being too bad on the ground.

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Originally Posted by Jay Chow

He's a BJJ Black Belt under Carlos Machado, so I've heard. But another page says he is a blue. Regardless, Carlos Machado is his brother-in-law and he says he's been training BJJ for a long time. I can't see him being too bad on the ground.

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He's a blue belt. Really high level wrestlers will give him a lot of problems

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Originally Posted by Brent Smith

Honestly I think he could do well against a Matt Brown level fighter. He's been fighting his whole life so I don't think Browns UFC experience will play much of an advantage

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You may be right. It might take guys that use angles a lot to get past his straight leg kicks.

Like I have heard Joe Hogan say (paraphrasing here), karate can work; it just takes someone at an insanely high level in order to make it happen.

If a dude like this would truly dedicate himself to learning an mma guard, he would be a wrecking machine.

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Originally Posted by CaseyD

He's a blue belt. Really high level wrestlers will give him a lot of problems

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He says wrestling is his 2nd strongest skill next to striking. But we will see in the future what that actually means

machida did it for a while. he could definitely do well.

Gonna play devil's advocate because I wanna be this kid's fan so I'm rooting for him.

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Originally Posted by CaseyD

He's a blue belt. Really high level wrestlers will give him a lot of problems

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From what I know, Dominick Cruz is a blue belt too. MMA and BJJ are different things.

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Originally Posted by David Stager

That dude is going to get crushed the next time he steps into the ring. Stiglitz, or whoever that was he just fought was way too obliging. I'm thinking Thompson's next opponent is gonna blitz the hell out of him and his TMA style.

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The same could've been said for Machida when he beat a younger healthy Tito Ortiz. A wrestler might have a tough time dealing with that distance and footwork the same way guys can't seem to get Dominick Cruz down.

Maybe he made that fight look easy because he's really that good. That's what I'm thinking. But in time, we'll see if he's the real deal or not.

Like somebody said, TMA can work at a high level if you've trained to defend other aspects of the fight game. For a while people wrote off striking arts because grappling dominated. Striking found its way back into MMA because strikers figured out how to COUNTER grapple. Why would karate be any different? It's a striking art, right?

I'm rooting for the kid. I always like seeing something a little different in MMA.