Gegard Mousasi is the last of his generation.
The 36-year-old Dutchman has won, almost continuously, for almost 20 years – he’s spent over half his life as a professional mixed martial artist, having debuted in 2003 at the age of just 17. He may be the last relevant mixed martial artist today to have fought in Pride. He dominated organizations like Dream and Strikeforce, then watched them cease to exist. That’s never broken his stride.
He went to the UFC, and proved that after all these years, he belonged among the world’s very best middleweights. He was on a brilliant five-fight win streak against top competition when he left the UFC for Bellator. And as he eases into his twilight years, he just keeps winning. Mousasi has gone 6-1 in his newest organization, twice winning the middleweight championship he now holds.
Mousasi has been a nomad for his entire career. He’s fought for no less than 20 different organizations and promoters in the last 18 years, counting one-off shows and stuff like BodogFIGHT that I had forgotten ever happened. That’s often been to his detriment – he’s rarely stayed around one place long enough to get the mainstream recognition that he’s deserved. He left the UFC rather than wait around for the Michael Bisping/Georges St-Pierre logjam to resolve in 2017, perhaps passing up a shot at eternal glory.
But he’s never stopped winning. Winning in MMA, as in any sport, comes from process and decision-making as much as it does talent and athleticism. Few fighters understand the process of winning better than Gegard Mousasi. Against John Salter on Friday night, the process was perfect.
Salter – actually a few months older than Mousasi, but with a fraction of the MMA experience – is an aggressive and potent grappler who started out hot early, taking Mousasi down and threatening him through most of the first round. Mousasi never panicked. He knows not to panic. He waited Salter out, allowing the less-experienced fighter to tire himself out, weathering the storm and taking over completely.
By the second round, Salter couldn’t take Mousasi down any longer – Mousasi gradually started to turn up the pressure, putting Salter on the back foot, making him more and more uncomfortable. Mousasi turned Salter into that old story about the frog being boiled alive, not realizing the danger until it was already too late. By the third, Mousasi was bashing Salter’s brains out with vicious ground-and-pound. It was, quite simply, real Veteran Shit.
Mousasi became a star with his skills: very good technical striking, underrated ground-and-pound (of the ilk he showed off against Salter), and a strong judo base. He’s become a legend with that kind of Veteran Shit. You don’t put together a record of 48-7-2, a winning percentage nearly unprecedented with that number of fights, by accident.
But can we call Mousasi an all-time great? A few have been tempted – there remain Mousasi nuts that to this day will call him the best middleweight in the world, and the guy to beat Israel Adesanya. While I’m a known Mousasi Admirer, I’ll never go that far.
And I’ll admit there are a few arguments against calling Mousasi an all-time great, for sure. First, strength of schedule: although Mousasi has been a champion or top contender everywhere he’s fought in, he’s never really fought or beaten the absolute best in his weight class. Although he beat the great Jacare Souza to win the Dream middleweight belt in 2008, Souza was not yet considered a great fighter, and he would eventually get that win back in the UFC. He was a world champion at 205 in Strikeforce, but it was a comparatively weak division at the time – he beat a past-UFC expulsion Renato “Babalu” Sobral to win the belt, and was soundly defeated by “King Mo” Lawal in his first defense.
He was a standout in the UFC, but never wound up fighting guys like Yoel Romero or Robert Whittaker, the real middleweight stars of the time. Even in Bellator, he’s only holding the belt today because the man who took his title, superstar grappler Rafael Lovato Jr., had to retire due to a brain issue. And I’ll also admit, his fights aren’t always action-packed, especially of recent vintage – his October bout against Douglas Lima stands out as particularly boring.
But the longer his career goes on, the more victories he racks up, and the more lopsided that record gets, what can you say? How can you argue with being a world champion in three different decades? Yes, Gegard Mousasi may not have always fought the world’s very best for his whole career, but his status has meant that he’s been fighting strong competition consistently for over a decade. He hasn’t had the luxury of fighting a bum in a very long time.
The sheer longevity, and the overwhelming amount of consistent success, are outlandish in the world of MMA. Gegard Mousasi is a unique case. That may be enough to call him one of the all-time greats.
The Big Fight 