Bo Nickal is a three-time NCAA champion and is developing his BJJ skills as he starts transitioning into the world of MMA, resulting in him recently earning his blue belt in the sport. He’s already a phenomenal grappler with a ton of talent of course, and he’s already shared the mats competitively with one of the greatest grapplers in history in Gordon Ryan. Even though he hasn’t spent long training in BJJ, he’s used the skills he already has to adapt to the different ruleset and would not doubt wipe the mats with the vast majority of black belts out there regardless of his time spent in the sport.
He’s not the only one of course, as a number of elite wrestlers have recently started working on their Jiu-Jitsu skills either for MMA or to make a name for themselves within the sport itself. Not only this, but several elite wrestlers like fellow three-time NCAA champion Jason Nolf have also realised that there’s a large market of Jiu-Jitsu competitors out there who will want to learn wrestling from them in the form of seminars or instructionals. Nickal doesn’t seem interested in imparting his skills to others however, and instead is focused on developing his own in light of his recent transition to MMA.
Bo Nickal put on a dominant display in his MMA debut and showed the BJJ talents that have earned him his blue belt when he locked up a tight arm-triangle choke against David Conley in the very first round and put him to sleep. He’s now had his second fight scheduled and although Nickal is currently competing as an amateur, there’s still a lot of attention on how he performs as he’ll no doubt be a huge boost for whichever promotion decides to sign his first professional contract. It seems as though Nickal is being smart about his career by taking it slow, and doing what Ben Askren says he wished he’d always done and is focused on learning BJJ to turn his elite wrestling into a way to finish fights.
The full event replay featuring Bo Nickal’s MMA debut will be available to watch via PPV on FITE TV, click here to watch.
