Robbie Lawler is a former UFC welterweight world champion and one of the most entertaining fighters to ever set foot in the octagon, but he actually prefers knockouts to submissions. It shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise of course, as he was always known as more of a striker and only ever had one submission win dating back to the early years of his career. His run as the UFC welterweight world champion was relatively short, but it consisted of three incredibly memorable five-round wars and remains one of the most entertaining title-reigns that the sport has ever seen.
A large part of his popularity with fans was his willingness to engage with tough opponents and his desire to take the fight to them. That all made sense when Lawler explained to Ariel Helwani how he wanted to win fights:
“I want to beat people up. That’s where, how I fought. It’s kind of funny because like, I laugh because I’m like coaching guys and I’m like in the UFC, I’d have zero submission attempts.”
When he was asked to explain a little more about his approach to fighting and why he didn’t really attempt to submit any of his opponents, Lawler shared his thoughts on knockouts vs submissions:
“In my eyes and in my head I was always thinking if you submit somebody, there’s tricks, right? There’s little tricks, like, you tricked me. But if you whoop somebody’s a**, you beat them up. Then there was really no trick to that.”
It’s not as if Lawler couldn’t submit anyone either, he was actually an excellent grappler. He had a strong background in wrestling long before he ever pursued MMA and was even promoted to brown belt in BJJ during his career. He also regularly trained with elite grapplers at Miletich Fighting Systems, American Top Team, and Sanford MMA (later known as Kill Cliff FC); so he had plenty of exposure to high-level Jiu-Jitsu and wrestling too. His approach to fighting might not make the most sense to Jiu-Jitsu purists, but it definitely won over the majority of MMA fans.
The full interview with Robbie Lawler where he explains why he prefers knockouts to submissions was uploaded to the official YouTube channel of the Ariel Helwani Show:
