I'm writing a research paper and I was wondering if people could give me examples/names of fighters who made/achieved greatly despite what people thought they would. Now they can be from any fighting background, the people just have to be people who defied expectations.
From mma off the top of my head: Randy Couture: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randy_Couture Started fighting mma in his mid-late 30s after failing multiple times to make the olympic wrestling team. Pretty much his entire career was a story of someone who's meant to be too small and too old to achieve anything but ended up becoming champ. The typical example form his was his fight with Tim Sylvia: Not sure off hand what the weight difference was but it was a David/Goliath type thing. Randy came in, dropped him with a punch and dominated him for the whole fight. Royce Gracie: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royce_Gracie Dude was supposed to lose terribly against people much bigger and heavier but slaughtered all of them and paved the way for bjj to become one of the staples of mma today. EDIT: Two more. Matt Hamill http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Hamill Guy was born deaf but became an NCAA Div. 3 wrestler and a pretty decent ufc fighter. I don't know enough about his career to give you a single example but I imagine becoming a pro fighter while deaf is quite impressive. There's a film beign made about him anyway. Not really on Randy or Gracie level but I'll throw Frank Mir out there: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Mir Was on a tear in the HW division before a motorcylce accident that destroyed his leg. Femur was shattered in a couple places and his knee ligaments were all torn off. He came back to have two disappointing fights and it looked like his career was done but he came back and is now one of mma's top ten HWs. Maybe Top 5 depending who you ask.
Thanks Also I'm on my cellphone and just realized that I posted this I. The wrong section, can someone move it to a more appropriate spot
