Very few activities in life come with a mercy rule. Mixed martial arts is one of them.
Though strikes and knockouts steal a lot of the headlines, a well-executed submission is truly a thing of beauty; the perfect blending of brain and brawn.
Its unequivocal nature is also appealing. If you tap out (or pass out, or your arm gives out), that really isn’t something that lends itself to interpretation. You wave the white flag, you concede defeat. Maybe that’s part of what makes submissions, and MMA in general, so appealing; very rarely is there such a clear winner and loser elsewhere in life.
Anyway, here are my picks for the top 50 submissions in MMA history. With so many to choose from, it can be tough to winnow it down even this far.
For the sake of simplicity, women were not considered here (though that could be a whole list on its own). To further narrow the field, I used the following selection criteria (in no particular order):
*Degree of difficulty
*Damage inflicted
*Inventiveness or creativity
*Quality of execution
*Importance of the fight
*Circumstances within the fight
*Caliber of opponent
*”Wow” factor
So there you have it. I’m sure there are a few that could be on here that aren’t and vice versa. If you see any such grievous injustices, please feel free to sound off in the comments. Thanks for reading.