Freestyle Wrestling Fighters

Freestyle Wrestlers have been enormously successful in Mixed Martial Arts. Tito Ortiz, Kevin Randleman, and Mark Coleman -- all former UFC champions, have a freestyle background. Jacob Christopher known as "Tito" Ortiz aka The Huntington Beach Bad Boy was born in California, is an American mixed martial arts fighter.  As a former Ultimate Fighting Championship light heavyweight champion (2000-2003), Ortiz merged as one of the sport's biggest starts to become 2006's biggest consistent ticket seller in the entire business and appearing on the covers of various magazines such as Black Magazine.

Ortiz started his martial arts career as a wrestler in his sophomore year of high school.  Under Coach Paul Herrera, Ortiz completed fourth in the state high school championships as a senor.  Following high school, Ortiz then continued his wrestling career winning a California state junior college title for Golden West College.  Following then his stint at Golden West, Ortiz wrestled at Cal State Bakersfield.  Ortiz trained with future NCCA and world champion Stephen Neal.

Kevin "The Monster" Randleman is an American mixed martial arts fighter.  Randleman's background is in collegiate wrestling.  Wrestling at 177 pound, Randleman was a two time Division I NCCA Champion for Ohio State University.  Randleman was a former Heavyweight champion of the UFC and last fought in PRIDE at Heavyweight and Light Heavy weight.  He is known for his athleticism and explosive powers.  He was formerly associate with Mark Coleman's Team Randleman has had several professional wrestling matches, his first in January 2004. Randleman has displayed an incredible amount of potential and athleticism inside the ring in spite of having no formal training.   

Mark "The Hammer" Coleman is an American mixed arts competitor, former NCCA National Champion Wrestler from Ohio State University and former Olympic amateur wrestler.  Coleman is credited with proving his ability to dominate in the developing sport of mixed martial arts, and with being the inventor of this strategy that came to known as ground and pound.

Coleman began his career in freestyle wrestling, he then went to win a NCAA wrestling championship, and completing in the 1992 Summer Olympic Games, he took the seventh place.  Following his amateur career, Coleman made the transition to the then-new sport of mixed martial arts; he won his first two tournaments, UFC 10 where he beat defending champion and fellow superstar, Don Frye and UFC 11 in 996, and becoming the UFC's first Heavyweight Champion when he submitted Dan Severn by neck crank at UFC 12.

In his last UFC fight, Coleman was knocked out by Pete Williams and lost his title to Maurice Smith. From 2000 through 2006, Coleman resurrects his career with PRIDE Fighting Championships in Japan, while also making appearances with the professional wrestling promotion HUSTLE in Japan. Having defeated Masaaki Satake, Akira Shoji, Kazuyuki Fujita, and Igor Vovchanchyn, Coleman won the Pride 2000 open weight Grand Prix tournament. He emerged top of the mixed martial arts world once again. Following this, during the next five years he faced stiff competition, but maintained his reputation as one of the toughest heavyweights in the world. He appeared with team mate, Kevin Randleman, on the US PPV broadcast of the final Pride event, Kamikaze, states that he intended to keep fighting, although many have said that his career is winding down and he should retire.