5 pro-wrestlers who you didn't realise fought in MMA

The worlds of pro-wrestling and MMA have always been intrinsically linked – no matter how much hardcore fans of both sports might deny it – and for every piece of theatre that MMA promotions lift from wrestling, so too there’s a new submission move or unique finish that wrestling steals from MMA.

With such a great amount of crossover, it’s no surprise that athletes have crossed from one sport to the other on plenty of occasions. Everyone knows about the big mainstream stars who found success in MMA and pro-wrestling – Brock Lesnar, Ken Shamrock, Ronda Rousey, and more recently, CM Punk and Shayna Baszler – but there are more crossovers than fans of both might actually realise.

Here are 5 pro-wrestlers who you might not have realised fought in MMA.

#5 Rezar

WWE fans haven’t been told a lot about the background of current tag team stars ‘Rezar’ and ‘Akam’, better known as the Authors of Pain. The two men are usually portrayed as unthinking wrecking machines that are almost interchangeable in the ring, but in fact, while Akam – real name Sunny Dhinsa – went into pro-wrestling following an amateur wrestling career, Rezar – real name Gzim Selmani – actually had quite an accomplished MMA career prior to his WWE days.

Selmani, an ethnic Kosovo Albanian, grew up in an MMA hotbed – the Netherlands – and trained in kickboxing and judo as a child before taking up MMA at the age of 15. Eventually fighting out of the famed Golden Glory team – once home to the likes of Alistair Overeem and Gilbert Yvel – Silmani began fighting as an amateur in 2012 before quickly turning professional later that year.

By 2014 he’d put together a solid 6-1 record as a Heavyweight, including a submission victory over British UFC veteran Oli Thompson. That was enough to earn him a chance in the world’s second-biggest MMA promotion, Bellator, but his lone fight there didn’t end well – he was TKO’d by Daniel Gallemore in the second round.

That would be his last professional fight, as he was signed by WWE in early 2015 and has been there since. But in online lists of “real tough guys” in pro-wrestling – common for years – Silmani definitely deserves a spot.

#4 Bart Gunn

A former WWE tag team champion as part of the Smokin’ Gunns, Bart Gunn became known as a tough guy in the world of wrestling when he won the infamous ‘Brawl for All’ tournament in 1998 – essentially a toughman competition with a mix of boxing and wrestling that was actually legitimate rather than staged – knocking out foes such as Bradshaw, the Godfather, and ‘Dr Death’ Steve Williams.

The tough aura that he’d achieved through his victory was somewhat dented in 1999 when he was knocked out by boxing veteran Eric ‘Butterbean’ Esch in a toughman fight at Wrestlemania 15, but surprisingly, he actually ended up in the world of MMA some seven years after that loss, and even found himself in one of the biggest MMA promotions of them all – PRIDE – for a single fight.

Fighting under his Japanese ring name of ‘Mike Barton’, Gunn – real name Mike Polchlopek – debuted in MMA in BJ Penn’s Rumble on the Rock promotion, where he faced UFC veteran Cabbage Correira. Stunningly, Gunn actually came away with a win, as Correira suffered a cut which caused the fight to be stopped.

His next fight however was not so successful. Gunn was signed by PRIDE to face Ikuhisa Minowa – AKA ‘Minowaman’ – a fighter who always straddled the line between MMA and pro-wrestling and was renowned for fighting larger opponents. In a relatively dull affair, Minowa defeated Gunn by unanimous decision after two rounds – and that was the end of the former Smokin’ Gunn’s MMA career.

#3 Sean O’Haire

Often considered one of the all-time missed opportunities in the world of pro-wrestling, O’Haire emerged in the latter days of WCW as a potential superstar thanks to his size, intimidating look and exciting style, and appeared to have all the tools to succeed at the top. Unfortunately, once he got to WWE in 2001 his reputation slipped and by 2004, he parted ways with the promotion.

That was largely the end of O’Haire in the wrestling world, but it wasn’t the last that fans would hear of him. During his WCW career the announcers pushed that O’Haire had a background in ‘toughman’ fighting, and it was this career that he would fall back into. A brief career in kickboxing – during which he competed 3 times in K-1 – was followed by a move into MMA.

O’Haire debuted in MMA in 2004 with a submission win over Tony Roberts, and then defeated PRIDE veteran Shungo Oyama in his next fight. A run in Japan then followed, but both of his fights – a K-1 HERO’s bout against future Lesnar opponent Min Soo Kim, and a PRIDE outing against Butterbean – ended in losses.

But the former WCW star wasn’t quite done, as he managed two more wins – and apparently a handful of others that weren’t recorded – before fading from view in late 2007. From there the only reports of O’Haire came when he was arrested for battery in 2009 and 2011, and sadly he committed suicide by hanging in 2014.

#1 Nathan Jones

His WWE career might’ve been very short – he stayed with the promotion for less than a year and was used on television for mere months before quitting the company at the end of 2003 – but fans still remember him somewhat fondly due to the series of vignettes introducing him as the ‘Colossus of Boggo Road’ – essentially a crazy ex-con character playing up on his real-life criminal background – and some hilariously sloppy work inside the ring.

Many wrestling fans might not realise, however, that Jones actually fought in MMA years before his WWE debut; years before he’d made it into the world of pro-wrestling, in fact. Jones fought on the inaugural PRIDE show, where he was faced with Japanese pro-wrestler and former sumo champion Koji Kitao.

Unfortunately for the giant Australian, the fight didn’t go so well for him. Kitao – who’d already fought once in the UFC during its early days – easily dodged some flashy kicks before taking Jones down, and from there he secured a keylock to force the Australian to tap out.

Unsurprisingly, Jones never fought in MMA again and he was gone from the world of pro-wrestling soon after his WWE run, too. Thankfully for Jones, a career as an intimidating-looking actor has proven to be more fruitful – he appeared in a short role in the Brad Pitt movie Troy and as of 2018 is still acting.

#1 Alberto Del Rio

Former WWE champion Alberto Del Rio has wrestled essentially all over the world, from Mexico to Japan and the USA, and while modern-day fans probably know him under his WWE name as well as under the moniker of Alberto el Patron, prior to his move to the USA in 2010 he was well-known as Dos Caras Jr, a masked luchador. Strangely enough, it was under his masked persona that he found himself in the world of MMA.

Del Rio – real name Jose Alberto Rodriguez – used his legitimate background in Greco-Roman wrestling as the backdrop for his MMA career, and initially, he saw a decent amount of success despite actually competing while wearing his lucha mask. He put together a record of 3-2 in the DEEP promotion before signing with PRIDE in 2003, and it was in the Japanese promotion where his most famous highlight took place.

Sadly for Del Rio, it wasn’t a memorable highlight as far as he was concerned. He was thrown in at the deep end – matched with the feared striker and future MMA legend Mirko Cro Cop, arguably at the peak of his powers. To the surprise of nobody, Del Rio lasted just 46 seconds before Cro Cop turned his lights out with his trademark left high kick – one of the most enduring knockouts of his career.

Another PRIDE fight followed, this time a loss to future UFC fighter Kazuhiro Nakamura, but Del Rio put up a much better account of himself in that outing. Following that, he returned largely to pro-wrestling but still moonlighted as a fighter – and ended his MMA career in 2010 with a respectable record of 9-5.