Gegard Mousasi, born in Tehran to an Armenian family, grew up in the Netherlands from the age of 4. He began his professional MMA career at 2003 at the age of 17, and fought in various organizations including M-1, Rings and DEEP at middleweight before debuting in Pride in 2006 at 20 years old.
After a win and a loss (the second one of his career at that point, both by armbars) he was matched with then #78 ranked Middleweight Hector Lombard, and showed superior grappling, controlling Lombard’s back for most of the fight.
In 2008 he beat then #68 LHW Evangelina Santos in a middleweight match to reach #23 ranking, but his jump into the spotlight was his debut in Dream against #14 Dennis Kang, on whom he was able to slap a triangle, catapulting him to #8 in the world. He then continued in the Dream tournament beating #20 Melvin Manhoef and #25 Ronaldo Souza on the night of September 23, 2008. Both fights were short. Gegard had no problem controlling Manhoef on the ground for another triangle submission win, while he got lucky against Souza sending a precise head kick just as Souza was diving in for some ground control. It was an exciting finish but it’s not one that proved Mousasi’s superiority, so a rematch between the two today would be a very viable and interesting option.
Winning the Dream Middleweight title has made Mousasi one of the best middleweight in the world, as he rose to #3 in the Middleweight rankings. Mousasi has shown himself to be a very well-rounded fighter, with world-championship level kickboxing and an excellent ground game which awarded him his most impressive wins to that point.
On 2009 He took on the massive challenge of Mark Hunt, who didn’t look good at the time, ranking at #31 Heavyweight after 4 fight losing streak. Mousasi controlled him on the ground, leading to an easy armbar.
He then signed a deal with StrikeForce which allowed him to continue fighting in Dream at the same time. He beat Renato ‘Babalu’ Sobral, who was the StrikeForce LHW champion and ranked #10 LHW, in less than a minute with his signature lightning fast ground & pound, reaching the pinnacle of his career by becoming the StrikeForce LHW champion and ranking at #4 at LHW.
In November 2009 he fought Sokoudjou, who was ranked #29 at heavyweight at the time, and while still beating him pretty decisively with the same old G&P, it was the first time he had gone to the second round in a while. In December, in the traditional end-of-the-year event in Japan he easily G&P’ed yet another former star Gary Goodridge, who was ranked #224 HW at the time.
And then came his first loss in 4 years. In April 2010 he tried to defend his StrikeForce LHW belt against then rising star, former wrestler Mohammad “King Mo” Lawal, who was ranked #16 at Heavyweight at the time. While not able to inflict serious damage, King Mo controlled Mousasi on the ground for 5 rounds, and Mousasi, who wasn’t able to slap any of his submissions on the strong and aggressive Mo, lost the LHW title, and dropped to #11 LHW in the rankings.
He then fought two more times in Dream, winning the Dream LHW title against #49 LHW Jake O’Brien and defending it against #26 LHW Tatsuya Mizuno and again entering the LHW top ten at #8. His guillotine choke against O’Brien was one of the fastest ever to put a guy to sleep.
In 2011, Mousasi returned to StrikeForce for a fight against former UFC LHW contender Keith Jardine, who was ranked #31 LHW at the time. While beating Jardine handily, this was not one of his stronger performances, and a point loss due to an illegal upkick cost him the win, making the result of this bout a draw. Another easy ground & pound win against #60 HW Hiroshi Izumi in July kept the Dream LHW title in Mousasi’s hands.
Ovince St. Preux was another rising star with a strong wrestling base, who was riding an 8 fight win streak and ranked at #40 LHW at the time. It seemed that if Mousasi would lose to someone, it would be to someone like St. Preux – a strong wrestler similar to King Mo. But Mousasi showed that he has learned from his loss, and with much improved wrestling (and a poor striking performance by St. Preux) was able to coast to a decision win, which was not all that impressive but showed how even more well-rounded Mousasi has become.
After more than a year of inactivity, in the beginning of 2013 he fought the high-level high-power striker Mike Kyle, who was ranked at #21 LHW at the time, at the final StrikeForce event. Mousasi, who usually has little respect for his opponents’ striking abilities and fights in a relaxed manner with little or no defense, kept his hands up, knowing what the result of a punch by Kyle can mean. He was still the aggressor though, and once he got the fight to the ground it was all Mousasi. He controlled Kyle easily getting the mount position; the usual ground & pound rolled Kyle over, and Mousasi won by a rear-naked choke.
In his last outing,Alexander Gustafsson, Mousasi’s original opponent, had to pull out and was replaced by #30 LHW Ilir Latifi, a relative unknown. This was another not particularly impressive performance by Mousasi where he totally controlled the fight, yet was unable to do a whole lot more. These last few fights were not against high profile enough opponents so Mousasi’s rankings did not improve. In fact, it slowly deteriorated from #8 to #10 LHW which is where he is now. This fight will be Mousasi’s first in middleweight since 2009. It would be interesting to see if that has any effect on his performance.
A prime Machida will be Mousasi’s toughest test. Mousasi is an excellent striker, a submission specialist and now even a competent wrestler, therefore he was always able to exploit his opponents’ weaknesses. Machida, though is just as well rounded as Mousasi, and with more experience against high-level competition. It remains to be seen if Mousasi has what it takes to hang out with the top, most well-rounded fighters in the world.