33-year-old American David Taylor is one of the most accomplished wrestlers in the history of Penn State University, yet as he’s watching teammate Bo Nickal earn outstanding success in the UFC – was the ‘Magic Man’ ever tempted to make the switch to MMA?
From Henry Cejudo and Daniel Cormier to Kayla Harrison and Ronda Rousey, there are a whole host of UFC superstars who, prior to stepping into the octagon, had found incredible success competing in the Olympic Games.
Yet for every Olympian who’s made that transition to MMA, there’s a plethora of potential superstars who haven’t made that jump – including the 2020 Summer Olympic Games gold medal-winning wrestler, David Taylor.
Olympic wrestler David Taylor explains why he didn’t make MMA switch
An Olympic gold medallist, a three-time world champion, and one of the most accomplished wrestlers in the history of Penn State; there’s an argument that both the UFC middleweight and light heavyweight divisions are lucky that Taylor opted not to make that jump to MMA.
Speaking earlier this week to former welterweight champion Kamaru Usman, via the Pound-4-Pound podcast, Taylor explained that whilst the idea of competing in the UFC was incredibly tempting, he just couldn’t justify such an enormous change at this point in his career.
“I was definitely heavily considering it, I think after that fulfillment in Tokyo, you’re just kind of figuring out like ‘Do I want to keep wrestling, if I do then can I do it at a high level’ so I dabbled a little bit.
“I went out to Factory X with Marc Montoya a couple of times and spent some time out there training and I really liked it… I didn’t really know what I was doing but yeah, I did get to spar a little bit.”
Taylor and Usman both laughed as he noted how as a lifelong wrestler, “getting punched in the face for the very first time” gave him a strange feeling of exhilaration, later admitting that MMA was indeed part of his future plan at the time.
However, given both his age and how far down the wrestling rabbit hole he’d already gone, Taylor came to the conclusion that such a dramatic switch just wasn’t a reasonable option.
“Being older I didn’t want to go through that long journey, that long process and I realized if I decide to do this it’ll probably be an excavated route and if that’s the case- there’s no easy work into it.”
“When it came down to it, I wasn’t really prepared to start over in my career and take that longer route you know, the developmental route, learn and get ring time… I just decided that it wasn’t really the path that I wanted to take but I definitely considered it, for sure.”
David Taylor on fellow Penn State icon Bo Nickal’s UFC career
Whilst Taylor opted against making such a dramatic career change, his former teammate Bo Nickal has already found outstanding success in the UFC following his 2022 breakout on Dana White’s Contender Series.
“They’re doing it right with Bo and I think Bo’s doing it right,” acknowledged Taylor, adding how “It would be very easy to get lured into the excitement of jumping into more and bigger fights, but Bo is taking a professional approach.
“It’s going to pay off for him down the road, the ring time that he’s getting, and the experience is really valuable but he’s a superstar, he’s got all the makings to be a superstar in the UFC.”
Nickal is currently 6-0 as a professional MMA athlete with two of his three wins in the UFC coming by way of submission – including in his last bout against Cody Brundage earlier this year.
“He’s getting to the point where there’s probably going to be a step up in competition, there’s a lot of guys in that middleweight division who are pretty tough.
“Just being patient, keeping his head and taking it one fight at a time, that’s the best approach for him.”
At the time of writing, Bo Nickal’s next fight has not been officially announced.