Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Daniel Puder: The Original WWE to MMA fighter...where is he now?

Back in the day when Strikeforce was just a fledgling San Jose, California based MMA promotion, they tried to used a tactic to draw fans in. Use a name that, even though he has minimal MMA experience, he is a name and people will want to see him fight. So the MMA career of Daniel Puder had a jump start. Puder was a winner of the formerly popular WWE reality series Tough Enough, and was thrust into the stoplight. However, about a year into his WWE career, he was cut loose from the WWE. Puder decided to now focus on MMA, and has accumulated decent wins in Strikeforce and BodogFight. After taking a few years off, Puder now trains at CSW under Erik Paulson, and has won two fights in 2009, bringing his MMA record to 8-0. With all the talk of Lesnar and Lashley, people seem to forget Puder was the first WWE to MMA fighter that people thought had real potential (sorry Sean O'Haire, losing to Min-Soo Kim automatically disqualifies you from this discussion). In fact, Puder still being 28, what's to say he can't make a run in a major organization. He's big, athletic, strong, and has a good ground game. I don't see why, with proper training of course, he couldn't eventually be a contender in a decent organization. So, can we have a trifecta of WWE to MMA superstars in the coming years? We'll see if Puder can get some big wins in a good organization, and keep at fighting, because he does have the potential.

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