Cung Le's Place in History Unsure

On Satruday, Strikeforce will welcome back its former middleweight champion, a champ who never lost his belt but rather had it taken away for inactivity. Le has recently been splitting his attention between professional fighting and acting, making several movies of late and laying the ground work for his pending retirement from the fight game.

At age 37, it his highly unlikely MMA fans will get to see Cung Le fight much longer, and I fear he will be remembered more for what he has not done: he has never fought a wrestler, never fought a top ranked middleweight, and never had to fight from off his back.

The truth is, MMA has simply been the last stop of a storied martial art career for Le and it would be a tragedy if he goes down as 'just another kickboxer' in the minds of martial arts fans.

Le has always wanted to do movies like his idol Bruce Lee, but he first wanted to compete as a martial artist in a time period where the format for proving one's self as a martial artist was unclear.

A student of the Sanshou style of Kung Fu, Taekwondo, and Mauy Thai, Le was attempting to create his own style and blend of the eastern kick boxing traditions.

Le decided to test this blend in competitive Sanshou and the results were astounding. He won three bronze medals at the Armature World Championships, three US Open International Martial Arts Championships, four US National Championships, three time captain of the U.S. National Team at the World Wushu Championships.

Le then became a professional and went 17-0 in pro Sanshou kickboxing, easily dispensing with the top competitors in the world with 15 KOs. Le then moved to the K-1 kickboxing league and went 3-0. And now going into professional MMA he is 6-0. Combined Le is 26-0 as a pro fighter.

Le is one the most, if not THE most, technical strikers in MMA today and with his wrestling background and blue belt in Jiu Jitsu, he is decently well rounded for a promotion like Strikeforce.

He will never be remembered as a great Mixed Martial Artist and he could very well lose on Saturday night but that will not change his standing among kick boxing martial artists.

Le's legacy will be as one of the truely great martial artists in history. While his success in MMA is limited, he entered into this new, exciting relam of martial arts at the age of 35 and has dominated the guys put in front of him, some 10 years younger than him.

Points sparing, technique demonstration, full combat Sanshou, K-1 kickboxing, and MMA, Le has demonstrated a dominating ability in all of them and his name should and will go down next other great kickboxing Martial Arts legends like Bruce Lee, Jet Le, and Anderson Silva.