Gunnar Nelson was an early prodigy in karate before switching to BJJ. Is his striking underrated?

In Iceland as a teen, Gunnar achieved 3 consecutive Karate championship titles. By age 16 he was chosen as the country’s “most promising up-and-coming karate talent of the year”. At 17 he decided to give up karate to pursue BJJ where he was perhaps even more successful and today in the UFC he is primarily known as a grappling threat (i.e. commentary before his fight with Albert Tumenov in 2016) Is the lack of striking reputation a consequence of his high level bjj simply outshining his less high-level striking skills? Or is Gunnar’s striking truly not as much of a threat as you might expect from a karate prodigy, or maybe the Iceland karate scene is just not very elite? submitted by /u/MapleMarshal [link] [comments]