8 MMA Legends You've Never Heard Of

Before Khabib Nurmagomedov was demonstrating just how dominant Dagestani grapplers can be in mixed martial arts, there was Magomedkhan Amanulayevich Gamzatkhanov.

Luckily, someone realised that Magomedkhan Amanulayevich Gamzatkhanov isn't exactly the easiest name to recite and he was rechristened as Volk Han for his MMA career.

Much like many of the early MMA pioneers, Han initially competed in professional wrestling before transitioning to the combat sport relatively late at the age of 33. Han would prove the efficacy of his grappling skills in a competitive environment and would go on to record victories over the likes of Kiyoshi Tamura, Dick Vrij, and Branden Lee Hinkle.

Han would retire from the competitive combat sport in 2012 following a shoot-wrestling fan's dream bout against fellow list inductee Masakatsu Funaki that ended in a draw.

Han's legacy in terms of MMA however, was his implementation of combat sambo as a grappling system in MMA. He would also serve as one of the early grappling trainers of a young Fedor Emelianenko, who would go on to be arguably the greatest MMA heavyweight of all time.