Hello my name is Rob (but you can call me ‘hellowhosthat’) and I’m an MMA addict. My addiction is serious enough that it leads me to seeking out prospects on smaller MMA cards so I can follow their careers. As such I’m going to try and write articles about the lesser-known prospects, the kind of guys you’re not going to see on the relatively more famous regional shows that most hardcore MMA fans watch. This is going to be my attempt at bringing attention to the fighters who for whatever reason haven’t appeared on those cards yet, the fighters you’re (probably) going to hear about here first but the fighters who I think deserve more attention than they get.
Welcome to Off the Beaten Path, where we take a look at some of these fighters. Obviously these guys can be a little rough round the edges and less proven so I’m probably not going to have the success rate in terms of them turning into ranked UFC fighters as I would if I was just talking about people like Amru Magomedov or Bilal Hassan but enough of the excuses for future failure, let’s get on with it.
I was going to make the subject of this debut column the excellent (and handsome) Jayden Ortega, but one thing I’m very good at is procrastination, so Shawn beat me to rightly hyping him up so instead we’re going to Mongolia to find the subject of our first column, Shinebaatar Bat-Erdene.
Bat-Erdene is a 22-year-old Bantamweight with a Sambo background. Whether I’d really strictly call him a sambo fighter I’m not sure as there isn’t exactly a burgeoning sambo scene in Mongolia but he’s competed in the world championships in sambo so we’ll stick with that for now.
What’s really impressive about this guy is his weird strength and athleticism for the weight. If he’s a guy you’re aware of, it’s likely because of his scissor choke submission of the previously undefeated Kazuyoshi Yoshida in the Japanese Gladiator promotion which went semi-viral. Now I watch a huge amount of MMA and guys tapping other guys with scissor chokes is something you just don’t really see, so that kind of goes some way to getting a perspective on how strong this guy is.
What you wouldn’t have seen from that clip was the way he was ragdolling Yoshida around all fight in which made a guy who would fight in Road to UFC immediately following his loss to Shinebaatar look like a kid wrestling with his much older brother. Just a complete physical domination.
What you wouldn’t have seen from that clip was the way he was ragdolling Yoshida around all fight in which made a guy who would fight in Road to UFC immediately following his loss to Bat-Erdene look like a kid wrestling with his much older brother. Just a complete physical domination.
After that win and especially after seeing Yoshida’s name pop up in the Road to UFC bracket, you could have been forgiven for expecting Bat-Erdene’s name to appear too, but that wasn’t to be so I’d have to seek out regional Mongolian MMA to see his next contest so it’s off to YouTube to watch him fight for the title in the weirdly named MGL-1FC promotion against the fantastically named Odsuren Shaggdar.
Now, although he was undefeated I’m not going to pretend that I knew whether Shaggdar was any good or not, but he certainly seemed like a game dude who was down to swing very hard during the fight. Bat-Erdene was down to swing hard too and sometimes possibly a bit too riskily considering his grappling path to victory, but when he did use his grappling path he again showed his crazy strength for the weight and ability to force his opponent down from positions he probably shouldn’t have any right to.
Shaggdar was a game dude though and didn’t go away as easily as Yoshida which forced Bat-Erdene to show that he had some very good wrestling cardio considering how much strength and explosive athleticism he uses. Grappling hard for three rounds before managing to get under the chin from a slightly off angle but still forcing Shaggdar to panic tap as if he was about to die any second, again showcasing the squeeze this guy must have.
While he made some positional mistakes in the grappling, I think it’s things a 22-year-old can easily tidy up and he’d especially benefit from training in a large US gym or somewhere like Tiger Muay Thai where he can iron these things out. His striking also needs a little work as he’s quite a wild aggressive swinger and he could get caught doing that one day, but there are guys fairly high up in the UFC who still do that.
All in all I think Bat-Erdene is a very physical fighter with a high level of potential and I think he’s definitely someone that a fan of following prospects in the sport should be keeping an eye on. He absolutely needs to be on Road to UFC in 2026 and if he is, even though he’ll only be 23 at the time I think he’d have a very good chance of winning the tournament and going on to have a solid career in the UFC.