Mark Coleman

Mark Coleman, born 20 December 1964, is an American retired mixed martial artist, professional wrestler and amateur wrestler. He won the UFC 10 and UFC 11 tournaments, became the first UFC Heavyweight Champion and took the Pride Fighting Championships 2000 Open Weight Grand Prix, and he was inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame at UFC 82. Coleman is credited with showing that accomplished wrestlers could dominate the young sport of mixed martial arts, and with being among the first in American MMA to use the strategy he named ground-and-pound successfully, which earned him the nickname The Godfather of Ground and Pound. In wrestling he was a World Championship runner-up, a Pan American Games gold medalist in 1991, a three-time Pan American Championships winner and an NCAA Division I national champion for the Ohio State Buckeyes, and he competed at the 1992 Summer Olympics.