U.S. Olympic trial runner-up Forrest Molinari declares plans to transition from wrestling to MMA

One of the United States’ top woman wrestlers is making the move to MMA.

Forrest Molinari, who finished as the runner-up at the Olympic trials in April after falling to 20-year-old phenom Amit Elor at 68 kgs, has made the decision to put wrestling on the back burner and turn her full focus on fighting. With a slew of medal wins at many of the biggest tournaments across the globe, including a bronze at the World Championships in 2021, Molinari immediately becomes one of the most experienced female wrestlers to transition to MMA.

At 28, Molinari could stick around for another Olympic cycle, but she ultimately decided that the timing was perfect to begin fighting now rather than waiting for another four years.

“The age thing was definitely a big deal,” Molinari told MMA Fighting. “Because I’m not going to do MMA just to do it. It’s the same as I don’t do wrestling just to do it. If I’m going to do it, I want to be the best.

“So we need to pay attention to the logistical side of it. I feel like I’m just getting into my prime wrestling-wise, but for MMA, I’m super young. I’m just a baby still getting into it. So if I decide I want to hop into World Championships next year or if I want to hop in the 2028 Olympics, that option I feel like is always open for me, but right now, I’m going to put MMA first and wrestling second.”

Molinari said the idea to eventually try her hand at MMA was something she thought about several years ago, but because wrestling at the international level requires intense focus and preparation, she had to wait until the time was right to actually make her move.

Over the past few years, she has started incorporating bits and pieces of MMA training into her regimen when time allowed, but now fighting is getting her full attention.

“I was deep in my wrestling career so I was focused on wrestling, but I was like, ‘That might be cool to do one day,’” Molinari said about competing in MMA. “I continued to follow it closer, I started studying it closer, just the techniques and stuff. As I started getting closer to the end of my wrestling career, I said, ‘I want to do this. I want to be the best in the world the same that I want to be the best in the world at wrestling.’

“It started getting more and more serious over the past couple of years. I’m just at an age where it’s like, do I want to keep wrestling or do I want to fight? Right now, I want to fight.”

Molinari has worked out at several gyms as she’s begun picking up the basics, but she hasn’t chosen a home base for her full-time training camp. That likely happens soon, but more than anything, she wanted to make the commitment public so she could let the MMA world know that she’s coming.

“Over the last two years, [my attention] has really been focused on just wrestling, the pre-Olympic year, the Olympic year, getting ready for the Olympic trials,” Molinari said. “It was really focused on wrestling. You don’t want to chase two rabbits.

“So I pulled off the MMA training and just focused on wrestling. Now it’s kind of flip-flopped. Now I’m very focused on MMA right now and I still wrestle twice a week. For me, the last couple of weeks and any time I’ve trained MMA, I love it. I don’t care about getting hit in the face. For me, I’m there for the fight in wrestling, so why would I not love MMA?”

While there’s no right or wrong way to approach an MMA career, Molinari isn’t interested in easing her way into the sport. She’s confident in the skills she’s picked up already, and she doesn’t expect that to slow down anytime soon now that her only focus is fighting.

That’s why Molinari said she hopes to make her pro MMA debut sooner rather than later.

“I feel like since I’ve truly submerged myself in just MMA training that it is coming to me very quickly,” Molinari said. “I’m starting to feel new things click every day at practice. I study fighting the same way I studied wrestling. I feel like I’ll be ready for a fight much sooner. I would like to fight much sooner.

“We don’t have a date yet or anything, but I am talking to everybody about it and get that figured out. I would like to fight before the new year, for sure.”

As far as her weight class, Molinari primarily competed at either 68kgs or 65kgs, which is between 143 and 149 pounds, but wrestlers also have to endure same day weigh-ins, so it’s not quite the same for MMA.

That being said, Molinari wants to get active with her fight career, so she expects to start out as a featherweight just so she can get some experience and stay busy before eventually getting her body ready for a cut down to 135 pounds, where she really hopes to wreak havoc.

“I think the best option for me is to start at 145 for a while, I’m just learning and getting a few fights in, and then slowly working my way down to 135,” Molinari said. “If we’re talking the best of the best, the top promotion is the UFC and they don’t have a 145 division. So in that sense, 135 needs to be discussed, but right now I’m going to start at 145.”