Training out of the Renzo Gracie Jiu Jitsu Academy and Mjolnir, Gunnar Nelson is a fast rising welterweight prospect known for his excellent grappling potential. The top Icelandic prospect in the sport, Nelson is a jiu jitsu phenom who has taken the grappling world by storm, winning many tournaments and displaying rapid progression in his ground skills. Nelson is very committed to his training and his grappling endeavours, and with continued work and steady progress has a chance to develop into a very special fighter in the welterweight division.

Although his first martial arts training was in karate, Nelson began training in BJJ at the age of seventeen and has been running with it ever since. He's trained his jiu jitsu with the likes of BJ Penn, John Kavanagh, and Renzo Gracie - whom Nelson earned his BJJ black belt from just two months after celebrating his twenty first birthday. Among his many grappling accomplishments, Nelson took gold at the 2009 Pan Am Games, silver at the 2009 World Jiu Jitsu Championships (brown belt), and finished fourth at the 2009 ADCC Submission Wrestling World Championships (absolute division), defeating the likes of Jeff Monson (a former heavyweight UFC title contender) and David Avellan along the way. While his pure grappling abilities are developing at an astounding pace, Nelson has also shown tremendous grappling saavy in his early MMA career - completely outclassing all his opponents to date once the fight has hit the ground. Nelson displays excellent transitions, good ground control and very sound technical ground skills. He sets up his submission attempts wonderfully and overall displays a technically polished ground game that is light years ahead of most at his age. In addition to his BJJ and submission skills, Nelson has also exhibited good ground and pound abilities and appears to have all the makings of a complete ground fighter. The only question in his overall grappling game appears to be his wrestling abilities. It remains to be seen if he can consistently get the fight to the ground (or keep it standing) against the stronger wrestlers he faces, but it should be noted that his takedowns have looked quite good early in his career (see bouts with El Bakara, Tromp). There's definitely going to be question marks surrounding how his ground game will continue "transitioning" to MMA, but given his age, rapid development and work ethic there are a plethora of reasons to be optimistic that Nelson will continue developing into an excellent mixed martial arts grappler.

Nelson's karate background does show on his feet as he has strikes with an unorthodox style, keeping his hands low, his stance very wide and does bear a little bit of a resemblance to Lyoto Machida. Nelson moves around well on his feet and has shown a willingness to engage (see bout with Iran Mascarenhas), pushing forward and not shying away from trading punches. Nelson displays a powerful overhand right, good punching power and did knock out Iran Mascarenhas standing. Nelson has been dropped in the past and will need to continue working on improving his technique and defensive standup skills (especially when he presses forward), but he has become visibly more comfortable with his striking as his career's moved forward and given his age and experience there is still considerable time for further improvement.