Hiya,
I was lucky enough to live through the most recent boxing glory days of 60s and 70s, especially the heavyweights. Of course there were other division fighters too that were excellent and plenty of great boxing was around. I sorta drifted away in the 80s until Tyson came on the scene, which was a real tragedy for him as it turned out. In the beginning though that guy was amazing.
Wrestling back then was of course mostly staged and relatively harmless to the fighters unless something went wrong. Hah, one time Killer Kowalski stomped off his opponents ear by accident. Any sorta 'sleeper' or submission holds were mainly for looks with no real damage being done.
MMA has things set up differently, at least from what I've seen. You can get seriously hurt in a match since real scientific holds put on wrestlers are meant to do severe damage in a fight. Unless of course the wrestler 'taps out', or submits before things go awfully bad.
Rhonda Rousy uses an arm bar move for her wins. The opponents gives up because of the pain and fear of permanent nastiness to the elbow joint I think. They know that's her MO but can't stop it from happening.
I would suggest looking at some of her fights and also there's a lot of men who are top fighters. Brutal sport that can grab me sometimes. Short three or five round fights (5 minute rounds) for the most part
Martin
Oh, I should mention that unfortunately at this time a bunch of top guys have been caught using illegal meds.