History of MMA

Although modern MMA was established relatively recently in comparison to other commonly watched sports, the concept of it is much older. Combat sports are mankind's oldest known sports. Sports like wrestling and boxing have been around for longer than we can even tell. Combat is a part of the nature of almost all living things, and mankind has always attempted to maximize our combative capabilities. This natural pull towards being stronger is what generates our interest in who the strongest people really are. Over the years different places developed different unique styles of fighting. However, each style usually specializes in a particular area of combat, and so when two practitioners of the same style face each other, the result is a very technical focused match, but one that is limited stylistically. Eventually people began to create more well-rounded tests of combative ability. A very early instance of this was a very popular Greek sport called pankration, which translates to all of power. Introduced to the Olympic Games in the year 648 B.C.E., this sport is somewhat similar to modern mixed martial arts, combining grappling and striking arts allowing combatants to utilize a wide range of strikes, takedowns, holds, joint locks and chokes. Other than biting and gouging, a competitor was allowed to do whatever in his power to incapacitate his opponent. Unfortunately, the sport was abolished in the year 393 AD along with gladiatorial combat as well. Although of course there were some occurrences of mixed martial arts competition, from that point until relatively recently there was little sign of mainstream mixed combat sports. It was the early 20th century until there was a significant resurgence of mixed combat sports. In the 1920's in Brazil there were popular Vale Tudo competitions, a full contact combat sport with few rules, held during events such as circuses. Vale tudo, translating to everything allowed, greatly contributed towards the modern evolution of combat sports as it sort of reignited the extinguished flame. It helped lead to the emergence of Brazilian jiu jitsu which is largely considered to be the most influential martial art in the development of modern MMA. The Gracie family, which created Brazilian jiu jitsu, refined the art of grappling and ground fighting. They began hosting challenges in an attempt to display their superiority, inviting practitioners of other martial arts to come and give them their best shot. They quickly began to notice their dominance, especially against many traditional styles of martial arts considering they mostly lack fundamental ground fighting techniques. They identified a big hole in the many more popularized forms of martial arts and took advantage of their weakness, showing that no matter how skilled of a striker you may be, if you can't get your opponent off of you then you can't hit them and so it doesn't matter. With these Gracie challenges being displayed, there is an increasing interest in finding the most effective style of martial art. Practitioners of any martial art would of course back their countless hours of training and claim their style to be superior, but there is only one way to truly put it to the test. And so, in the year 1993, came the introduction of the UFC (The Ultimate Fighting Championship) in order to try and determine the most effective style of fighting. This was a tournament style competition in which there was a collection of different martial artists with a broad range of styles all competing against each other. It was done all in one night, with competitors fighting multiple times back-to-back, there were very few rules, no gloves, no rounds, no time limit, no weight classes, and only one winner. This is very different from the UFC events we see today, but the sport has evolved drastically since then. A member of the Gracie family, Royce Gracie, was the winner of this first UFC event in 1993 even though he was the smallest competitor, displaying the effectiveness of good grappling technique. He competed in the first four UFC events and won three of them. Although the beginning of the UFC appeared to show the dominance of Gracie Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, as the sport continued people began realized that the outcome of a fight relied not so much on which person practiced the better martial art but instead on the martial artists themselves. Brazilian Jiu Jitsu merely brought attention to the true effectiveness of ground fighting, but nothing is more uncertain than a fight. Anything can happen, and so competitors quickly realized that they must adapt. Once they began focusing on winning and becoming a better more well-rounded martial artist, instead of trying to prove that a certain style is superior, that is when MMA began to truly take form. Obviously, a person that can effectively fight everywhere, whether the fight stays on the feet or ends up on the ground, will dominate a person that's only capable in a particular aspect. That is why martial arts has evolved so much between then and now, so much that the fighters of today that compete in the UFC are basically required to be capable in all areas or they just won't make it. Of course everybody has their preferred style of fighting, but they must train everything to be prepared for all styles. This allowed for the emergence of so many new techniques and ways of fighting, drastically changing and improving the combat sports world. The martial artists of today are so much better and more rounded overall than the martial artists just 30 years ago, and the martial artists of the future will likely far surpass that as well.