Ultimate Fighting: The Brains and Brawn of Mixed Martial Arts
Two stone young relief from men are 510 shown in wrestling Athens Greece on
One BATTLEGROUNDS FROM ANCIENT GREECE TO THE OCTAGON ombat sports are nothing new The term martial arts wasn't coined until the 1500s but the history of combat sports stretches back thousands of years The ancient Greeks made wrestling an Olympic sport in 708 B.C. Soon after an early form of boxing joined it in the Olympic Games As the Greeks watched wrestlers and boxers they must have wondered who would win a match between the two PANKRATION SUDDEN DEATH The 33rd Olympics in 684 B.C. introduced pankration This all strength contest featured two combatants in a nearly no holds barred match Only eye gouging and biting were outlawed Men could punch and kick Once on the ground they could use submission holds to attempt to get their opponents to give up the fight Some fights dragged on and on If a fight lasted until sunset it required the limax The fighters drew lots kind of like a coin flip to see who went first The first fighter delivered a strike His foe was not allowed to block If that strike didn t end the fight then the second fighter got his turn Very few turns were needed before the fight and sometimes a life ended
Pankration changed over time It evolved into two types stand up fighting ano and ground fighting kato In A D 404 the Romans who had taken over Greece shut down the Olympics and official pankration contests ceased The sport however did not die In Europe a variation called brancaille developed It was based on wrestling but allowed competitors to use their hands feet elbows and knees to strike their opponents Meanwhile martial arts flourished around the world Different cultures developed distinct forms of fighting Among them were sambo in Russia ju jitsu in Japan muay Thai in Thailand and tae kwan do in Korea SHOW BUSINESS Combat sports grew popular in the United States in the 1800s A form of wrestling with few rules called catch wrestling had become popular The rough and tumble sport of boxing was as dangerous as it was exciting Over time more rules governed the sport of boxing making it safer for combatants Meanwhile wrestling was undergoing another type of change In the 1800s and the early 1900s most wrestling matches were shoots This meant that the matches were real with no fixed outcomes But at some point in the early 1900s the sport became more about show business Wrestling featured colorful characters and worked predetermined outcomes It was no longer a real combat sport Both boxing and wrestling remained popular They thrived with the dawn of television in the 1950s After World War II 1939 1945 martial arts particularly karate became popular in the United States Dojos martial arts schools sprang up all over An American form called kempo or full contact karate developed Movies introduced many people to martial arts mostly because of one man Bruce Lee ENTER THE DRAGON BRUCE LEE AND JEET KUNE DO As a teenager in Hong Kong Bruce Lee got into street fights His parents made him channel that energy into the martial arts He soon became a master In 1959 Lee moved ULTIMATE FIGHTING
to the United States and opened his first dojo in Seattle Washington Soon after a TV producer saw him at a karate tournament in California The producer cast Lee for The Green Hornet TV show which ran from 1966 to 1967 The show wasn't a hit but Bruce Lee was Lee wanted to star in movies But he couldn't land any lead roles in Hollywood So he returned to Hong Kong to make kung fu movies Films such as Way of the Dragon shattered box office records in Asia and made big money in the United States In Way of the Dragon the final fight scene featured Lee and Chuck Norris another martial artist who went on to become an action star Lee died in 1973 But he had already helped to m martial arts popular worldwide Perhaps less known yet even more important to the development of MMA was Lee's fight philosophy Even while working in films Lee often sparred with other martial arts experts He found that traditional martial arts were too much science with their strict rules and too little art Also while martial arts looked dangerous in a real fight many such moves would fail Lee came up with the idea of jeet kune do or way of intercepting the fist This was a hybrid style It combined the style of martial arts with real world effectiveness Jeet kune do emphasized practicality flexibility speed and efficiency Fighters cross trained in all combat arts including boxing and even fencing In many ways Lee developed ideas to create the first true mixed martial artists That is if you don't ask the Gracie family in Brazil Battlegrounds From Ancient Greece to the Octagon 9
