Ultimate Fighting: The Brains and Brawn of Mixed Martial Arts
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
THE GRACIE CHALLENGE Meanwhile another version of mixed martial arts was emerging in Brazil Its roots went back to the early 1900s Mitsuyo Maeda was a Japanese judo expert and pro wrestler at that time He challenged anyone in the crowd to fight him and he beat them all His nickname was King of Combat Maeda settled in Brazil and performed judo exhibits to promote his dojo These shows showed how a smaller man Maeda weighed only 140 pounds 64 kilograms could defeat a larger man using skill and leverage Fourteen year old Carlos Gracie saw one of the shows in 1917 He soon joined Maeda s dojo in the northern state of Para Brazil Four years later Gracie moved to Rio de Janeiro Brazil There he opened his own dojo with his younger brother Helio The brothers were very different Carlos was large and strong Helio was small He couldn t match his brother s strength So he created a fighting system for those who weren't powerful enough to execute the throws crucial to success in judo He called it Gracie jiu jitsu but it would later be dubbed Brazilian jiu jitsu This martial art still used judo throws But they existed mainly for the purpose of getting an opponent to the ground where a combatant would attempt to win with choke holds and joint holds Confident with his new system Helio issued challenges to all kinds of fighters to an anything goes fight called vale tudo In 1995 Helio Gracie held up an old newspaper article about his jiu jitsu fighting style 10 ULTIMATE FIGHTING
In 1951 four time Japan judo champion Masahiko Kimura accepted the challenge In front of 20 000 people he battled Gracie in perhaps the first large public MMA battle Kimura got Gracie in a judo hold called ude garami later called the Kimura The hold broke Gracie's arm but the tough Brazilian refused to give up His brother Carlos threw a towel into the ring to signal Gracie s surrender Stunned by the loss Helio retired He focused on spreading the word of BJJ and raising his family One son Rorion brought BJJ to the United States in 1978 Like Bruce Lee Rorion ended up in the movies His dojo became popular among Hollywood stars His fame spread when he revived the Gracie challenge by inviting fighters from all martial arts to battle him Many challenged Rorion but all lost BJ seemed to be the ultimate fighting style In Brazil Helio came out of retirement to battle former student Waldemar Santana Helio hated that Santana had become a pro wrestler A war of words in the press led to a fight not in public but at a local gym The two men fought for four hours Gracie finally succumbed when Santana kicked him in the head KICK-STARTING MMA Another kick to the head was even more important in MMA history It came from the foot of Akira Maeda A trained karate fighter Maeda was a protégé of the New Japan pro wrestling promotion's biggest star Antonio Inoki Maeda became an excellent pro wrestler But he didn't like the emphasis on entertainment He left New Japan to start his own promotion the Universal Wrestling Federation UWF Three other wrestlers Satoru Sayama Nobuhiko Takada and Yoshiaki Fujiwara joined him The four promoted shoot style wrestling It featured hard kicks submission holds and judo throws but no leaps from the top rope The fights were still worked but they looked real The UWF did well at first but infighting led to its demise Three of the four returned to New Japan In 1985 Sayama started a new promotion called Shooto It featured no pulled punches and few holds barred It was the first true MMA group Battlegrounds From Ancient Greece to the Octagon II
