MMA History | MMA Spark!

Subscribe

MMA History

The MMA or Mixed Martial Arts is a popular form of arm to arm combat that has gained a certain degree of mass appeal recently. Like most other sports invented by humans, this one also isn’t devoid of a certain historical background. Given below is a brief history of the sport.

Pre Modern Era- Pankration is an ancient form well known unarmed as well as hand to hand combat that partially resembled the modern version of MMA. Historically, few of the oldest forms of unarmed combat games that gained a widespread popularity were the Shardana and Egyptian freefighting, and both had minimal rules. The aforementioned combat games were followed from pankration that is originally Greek in nature. This combat sport was first introduced in the Olympics reportedly in the year 648 B.C. The Greek pankration was reportedly less violent than both the Roman and Etruscan pancratium. There were a few statues put up both in the Roman city not to mention in many other cities in order to honor and recognize all the remarkable pankratiasts of Rome. Reports of several No-holds-barred matches came from the late 1800s and the fighters or the wrestlers represented a varied plethora of fighting styles. The fighting styles include many types of catch styles of wrestling. Several Greco-Roman wrestlers as well as others fought against each other in many wrestling tournaments all throughout Europe. In the USA the first ever major show where a wrestler and a boxer were pitted against each other happened in the year 1887. The then heavyweight boxing champ of the world John L. Sullivan, entered a match with his trainer, the famous Greco-Roman wrestling champion William Muldoon. John L. Sullivan was slammed in a matter of a couple of minutes and famously lost to his trainer.

The next much publicized match of arm to arm combat took place in the late 1890s between Bob Fitzsimmons and Ernest Roeber. The former became the heavyweight boxing champion of the world while the later was the champion of the European Greco-Roman wrestling. In this match, Roeber got injured and fractured his cheekbone however he still succeeded in defeating his opponent. He reportedly won the match through submission. In Europe somewhere around the 19th century, Giovanni Raicevich, an Italian by nationality defeated Akitaro Ono, a Japanese heavyweight. Later in the 20th century in 1936 to be accurate, a contender for the heavyweight boxing championship by the name of Kingfish Levinsky met veteran Ray Steele in a mixed match. In this match, Steele won in a matter of 35 seconds.

Pro-wrestling was later evolved into something different and it re-emerged in a couple of streams namely “shoot” and “show”. “Shoot” was something that involved the fighters to actually compete and the “show” was something that evolved into professional modern wrestling.

The current Era- Historically the traces of the modern MMA championship are easily traced back to the mixed style competitions that took place throughout several countries including Europe, Japan as well as the Rim of the Pacific and all these competitions took place in the early 1900s. The well known Gracie family started tournaments for the vale tudo martial arts were started in Brazil in the 1920s. There were many early forms of MMA matches that were hosted by in Japan by a certain Antonio Inoki during 1970s. The MMA soon got recognized as a popular sport and gradually gained an international status as well as an international exposure. MMA also was showered with a fascinating degree of widespread publicity especially in the USA in the early 90’s in 1993 to be more specific. The MMA became popular and gained immense recognition in the US when Brazilian Royce Gracie won the first ever UFC tournament in the world. He had a trio of challengers against him; however he made all three submit in a matter of five minutes. This match or rather this awe-inspiring performance by Royce Gracie succeeded in sparking an amazing revolution of sorts in the martial arts world. On the other side of the earth, in Japan there was a good amount of interest in this particular sport and this interest soon resulted in creating the PRIDE Fighting Championships. This championship match was inaugurated in the year 1997.

The creation of both the UFC as well as PRIDE spawned from a certain movement that was firmly rooted in a couple of interconnected subcultures. The Vale tudo events that was common in Brazil and the shoot wrestling matches that took place in Japan. The Vale tudo begin during the 1920s and was kick started by the “Gracie challenge”. The challenge was issued on behalf of Hélio Gracie and Carlos Gracie. This was later upheld by the future members of the Gracie family. In the 1970s, a collection of several MMA matches were hosted by a certain Mr. Antonio Inoki in Japan. He and his hosted matches succeeded in inspiring the famous shoot-style MMA that is still prevalent in Japanese pro- wrestling.

Share on Facebook