MMA braids striking and grappling from many lineages
Mixed martial arts is a full-contact sport of striking and grappling that borrows techniques from fighting systems worldwide. Its roots run from ancient Greek pankration and Chinese leitai through savate challenges, catch wrestling and Brazilian vale tudo to the founding of the Ultimate Fighting Championship in 1993.
Pankration fused existing wrestling and boxing and entered the Olympics at the 33rd Olympiad in 648 BC. Every blow and hold was legal except biting and gouging, there were no rounds, and a fighter conceded by raising his index finger. Historian E. Norman Gardiner judged no athletic event more popular. China's leitai likewise mixed martial arts, boxing and wrestling with almost no restrictions, and similar contests are recorded in Egypt, India and Japan.
In 1852 French savate kickers faced English bare-knuckle boxers; Rambaud, called la Resistance, beat Dickinson with his feet, though England took the other four bouts. Catch wrestling, blending Indian pehlwani with English styles, arose in the late nineteenth century, and in 1887 wrestling champion William Muldoon slammed boxing champion John L. Sullivan to the mat within two minutes. Edward Barton-Wright's Bartitsu, founded in London in 1899, was the first known system to merge Asian and European styles, while Japan's early-1900s merikan bouts and Russia's 1920s sambo pushed the hybrid idea further.
Brazil's vale tudo set capoeira, Muay Thai, Luta Livre, judo, catch wrestling and Brazilian jiu-jitsu against one another, and Kimura versus Gracie in 1951 was an early headline match. Muhammad Ali's 1976 exhibition with wrestler Antonio Inoki in Japan inspired Shooto in 1985, Pancrase in 1993 and Pride in 1997. Rooftop contests between styles in mid-century Hong Kong fed into Bruce Lee's Jeet Kune Do.
The Gracie family carried their jiu-jitsu, developed from the 1920s, to the United States, and Art Davie and Rorion Gracie staged the first UFC in 1993 with hardly any rules. Later changes, such as banning kicks to a downed opponent, reshaped the contest.
Source: Mixed martial arts
