In regards to the history of Mixed Martial Arts, the first roots can be traced back to ancient Greece. It was 648 B.C.E. when the Greeks introduced the sport of pankration into the Olympic Games. Pankration is fundamentally at the root of Mixed Martial Arts history - it is a sport introduced to the Greek Olympic Games in 648 BC, developled as a mixture of boxing and wrestling. The term stems from Ancient Greek language - the word "παγκράτιον", which literally means "all powers". The word is a combination of two Greek words, pan, meaning “all,” and kratos, meaning “powers.”
The Martial Art primarily only had two rules which dissallowed both biting and eye gouging. The only way to win the fights was to knock the opponent unconscious or send them to submission. It was not uncommon for these fights to last over an hour aswell as the result of death.
This ancient form of Mixed Martial Arts became the most popular event in the Olympic Games, and across the Hellenic world. The fight would take place in a ring with a radius of around 12 feet. This ring design was used because it was thought that it would encourage close combat techniques. The fights would also have a referee, who would use a long stick in aid of enforcing the rules.
Looking at the history of Mixed Martial Arts, many of the modern techniques can be found within this ancient Greek sport, such as punches, joint locks, choke holds, elbow and knee strikes, and kicks. Although these techniques were often used, just as in modern Mixed Martial Arts, the fights were usually ended on the floor through submission holds and strikes. Pankratiasts were renowned for their grappling skills using such techniques as takedowns, chokes and joint locks, often to great effect. The deaths that occured were usually by strangulation.
Pankration is the first recorded form of what would later come to be known as mixed martial arts, and is the closest any society has come to allowing a truly no-holds-barred unarmed combat sport.
Modern Mixed Martial Arts History
Pankration popularity declined rapidly in Greece due to Roman rules and dominance, at which point other sports such as wrestling and Boxing became the most dominant forms of combat sport in the West. At the same time, traditional Martial Arts styles would increase astronomically in popularity is Asia.
This trend would remain the same until 1925. It was then, that in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil that Mixed Martial Arts history was resurrected.
The modern histroy of Mixed Martial Arts begins with a legends named Carlos Gracie. Carlos began to teach his brothers, Helio, Jorge, Osvaldo and Gastão, Jr. a style of combat which has a mixture of Martial Art Styles within its techniques - a style which he was taugh by a Japanese man named Mitsuyo Maeda had taught him. Maeda was a champion in Judo. The Gracie brothers were not bound by the tradition that Japanese practitioners of the art so rigidly upheld, rather the brothers began to adapt the art to suit themselves, and to make it more practical.
It was in 1925 that Carlos took his (11 years younger) brother Helio, to Rio de Janeiro, at which point they opened up their own Jiu-Jitsu academy. Carlos and his brother Helio continued to run the school, quickly attaining many students. At the same time, Carlos wanted to build on the schools popularity and open up many more. He decided on a famous marketing strategy. He started a new campaign called the “Gracie Challenge” by using an advertisement in a range local newspapers. The advertisement, which included a picture of the slight Carlos Gracie, information on the academy, and stated “If you want a broken arm, or rib, contact Carlos Gracie at this number.” This was essentially as an attempt to show that it was superior to other styles of martial arts. The fight usually featured a smaller Gracie versus a stronger looking opponent. Carlos and later his brother Hélio Gracie defeated martial artists from a huge range of styles such as Boxing, Judo and Karate, it was extremely rare that they would experience a loss.
It was this 'Gracie Challenge' that would begin an outstanding revival for Mixed Martial Arts. The fights would become hugely popular with many people wanting to watch. Due to this surge in popularity, some of the fights were even carried out in huge Brazilian soccer stadiums. The first of these professional fights was between Brazilian Lightweight Boxing Champion, Antonio Portugal and Carlos’ younger, smaller, and much frailer brother Helio. Helio won the match in less than 30 seconds, effectively elevating himself to the status of Brazilian hero.
At the time, Brazil had no international sports heroes, and Helio filled that void for the Brazilians. As word of these matches spread to Japan, the great martial arts champions of Japan sought to participate in this new form of competition against the Gracies, who the Japanese thought were defiling their traditional arts. Japanese champions flocked to Rio de Janeiro to do battle with Helio Gracie, who was always out weighed by his opponents, often by more than 100 pounds. He defeated many great Japanese fighters, and in a trip to the United States, Helio defeated the World Freestyle Wrestling Champion American super heavyweight Fred Ebert.
This new sport quickly became hugely popular, soon becoming the second most popular sport in Brazil behind soccer. This is still the case today. Leagues and organizations were soon formed and events began to be held regularly all over Brazil. The fights featured practitioners of Brazilian jiu-jitsu, muay Thai kickboxing, luta livre wrestling, boxing and various other styles. As these events, and as a result, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, grew in popularity in Brazil, the Gracies branched out to the United States.
History of Mixed Martial Arts in the US
In the early 1980s, Helio’s oldest son Rorion (pictured, behind Carlos, with his two son's Ryron and Rener), decided to relocate to the United States to teach Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu in California. Just like Carlos and Helio, Rorian used the Gracie Challenge to promote his club and family style.
As Rorion saw the potential that Mixed Martial Arts offered, he wanted tocreate an organization that would promote this sort of fighting in the United States. He visited Thailand where he witnessed an underground Mixed Martial Arts event. He met Art Davie and utilized his connections in the television industry to set up a meeting for himself and Rorion Gracie with Bob Meyrowitz, who was president of Semaphore Entertainment Group (SEG), a corporation that specialized in putting on live pay-per-view sporting events. Together, the three men established the “Ultimate Fighting Championship,” which held its first event in 1993.
The first “Ultimate Fighting Championship” (or UFC as it is more commonly known) event sold 86,000 pay-per-view buys, and by the third event, the buy rate was up to 300,000 pay-per-view buys per show.
The Ultimate Fighting Championship had introduced a form of fighting which it dubbed “no-holds-barred,” or NHB fighting. The first six Ultimate Fighting Championships had very few rules.
There were actually no weight classes, no time limits or rounds, and no mandatory safety equipment. The only rules were that fighters could not eye gouge, bite, or fish hook (similar to the Ancient Egyptian rules of Pankration - the style which UFC is derived from), and fights could only end with a referee’s stoppage, knock out, or submission, which could be signified verbally, or by a “tap out,” where the fighter must tap the mat, or his opponent three times with his hand or foot to signify that he submits.
The fights took place in an octagonal cage, now called “The Octagon.” The way the event took place was that the tournament would last one night tournament, where competitors would fight several bouts with a process of elimination until a single champion was found.
The lack of weight classes became an obvious problem from the outset, when 415 pound Hawaiian sumo wrestler was allowed to fight 216 pound Dutch kick boxer Gerard Gordeau. This scene was later repeated in the third UFC event, when 6-foot-8inch tall, 600 pound sumo wrestler from New Jersey, Emmanuel Yarborough, was allowed to fight 5-foot-11-inch tall, 200 pound karate fighter from Illinois, Keith Hackney.
Another problem that quickly became obvious was the lack of time limits, and judges. By UFC IV, most of the competitors had caught on to Royce Gracie’s success, and had begun to learn grappling techniques. As a result, the fights became longer and longer. It reached a point where the fights were running over the allotted pay-per-view time slot, and the UFC was losing fans, as they viewed the long periods of ground fighting as boring. SEG realized that it had to do something, so in 1995, at UFC V in Charlotte, North Carolina, the UFC instituted a 30 minute time limit, but did not have judges. Thus, when the much anticipated Royce Gracie-Ken Shamrock rematch ran over the 30 minute time limit, it was ruled a draw. The fans were outraged. This resulted in the use of judges beginning with UFC VI to decide the outcome of fights that outlasted the time limit.
As the UFC gained popularity, it became a pertinent political topic, as Arizona Senator John McCain launched a campaign against the UFC. As a result, in 1997, pay-per-view carriers dropped the Ultimate Fighting Championship events from their line-ups. This was partially SEG’s fault, as they had marketed the UFC as a blood sport, by drawing attention to the negatives that surrounded the event. SEG’s marketing of the event boasted that it was a “no rules,” or “no-holds-barred” fighting event, where anything could happen, even death. This was a successful marketing scheme in the beginning, as it drew attention to the sport from curiosity seekers, but it later backfired politically. As the political uproar began, and Sen. McCain became an outspoken champion of the abolition of the sport, states began to outlaw mixed martial arts competition. This forced the UFC to move its events from state to state, until the pay-per-view providers dropped the events from their services. In the words of UFC ring announcer, Bruce Buffer, this caused the UFC to “basically go underground.” The Ultimate Fighting Championship remained a fringe oddity, without pay-per-view coverage, and banned from all but a handful of states for several years, until the franchise was purchased by Zuffa, LLC. Zuffa, a Las Vegas based media and casino management company owned by Lorenzo and Frank Fertitta, took over the UFC franchise with the intention of returning it to its former popularity, and eventually gaining the sport mainstream acceptance.
The Fertittas and Zuffa president Dana White sought to turn the UFC into a “good, clean sport with actual rules,” which would allow the sport to eventually become sanctioned. This would be a huge step for the UFC, as “sanctioning provides a legitimization for the sport,” according to Bruce Buffer. Dana White and the Fertitta’s work came to fruition in 2001, when the UFC returned to pay-per-view, with record buy rates, and record ticket sales at their live events. The new and improved UFC returned with a stricter set of rules, which included rounds, time limits, five weight classes, a list of 31 fouls, and 8 possible ways to win. Also, the UFC fighters were drastically different from those that entered the Octagon in 1993. Current UFC fighters are among the best conditioned athletes in the world. Often, fighters train for more than six hours a day, which is comparable to, and often more than the amount of time boxers and other professional athletes spend in training on a daily basis.
Today, the UFC’s pay-per-view buy rates are rising quickly, as are ticket sales at their live gates. Fighters now spend five to six years fighting in smaller events, building their resumes to compete in the big show. Fans continue to flock to the sport looking for the excitement and intensity of the purest form of one-on-one competition on the planet today. Mixed martial arts is also currently the fastest growing sport in the United States, as mixed martial arts events and training centers spring up all over the country, and the money the sport is making continues to grow at a nearly exponential rate.