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INDUSTRY ANALYSIS
Mixed Martial Arts is also known as MMA for short. This is a full contact sport that is also known as a combat sport. It combines different styles and techniques of fighting. Mixed Martial Arts is popular in part because of the fact that it incorporates so many different styles of fighting.
The history of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) dates back to the Olympics of ancient Greece. Mixed Martial Arts fights originated as hand-to-hand combat performed as a sport called pankration, from the Greek words pan and kratos, meaning “all powers.”The Greek competitors had only two rules: no biting and no eye gouging. The teachings of ancient Greek pankration spread to India thanks to Alexander the Great and his habit of recruiting athletes as soldiers because of their strength and combat knowledge. A Buddhist monk traveling through India picked up on aspects of pankration and brought that knowledge to China, where it birthed Asian martial arts such as kung fu, judo, and karate. As people branched into new lands, they took these arts and built on them, often creating a new style or form of martial art. As martial arts spread, so did the idea of mixed-style competitions.
Mixed martial arts competitions were introduced in the United States with the first Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) in 1993.The goal was to find “the Ultimate Fighting Champion” through a tournament of the best athletes skilled in the various disciplines of martial arts, including karate, jiu-jitsu, boxing, kickboxing, grappling, wrestling, sumo and other sports. The winner of the tournament would be crowned the champion. The Ultimate Fighting Championship had introduced a form of fighting which it dubbed “no-holds-barred,” or NHB fighting. The sport gained international exposure and widespread publicity when jiu-jitsu fighter Royce Gracie won the first Ultimate Fighting Championship tournament, submitting three challengers in a total of