The Evolution of MMA (Article I)

Editorial by Moosh LooLoo

What do Bruce Lee, H�lio Gracie, and Antonio Inoki have in common?

Well, firstly, in their heyday they could all beat the souls straight out of 99.9% of the planet but, also, more importantly, they are three of the most important people in the history of mixed martial arts, whether you know it or not. All three shared a dream (which is also shared by 99.9% of men on earth) to one day see the worlds� great martial arts masters battle it out mano y mano and prove which style is the best on earth! The important thing to consider here, though, is that they MADE IT HAPPEN! From Bruce Lee�s quintessential guide to hand combat, �The Tao of Jeet Kun Do�, to Inoki�s Gotch-inspired �Shoot-Style� of professional wrestling (and fighting!), to the eventual culmination of modern MMA and the ultra popular UFC (founded in part by H�lio Gracie), there have been no greater influences of modern hand-to-hand combat sports across the world.

The age old question of which school of martial arts would dominate all others doesn�t span mere decades, of course, and has probably been an idea floating about since the invention of the right cross! In Greece, the Olympic Games (maybe you�ve heard of it?) was founded almost solely on this idea and Pankration was born. The goal of which was to pit two men together in a fight to the death by bludgeoning, beating, or choking the life out of the opponent with nothing (literally, not even clothes) but their bare hands� Compared to the brutality we love, the Greeks were fairly hard-core� Fast forward some centuries to Ancient Rome where they took some of the fun out of it, but added a ton of blood and guts� The Gladiator Games regularly hosted tens of thousands of people at time to watch contests pitting styles vs. styles� but with weapons! These people were also pretty damned hard-core� Fast forward through centuries and millennium of people chopping each other up for various reasons, where wars fought at an arms length was commonplace throughout� and consider in all those years and all those armies there was at all times a �toughest guy around�, whether with sword or fist, and he was sure to be tested by the other �toughest guy around�� It can�t be helped� we just HAVE to know who actually IS the toughest guy around� It�s been in our blood for exactly however long man has been on earth.

During these times, there were schools of fighting for every style, which all had their strengths and weaknesses and of COURSE they wanted to prove their worth to the world by competing! And hand to hand combat hardly ever skipped a beat and steadily went from instinct, to art, to science! It�s always been hard (or silly) to argue learning how to defend ones self when there are no weapons in reach and could forever be!

Enter Bruce Lee, a Chinese (American) Kung-Fu expert who sent waves across the world when he stepped onto the silver screen with his amazingly fast and generally unknown fighting style and instantly everyone wanted (or claimed) to know how to do a flying spin kick! But Bruce Lee martial art was much, much, deeper than his movie and TV roles would lead on, and whether or not he was a master or submissions and wrestling is besides the point. He was a pioneer in the way that he realized that he WANTED to be a master on the ground as well as on the feet and tried through every means he could to spread that idea, that NO single style can be master, but that taking, from each art, what works best and meshing them together� Starting with Kung-Fu which has rigid and set forms and stances, he worked to create the art of Jeet Kun Do, which in essence means �Style of No Form�� Be Like Water� (ADAPT!) should be in every Mixed Martial Artists mind! His influence absolutely brought martial arts to the forefront of the worlds� stage.

Antonio Inoki, a Japanese professional wrestler, helped spread the idea of early Mixed Martial Arts through-out Japan with his style of wrestling known as �Shoot-wrestling� which he learned from a master of the art named Karl Gotch. Though working many �fixed� matches, his style was important because instead of flash and flare, he looked like he could actually get the job DONE, because he used maneuvers that worked in real-life situations� It transformed the Japanese fans idea of what professional wrestling was, and what they wanted to see� whatever they saw, they wanted it to look real! Inoki made it look real, you see, because he knew how to really do it and a �fixed� match with him looked just like a real match� He brutalized everyone who didn�t know how to really fight and made them look awful. From there on, things got real in the rings or Japan, whether �fixed� or not, people were getting hit hard, and if you couldn�t defend or attack with actual skill, you weren�t going to last long. When Inoki (a master of �Pro Wrestling & Judo�) actually fought Muhammad Ali in a very early mixed-arts rules fight� not a terribly exciting fight, but a true example of an early �Classic Stand-Up vs. Ground� battle. With his style in the ring, Inoki played a large part in bringing the spirit of Bushido back to the Japanese people and many if not most modern Japanese mixed martial artists would name him as an early inspiration.

H�lio Gracie, a Brazilian martial arts legend, had long been the head of the finest family of Jiu-jitsu practitioners on earth by the time Bruce Lee or Inoki hit the stage, but his official �World Coming-Out Party� didn�t happen truly until UFC I, where his son Royce Gracie showed the modern world what dedication to grappling arts can do for a person in a no-holds barred fight. In the preceding years in Brazil, though, school to school challenges were settled on the streets, and were not uncommon for certain, and he, along with his school, were often tested and very, very, rarely defeated! In the 1990�s he was a founding member of the UFC and a driving inspiration to bring this sort of contest to the masses.

Finally, after years of exposure, the world has come to realize what these men (and certainly others, written or unwritten) said was truth� Truly, I sincerely thank all three of these masters for the parts they played in bringing the sport of MMA to fruition and martial arts so far forward. In my next article, I will talk about the Modern Era of MMA and the future as I see it, so until then, �Be Like Water.�

Written by Kegaru Tetsudori.

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