“Martial arts are so old as human society. Human race all along needed a motivation that gives it strength and valence to succeed its goal and that is exactly what martial arts offer”
No matter how much seasons and with them human worries have changed, the need of a large number of people to soak in martial arts still remains the same. For this reason, martial arts are constantly developing and sometimes new forms are born, which harmoniously co-exist with the previous ones and exchange techniques.
The global event called MMA is the mixed martial arts. It consists of different kinds of martial arts such as judo, taekwondo, fight etc., which are Olympic games. Although the sport seems that comes from USA, is actually based on ancient Greek sport called “pancratium”.
Historical sources that referred to pancratium dated between 8th BC until 12th AC century. The word pancratium and its derivatives are found in dozens of writing passages, inscriptions etc. Those reports give us information about the way ancient Greeks conducted races, famous pancratium fighters, winner prize while according to the testimonies pancratium included in Olympic Games at 648 BC.
In the late 60s – early 70s the idea of elements’ combination from many different martial arts gained round in West thanks to Bruce Lee and the “Jeet Kunne Do philosophy system”. Bruce Lee thought that the best fighter is not the boxer or the karate athlete or the judo athlete but the one who can conform to any style of fight and can create or adopt his own individual style and not the one who follows the existing technique systems. In 2004, Dana White, UFC President called Bruce Lee “the father” of martial arts.
- Nowadays in USA the sport outmatches NBA, NFL, Formula 1 referring to economic terms.
- The main American UFC organization redeemed in the early 2000s for the amount of 2 million and resold in 2016 for the amount of 4 billion (the biggest organization’s redemption in the history). Today 3 years after the agreement with the biggest sport channel ESPN, the organization’s value overcomes 8 billion.
- According to Forbes list, UFC value is bigger than the oneof Real Madrid, N. York Yankees, FC Barcelona.
- Connor McGregor was the 4th one on the list as the highest paid athlete all over the world, together with Lebron James, Lionel Messi.
- Due to the sport’ s popularity, the number of mix martial arts schools in Greece is calculated to 2.000.
