Ed Wood wrote:What is this? The Wizards have had a less than smooth start to the 09-10 season. Usually I’d be using the opportunity to take advantage of you catastrophizing ninnies and laying down a mean draft thread for some serious Ed Davis discussion, and I’m gonna’, but college hoops is still a little ways away whereas this past Sunday saw arguably the first quality mixed martial arts fight card in the history of broadcast television. So I am instead making an attempt at introducing the oldest newest sport to hit the big time, mixed martial arts.
This thread is here for the purpose of discussing MMA and other combat sports. There is, and I am aware of it thank you, a very small little forum for the purpose of discussing this topic. I post there, I have nothing bad to say about it, but this is the Wizards forum, and I feel that it is only natural that I want to also discuss it here. And from there we’re back to the thread. I’ll try to put up an occasional feature on a particular aspect of combat sports or a particular competitor to satisfy my own perverse needs but it’d be nice to get some general discussion going as well. If I ever manage to convince anyone to follow the sport here be the gameday thread, and if anyone has any questions regarding combat sports I’ll make **** up and you can read it here.
So, combat sports are, as you may have heard, actually incredibly old. While the current MMA kick in the US is about two decades old now, Greeks were punching each other thousands of years ago. I won’t try to comprehensively cover the history of wrasslin’ and chokin’ stuff but some people seem to think that history lends respectability and legitimacy to the sport, so there you are.
The first UFC (stands for Ultimate Fighting Championship) event took place in 1993 in Denver. Vale Tudo events, bareknuckle open rules fights, had taken place in Brazil forever, but the first UFC was one of the first high profile mixed martial arts events in the United States. These early events lacked some of the basic rules (no groin shots) that were created in response to early criticism of the sport and the Gracie family used these early events effectively as advertisements for Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, as Royce Gracie repeatedly defeated opponents with no grappling ability whatsoever.
In the sixteen years since Mixed Martial Arts has evolved considerably and grown precipitously. Competitors now train specifically for MMA competition and are expected to be competent in all of the areas of skill that MMA encompasses, including striking, wrestling, and submission grappling. MMA has also begun to break out into the mainstream. UFC events now regularly compete with high profile boxing cards and professional wrestling promotions for the pay-per-view title and the Strikeforce MMA promotion has an ongoing agreement with CBS to televise its premier events. MMA also flourishes in Japan, where Pride, once a strong competitor of the UFC, has given way to DREAM, another successful promotion. Countless smaller promotions both in and out of the US provide opportunities for less well-established competitors.
This is not necessarily a thread solely for MMA discussion, however, it’s open season on all combat sports. Boxing, kickboxing, submission grappling (not) professional wrestling, this here’s a thread for all of it. Personally I know shamefully little about boxing and don’t keep up with the sport very well, so I can’t pretend I’ll be too helpful if it comes up, but I’m game for anything.
A Glossary of Terms Promotions UFC- The ultimate fighting championship. The largest American MMA promotion, run by the Zuffa group out of Las Vegas. The UFC has worked very hard to become THE American MMA promotion, to the point where MMA and UFC are synonymous to some in the same way that a Kleenex is a tissue. The UFC is probably the most talent-rich promotion in the world and puts together the highest profile cards as a result. On the other hand UFC promotional material is bad and until recently everybody had to pick between Limp Bizkit and Rage Against the Machine for entrance music (not really) so it’s not all roses as an organization.
WEC- World extreme cagefighting is basically the UFC’s little brother. The WEC focuses on the smaller weight classes (lightweight on down) that the UFC traditionally hasn’t incorporated, though both promotions currently have a lightweight division, with the UFC stocking most of the upper echelon fighters. The WEC does televise its shows for free on versus, however, and the smaller weight classes often provide exciting fights and better conditioned fighters.
Dream- The largest Japanese MMA promotion currently. Dream does stock a considerable amount of talent, particularly at certain weight classes (light weight) but overall is likely a tier below the UFC overall. It compensates with great fight promotion, great fighter introductions, and by occasionally working fights so that popular fighters come out on top.
Pride- The old Japanese promotion, bought out by Zuffa and the UFC in 2005. Pride featured a lot of really talented fighters and the same focus on entertainment that draws some fans to Dream, and a far more frequent and well-substantiated penchant for questionable judging and biased officiating. Pride never die.
Strikeforce- A smaller American promotion that mostly sticks to smaller scale shows and occasionally cooperates with other organizations like M-1 to put together bigger promotions. Strikeforce has had a lot of trouble keeping its champions in the fold and defending their belts with regularity, but is otherwise well run.
K-1- The Japanese kickboxing promotion. Kickboxing is basically boxing with the addition of kicks and the occasional knee. Knees were actually more freely permitted prior to the tooling of Japanese favorite Masato by muay thai veteran Buakaw Por Pramuk through the use of the thai clinch and repeated knee strikes. K-1 fights are frequently entertaining because of the activity level and quality of striking, though K-1 fighters are usually unsuccessful when crossing over into MMA.
ADCC- The Abu Dhabi Combat Club hosts yearly the biggest and most prestigious no-gi submission grappling tournament in the world. Every year most of the biggest names in grappling compete for what has become synonymous with the title of the top grappler in the world, the open competition championship.
PersonalitiesDana White- President and face of the UFC, Dana is both a very good businessman and savvy enough to stick to character as the face of American MMA. Dana is known for cursing as much as he possibly can whenever he’s on television and for wanting to know very badly whether anyone and everyone wants to be a fighter. I assume he also has terrible taste in music based on the stuff that the UFC uses promotionally.
Joe Rogan- The voice, I guess, of American MMA. Joe formerly hosted Fear Factor and so is something of a name even outside of his role as the color analyst for UFC shows. Joe is probably the best of a bad bunch of MMA commentators, he generally knows what’s going on, especially on the ground, but is also apt to allow his personal preferences to color his commentary, loves the twister.
Bill Goldberg- The other voice of American MMA, the play-by-play partner of Rogan. Goldberg basically has no idea what’s going on, but he’s not too bad when he’s just having fun talking with Joe and watching fights. Probably a nice guy, but not a good commentator.
Bas Ruten- Was a pretty good striker way back when before you were allowed to use gloves in MMA. Likes to pretend that he taught himself to be a really good grappler. Always gregarious and larger than life, very good in front of the mic when he has the opportunity, also the source of an infinite number of sometimes helpful and always entertaining instructional videos.
Royce Gracie- The old man of the sport and winner of the first UFC tournament. Royce was the first great champion of the sport, remaining undefeated save for an injury-related forfeit for seven years before loosing to another legend of the sport, Kazushi Sakuraba, in 2000. The success of Royce led to the popularization of Jiu Jitsu as one of the fundamental aspects of a mixed martial arts skillset.
LinksSherdog- A general MMA-related news site that handles coverage for ESPN. Read an article and I'm sure you'll see why. A quick visit of the forums is a similarly instructive experience.
Cagepotato- If you ever find yourself tired of reading Sherdog articles you're probably tired of life, but check cagepotato just to be sure.
Bloodyelbow- OK, Sherdog is bad. I am sorry. Here is a nice
history of MMA as apology.
MMA Core- A site that provides all kinds of MMA resources. Explore.
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]The single most important thing about MMA.[/url]