What is M.M.A.

Mixed martial arts (MMA) is a combat sport. This type of fighting is a wide variety of fighting techniques used together, including grappling & striking.

Modern MMA events can be traced back to the Gracie Family. (Royce Gracie shown above) They began holding vale tudo martial arts tournaments in Brazil starting in the 1920s. Then came early mixed martial arts matches hosted in Japan in the 1970s.

In the late 1960's Bruce Lee came on the scene and began to show the world the idea of mixing martial art styles. This is how the idea of MMA began to gain popularity.
Todays mixed martial arts tournaments became popular in 1993 with the Ultimate Fighting Championship, better known as UFC. This was done to determine which type of fighting would be more effective in real life combat. The sport went international and gained widespread publicity in the United States in 1993, when Royce Gracie, a brazilian jui-jitsu fighter dominated the Ultimate Fighting Championship.

Originally this fighting was done with minimal rules to keep it more like real life combat. In order to keep the athletes safe and to help acceptance of the sport, they began to add more in the late 90's. As time goes on much of the original no-holds-barred concept is kept the same. Because of the changes, the sport has grown rapidly.

Back in Japan the continued interest in the sport resulted in the creation of the Pride Fighting Championships in 1997.

UFC 1 - The Beginning, took place at the McNichols Sports Arena in Denver, Colorado on November 12, 1993. The event was seen live on pay-per-view. It was an eight man tournament with $50,000 to the winner. The tournament had no weight classes or time limits so competitors could only win a match by submission, knockout, quitting. Today we are waiting to see UFC 77, showing this Saturday, October 20, 2007 at 10pm, EST. These days MMA has actually set Pay-Per-View records. Most UFC shows are shown Saturday nights on Pay-Per-View with every fourth one or so showing free. Some of the names in the Ultimate Fighting Championships are so well known that even those who are not MMA fans have heard of them. Some of these names are Royce Gracie, Ken Shamrock, Randy Couture, Chuck Liddell, & Tito Ortiz.

UFC President Dana White.(shown above) "No one respects Royce and Matt more than I. Royce started the UFC in this country. To have Matt and Royce fight in LA in front of 20,000 people is a dream come true - it's the biggest thing ever to happen in this sport - and I'm glad that Royce will be there, experiencing first-hand just how far the UFC has come." He was talking about UFC 60: HUGHES vs. GRACIE.

UFC has expanded into new shows lately with The Ultimate fighter. This shows behind the scenes training in a reality show setting. The winner gets a contract to fight in the UFC. Shown Wednesday nights at 10pm in the USA on Spike TV. This season it is Team Hughes VS. Team Serra.

I wanted to give thanks and credit to the sources that assisted me in writing this lens.

*Wikipedia
*UFC.com
*Sherdog
*The Martial Arts Directory
And my new friend "Rockycha" thanks for the feedback.