Striking martial arts include boxing, Muy Thai, kickboxing, karate, kenpo, tae kwon do, kung fu....basically anything having to do with punching, kicking, kneeing, or elbowing an opponent.
Grappling martial arts include brazilian jiu-jitsu, freestyle wreslting, greo-roman wrestling, and judo. These are arts the do not include striking (punches, kicks, etc) but are more about ground conrtol, balance, body throws, and submissions.
Putting a few, or all, of these together and you have mixed martial arts (MMA).
Now a little background on the main organization that is leading the growth of MMA: the UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship).
The UFC was started by the Gracie family who hailed from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It was started before the idea of mixed martial arts existed. Back then, different martial artists wanted to prove that their particular art was the best. You would have judo guys saying their art was better than karate, karate guys saying they were better than boxing, boxing better than brazilian jiu-jitsu, and so on.
The Gracies from Brazil started their own martial art which they called Gracie Jiu-Jitsu (now known as Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu). In order to prove their art was the best, they would invite the best karate, tae kwon do, boxing fighters into their gym and challenge them to a fight. Their thought was the winner of this fight would show which art was the best. The Gracies even offered $10,000 to anyone that would beat their best fighters. Their best fighters all happened to all be the sons of the founder of Gracie Jiu-Jitsu, Helio Gracie. They took on hundreds of fights with this challenge, and never lost once.
Below is a photo of grandmaster Helio Gracie and his best students, his sons.
So it is with this idea of pitting one martial art versus another that the UFC was born. The business savvy Gracie son, Rorion put the UFC together with the idea of showing what they called "Gracie Jiu-Jitsu" was the best martial art in the world.
The UFC started as basically a no-rules fight. There were little regulations, no weight limits or catagories, no reasonable time limits or rounds, and it was held in a tournament style format where a fighter would have to win at least 3 fights to be declared the "Ultimate Fighter". It was this format that caused the sport to be called "human cockfighting" and it was Senator John McCain who wanted it outlawed. By the time UFC 9 rolled around, he started a letter writing campaign to put an end to it altogether, and was successful in getting it pulled from many cable companies Pay-Per-View (PPV) offerings and creating some rules for these fights. Some viewe this as the end of the UFC. In actuality, it helped the UFC transform into what it is today: a regulated sport that grosses more PPV money and more ticket sales than boxing in the last 2 years. Regulations include drug testing, wearing 8 ounce gloves to protect a fighters hands and his opponents face from injury, weight catagories, and timed rounds.
As the UFC tranformed from no-rules fighting into a bonafide sport, the fighters competeing also tranformed. Gone were the days of one martial artist vs another martial arts of a different art. Now fighters realize that to be able to compete at the highest level, they need to cross train in various arts in order to be able to defend themselves and keep from losing. Of course fighters have their speciality, but they now realize that they need to well versed in many arts in order to become the champion. And so Mixed-Martial Arts was born.
More information on the UFC can be found here.
More information on brazilian jiu-jitsu can be found here.
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