MMA

There are few things as interesting as the newest and fastest growing martial sport of Mixed Martial Arts. It truly is fascinating that in such a small time a sport can take all of the world’s martial arts farther in the last twenty years than the previous millennia.

Mixed Martial Arts is commercialized now, but the beginnings of the art are usually not, the basic breakdown of the fighters is usually the same. They usually come from a lower middle to lower class background with a emphasis heavily in sports on high school.

A lot of high school wrestlers make the move into MMA when they leave high school or college. Collegiate wrestling has few possibilities out of college for progression. So wrestlers look for a way to still wrestle and make some money. MMA is the answer. Many of these wrestlers need to make the transition though and have to progress into submission and striking techniques.

Other sports have produced viable MMA practitioners, such as Track and Field, Traditional Judo, Greco Roman Wrestling, and Football to name a few. Professional athletes of some of the aforementioned sports have even made the transition.

MMA is broken down by weight class. This promotes much of the same problems as was common with wrestling in the past, starving and dehydrating oneself. Health problems are not common yet and hopefully they stay that way. This sport is one of the most difficult atheletically of all sports. It has extreme strength, cardio, and endurance needs that make it unique among sports out there today.

Injuries are common in mixed martial arts, broken fingers, cuts above the eyes, broken bones. During submission attempts in many of the techniques the joints can be subjected to severe stresses that have brought about a list of newer injuries that are less common than ones that occur in other sports.

Money can be quite nice in the more commercialized MMA organizations, some fighter make more than $100K a fight. Many of these fighters supplement their income for the actual fights by having sponsors and product lines in such things as clothing, nurtitional supplements, and video sales.

I look at the sport as a whole and wonder just how high it can go. Studies amongst people today show the sports is one of the most popular among middle age men down to teens. The sports was at first only for men, as it's popularity has grown some of the professional organizations as promoting women fighters with a woman's fighting bracket with a champion in each of it's weight classes.