What is the ultimate fighting style?

3 Main MMA Fighting Styles: Striking, Jiu Jitsu, and Wrestling

The value of being an MMA fighter is the diverse tool box of moves, styles, and ideologies you have at your disposal to dominate and defeat your opponent. When you watch a master fighter at his craft, he will blend different styles together seamlessly into one continuous and powerful movement, making it look effortless and unexpectedly graceful. Yet understanding the three main MMA fighting styles are the building blocks that every fighter needs to grasp completely in order to reach this level of artistry. Read on to learn more about striking, jiu jitsu, and wrestling to elevate your game and continue to reach for mastery of this incredible sport.

When it comes to striking, you really should watch Lyoto Machida versus Rashad Evans at UFC 98 to witness this style at its best. Machida’s precision and combinations reached a level of achievement that appeared so perfect as to be closer to something you would see in a video game, not in real life. Striking combines two goals during a fight: to wear your opponent down and to knock them out.

The good news is that striking is fairly easy to integrate into your current technique because the stance and posture required are the ones that you come out of your corner with: head low, hands up, and feet shoulder width apart. The variety of jabs available to the striker, from the cross to the always dramatic uppercut, give you a wide range of choices to keep your opponent guessing and help you surprise him when he isn’t looking with a carefully placed fake. Striking is a must for all serious MMA fighters, and something we teach heavily in our Mixed Martial Arts San Diego classes.

Since the first Gracie stepped into the ring and whipped out their unparalleled jiu jitsu technique, this fighting style has been a staple of all successful mixed martial artist’s playbook.

Focusing on grappling and ground fighting, jiu jitsu techniques provide fail-proof ways to dominate and submit your opponent. From a variety of full control mounts to chokeholds, the skilled jiu jitsu fighter has a dangerous skill set at his disposal to claim victory over the largest and most intimidating opponent.

Just about every big name in MMA has a solid wrestling background.

Because the unique combination of throws, takedowns, mounts, pins, and clinches makes it a veritable Cliff’s Notes on how to earn a victory, by skill or by brute force. Randy Couture, Chuck Liddell, Dan Henderson, Rashad Evans, and Brandon Vera use wrestling as a cornerstone of their ground game, just to name a few. And of course, the man who built his MMA career on his wrestling skills, Matt Hughes, provides great examples of how integral wrestling is to a successful game strategy.

Yet while all of these styles individually have their strengths and benefits to a fighter’s game, overall success and victory only comes from integrating all three together to create a strategy that is multifaceted and technically strong. Truly great mixed martial artists, like Anderson Silva, prove time and time that the only way to ensure a fool-proof victory strategy and a reputation as a feared opponent is to be well rounded in all of these incredible fighting styles. Identify which you need to polish, and then use it to up your game and take it to the next level.

What’s the Difference Between UFC and MMA?

If you are a sports fan (or even if you are not) then chances are you have heard about MMA and the UFC. Standing for Mixed Martial Arts and the Ultimate Fighting Championship respectively, sport martial arts are rapidly taking over boxing as the most watched combat sport in the world.

But, if you’re confused about just what MMA is, what the UFC is, and what the difference between them is, then it really is quite simple.

MMA Is the Sport. UFC Is the Major Organisation/Promotion Within That Sport

MMA stands for mixed martial arts. It is a sport that has only really come to prominence relevantly recently but it’s actually been about for hundreds, if not thousands of years. Essentially MMA is a full contact sport that allows the use of both striking and wrestling, both standing and on the ground.

Since ancient times, contests have been fought with these kinds of rules such as the ancient Olympic combat sport of Pankration, which was practiced in Ancient Greece and later by the Romans. However, it is only since the late 20th century that the sport of MMA has come into the consciousness of the masses, thanks mainly to the inception of the UFC — the Ultimate Fighting Championship.

The Foundations of Modern MMA

Before the UFC, there were various types of mixed martial arts organisations in existence. The two most popular were Vale Tudo in Brazil, which was dominated by the Gracie Jiu Jitsu clan and shoot wrestling shows in Japan. Although reasonably popular in their respective countries, neither ever really broke into the big US television market.

It was the creation of the UFC in 1993 that rocketed the sport of MMA into the public’s imagination. The first Ultimate Fighting Championship was supposed to be a one-off, a competition to identify which was the world’s most effective martial art, with representatives of different fighting styles such as Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, Wrestling, Muay Thai, Karate, and Taekwondo.

It was won by Royce Gracie, younger brother of one of the show’s founders and viewers were highly impressed at the Brazilian Jiu Jitsu that he used to defeat all of his opponents, often fighting men twice his size. Because of this popularity, further UFC promotions were organised with Royce Gracie winning three of the first five. It has gone from strength to strength and today is the premier MMA fighting organization that attracts the very best fighters from across the world.

UFC and the Development of MMA

In the early days of the UFC, MMA was essentially one style of fighter fighting against another. Therefore, you may have had a Judo player fighting someone skilled in Taekwondo or a wrestler fighting someone skilled in Karate. However, as the UFC developed over the years, it became clear that one style was not enough to be truly effective. This realisation was to change MMA forever.

No longer a mix of martial arts with one style being pitted against other, fighters in the UFC (and other mixed martial arts promotions) began to cross-train in different martial arts, grapplers becoming better strikers and vice versa.

That means mixed martial arts competitions were no longer a mixture of martial arts being pitted against each other but MMA itself became its own style – a mixture of the very best techniques of all martial arts mixed together.

Therefore these days as well as being a sport, MMA is a martial arts style in its own right with the UFC being the major promoter and organisation within the sport, attracting the very best fighters from all around the world.

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Table of Contents

MMA: Anderson Silva

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mixed martial arts (MMA), hybrid combat sport incorporating techniques from boxing, wrestling, judo, jujitsu, karate, Muay Thai (Thai boxing), and other disciplines. Although it was initially decried by critics as a brutal blood sport without rules, MMA gradually shed its no-holds-barred image and emerged as one of the world’s fastest-growing spectator sports in the early 21st century. MMA events are sanctioned in many countries and in all 50 U.S. states.

History of MMA

Mixed martial arts was believed to date back to the ancient Olympic Games in 648 bce , when pankration—the martial training of Greek armies—was considered the combat sport of ancient Greece. The brutal contest combined wrestling, boxing, and street fighting. Kicking and hitting a downed opponent were allowed; only biting and eye gouging were forbidden. A match ended when one of the fighters acknowledged defeat or was rendered unconscious. In some cases, competitors died during matches. Pankration became one of the most popular events of the ancient Olympics.

In 393 ce Roman emperor Theodosius I banned the Olympic Games, spelling the end of pankration as a popular sport. However, this style of fighting later resurfaced in the 20th century in Brazil via a combat sport known as vale tudo (“anything goes”). It was popularized by brothers Carlos and Hélio Gracie, who began a jujitsu school in Rio de Janeiro in 1925. The siblings garnered attention by issuing the “Gracie Challenge” in area newspapers, proclaiming in advertisements: “If you want a broken arm, or rib, contact Carlos Gracie.” The brothers would take on all challengers, and their matches, which resembled those of pankration, became so popular that they had to be moved to large soccer (association football) stadiums to accommodate the crowds.

MMA first came to the attention of many in North America after the Gracie family decided to showcase its trademark Brazilian jujitsu in the United States in the 1990s. Hélio’s son Royce Gracie represented the family in a 1993 tournament in Denver, Colorado, that came to be called UFC 1. The name referred to the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), an organization that became the leading promoter of MMA events. The earliest aim of the UFC events was to pit fighters of different styles against each other—such as wrestler against boxer and kickboxer against judoka. Initially, the only rules decreed no biting and no eye gouging. Bouts ended when one of the fighters submitted or one corner threw in the towel. Royce Gracie emerged as the champion of UFC 1, which was held in a caged ring at Denver’s McNichols Arena. As the UFC’s first cable television pay-per-view event, the tournament attracted 86,000 viewers. That number increased to 300,000 by the third event.

The UFC initially marketed its product as a no-holds-barred sport in which anything could happen. Its brutality raised the ire of many, including such politicians as U.S. Sen. John McCain, who famously called caged combat “human cockfighting” and sought to have the sport banned. In 2001 new UFC management created rules to make the sport less dangerous. It added weight classes, rounds, and time limits and extended the list of fouls in the ring. The revamped UFC no longer featured mostly brawlers. Newer fighters were more skilled as boxers, wrestlers, and martial arts practitioners, and they were forced to train extensively and remain in peak condition to perform well. In the United States the sport came under regulation by the same bodies that governed the sport of boxing, including the Nevada State Athletic Commission and the New Jersey State Athletic Control Board. Even McCain dropped his opposition to MMA, acknowledging in 2007 that the “sport has made significant progress.”

Although the UFC struggled to make money in its early years, it eventually developed into a highly profitable organization. Between 2003 and 2006, a trilogy of fights between two of the sport’s biggest stars, Americans Randy (“the Natural”) Couture and Chuck (“the Iceman”) Liddell, at UFC 43, 52, and 57 helped elevate MMA and the UFC. The sport also received a boost from The Ultimate Fighter reality TV show, which first aired in 2005. The show traditionally features fighters looking to break into the UFC. Divided into teams under celebrity fighter coaches, combatants live under the same roof and fight each other in a knockout format, with the final winner earning a UFC contract. Beginning in 2013, women also appeared on The Ultimate Fighter both as coaches and as competitors.