What is the Full Form of MMA

MMA: Mixed Martial Arts

MMA stands for Mixed Martial Arts. From the name itself, it can be derived that it is a mixture of all martial arts, and it is a full-contact fighting sport that allows punching, kicking, knee & elbow attacks, grappling and throwing everything.

History of MMA

In the era of Greek, there used to be a sport called Pankration, which included all the same strikes we get to see in modern MMA.

According to some mythologies of Greek, Pankration was invented by heroes named Heracles and Theseus.

The Pankration was first introduced in 648BC in the 33rd Olympiad, which used to be a festival for Zeus.

In the history of ancient China, India, Egypt and Japan, some evidence is present which proves the existence of similar kinds of mixed combat sports.

In the 1800s, the fighters started fighting with different martial arts practitioners.

During the late 1960s and 1970s, Jeet Kune Do (a type of mixed martial art introduced by Bruce Lee), became popular, and that is why Bruce Lee is also known as The Father of Mixed Martial Arts.

In 1970, a match was played between the boxing legend Muhammad Ali and Antonio Oki, and the total number of rounds played in this match was 15. In the end, the result of the game was declared a draw. This match played a vital role in the history of Mixed Martial Arts.

From this match, two students of Antonio named Masakatsu Funaki and Minoru Suzuki got inspired and founded Pancrase, a mixed martial art promotion company that was launched in the year 1993 in Japan. The name Pancrase was based on the same game popular in the Greek era named Pankration, which we discussed earlier.

After that, many other MMA promotion companies were launched, like the Ultimate Fighting Championship (founded in 1993) and Pride Fighting Championships (inspired by Pancrase).

Currently, more than hundreds of Mixed Martial Art promotion companies are available, promoting hundreds of MMA events. Among all these MMA promotion companies, UFC is the first in the ranking. Apart from this, Bellator MMA is in the second rank, and Absolute Championship Berkut is in the third-ranking worldwide.

The fights of MMA can be watched on some of the popular TV channels and websites like Sherdog.com, mmafighting.com, and UFC.com.

Weight Categories in MMA

MMA fight rules have changed a lot since its start. Since it is a dangerous and risky sport, the spectators demanded that there should be some strict rules to protect the fighters from serious injuries and unethical attacks.

Nowadays, most of the time, the fight is fought against the same body-weight fighters. It now has nine categories of weight which are listed below:

• Strawweight: fighters with up to 115 pounds
• Flyweight: fighters with over 115 pounds to 125 pounds
• Bantamweight: fighters with over 125 to 135 pounds
• Featherweight: fighters with over 135 to 145 pounds
• Lightweight: fighters with over 145 to 155 pounds
• Welterweight: fighters with over 155 to 170 pounds
• Middleweight: fighters with over 170 to 185 pounds
• Light Heavyweight: fighters with over 185 to 205 pounds
• Heavyweight: fighters with over 205 to 265 pounds
• Super Heavyweight: fighters with over 265 pounds

Fighting Area

The fighting area of the MMA can be a ring or fenced; fenced fighting is also called cage fighting. In cage fighting, the shape of the cage can be the shape of a hexagon or an octagon. If the cage's shape is hexagonal, it is called a hexagon cage, and if the cage has eight sides, it is called an octagon cage.

Rules for Players

• The fighting players are not allowed to wear any kind of jewellery or piercing accessories during the fight.
• The fighters must wear a gum guard or mouthpiece and hand gloves during the fight.
• Male fighters are allowed to wear groin guards if they want to, but female fighters are not allowed to wear groin guards during the fight.

Rules for the Matches

• If the MMA event is non-championship, there will be three rounds in each fight.
• If the event is a championship event, then there will be a total of five rounds. The duration of each round cannot exceed five minutes, and there will be a pause for one minute for rest after each round too.
• In MMA fights, there are some actions which are considered a foul. They are:-
  • Head Butting
  • Eye Gauging
  • Biting the opponent
  • Spitting on the opponent
  • Pulling of hair
  • Attacks on Groin
  • Fish Hooking
  • Any kind of strike on the throat
  • Manipulating the small joints of the opponent
  • Hitting on the spine or in the back of the head
  • Twisting the flesh
  • Pulling the collarbone
  • Attacking the grounded opponent with a knee or kicking, etc.