Brock Lesnar in the time of Pythagoras

MMA announcer Michael "The Voice" Schiavello of HDNet Fights checks in with ProFighting-fans.com

Evolution is a funny thing, and I don’t just mean evolution of the species. Other things evolve too: music, sports, food and clothing just to name a few. Sometimes evolution goes so far that it actually completes a circle and ends up at the very point it started, which peculiarly is the case with Mixed Martial Arts.

We live in a time of exponential technological advancement greater than any in recorded history (of course there’s a whole theory that the Atlanteans and Sumerians were far more technologically advanced than we are today, but that’s a discussion for another time). Almost three thousand years since two men oiled themselves up and wrestled competitively at the first Olympic Games (776 BC), and since Homer in TheIliad (675 BC) wrote of Mycenean warriors in 1200 BC boxing in honor of their fallen comrades, the evolution of fight sports has brought us back to where we were thousands of years ago.

The sport of Mixed Martial Arts as we know it today, which encompasses boxing, kickboxing, wrestling and submissions (and so much more, but these are the bare components of the sport) is said to be the most advanced form of competitive combat in the world. Guys like Georges St-Pierre, BJ Penn, Shinya Aoki, Fedor Emelianenko and Gegard Mousasi are advanced combative athletes who don’t rely solely on one martial discipline to garner success, but instead are hybrids of several martial arts rolled into tight and successful game plans that encompass the modern mixed martial artist. While these superb athletes and their peers are presented as elite modern fighters who continue to evolve their skill sets (between UFC 1 in 1993 and UFC 100 in 2009 the evolution of the mixed martial artist into a cleaner and more well-honed and well-rounded athlete is as obvious as Bobby Lashley’s traps) it’s more than a little ironic that these “modern” skill sets of being able to box, kick, wrestle and apply submissions all in “the new boom sport of MMA” is in fact a throwback to the most ancient sporting spectacle of all!

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Don’t believe that what we’re seeing in the UFC, DREAM, Strikeforce and the like was taking place thousands of years ago? Just look at some of the scenes depicted on ancient pottery such as this item from the 5 th century BC on display at the Museum of Metropolitan Art (http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/greekpottery/ig/Greek-Pottery---Athletics/Pankration-Amphora.htm) What do you see here? It looks like a front kick to me.

How about the pictures on this cup, dated from 500 – 475 BC on display at the British Museum (http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/greekpottery/ig/Greek-Pottery---Athletics/Training.htm) This depicts two pairs of combative athletes in training. The center pair is quite obviously engaged in grappling, with the athlete on the left performing what looks to be a headlock. The other pair is engaged in a striking contest with the athlete on the left looking to be performing a sweep while defending against a straight right hand (all that’s missing is their backs pressed up against the Octagon!).

And check out the design on this Greek drinking cup from 490 – 480 BC on display at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/greekpottery/ig/Greek-Pottery---Athletics/Boxers.htm) Here we see two fighters trading uppercut elbows Muay Thai style just as you’d see Anderson Silva let fly during his UFC fights.

There was a time when boxing was thought to be the epitome of modern combat sport, first with Broughton rules (introduced in 1743, they included a 30 second count for a downed opponent), then later with London Prize Ring Rules (1838) and then with Marques of Queensbury Rules, which were introduced in 1867.

To the general public boxing would remain the pinnacle of modern fight sports until the 1960s when full contact Karate started to gain popularity (led by Joe Lewis) followed by the 1970s kickboxing boom of Bill “Superfoot” Wallace, Joe Lewis and Jeff Smith, all of whom were original PKA champions in 1974. To those fight fans that had grown up with boxing, however, the use of kicks – even above the waist kicking and done in long pants – seemed unmanly and barbaric.

In the 1980s kickboxing continued to rise in popularity through the feats of such fighters as Benny Urquidez, Don Wilson and Dennis Alexio.

By the late 1980s many Dutch kickboxers began venturing to Thailand to learn Muay Thai. The Thais of course had been doing Muay Thai for thousands of years though in its modern form as a ring sport form about the early 1930s. Little was known of Muay Thai outside of Thailand except that which had been taken to Japan. Interestingly as far back as February 12, 1963, three Kyokushin Karate fighters from the Oyama dojo in Japan went to the famous Lumpinee Stadium in Thailand and fought against Muay Thai fighters. The Karateka were Tadashi Nakamura, Akio Fujihara and Kenji Kurosaki. They beat the Thais 2-1.

Spreading out from Holland through the likes of Ramon Dekkers, Rob Kaman, Glibert Ballantyne and Ivan Hippolyte (yes, the same Ivan Hippolyte you see cornering Remy Bonjasky in K-1), Muay Thai picked up tremendous popularity in the Western world in the early 1990s and for the rest of the decade. It stimulated kickboxing’s evolution to include leg kicks and knees, and thus the creation of the K-1 organization by Master Ishii in 1993 (as a means of bringing together kickboxers, Karatekas [namely of his own Seidokaikain organization] and any other stand-up fighters to compete under a unified set of kickboxing rules).

That same year, modern mixed martial arts was truly born with the first ever UFC tournament. After a slow start to its mainstream acceptance and popularity, UFC is now a combat sports monster and Mixed Martial Arts is the epitome of modern fight sports, which brings us right back to those clay pots predating Christ. The pictures of ancient Greek fighters elbowing, punching, kicking and submitting each other could just as easily be pictures of Brock Lesnar, Alistair Overeem, Kazushi Sakuraba or Nick Diaz!

The burning question in my mind is: where do fight sports go from here?

It’s hard to think of much more than can be added to civilized fight sports that doesn’t already exist in the MMA arena. Is this as advanced as fight sports will get? And how advanced is MMA really if what we’re seeing now was being watched in Ancient Greece and other similarly ancient cultures thousands of years ago?

There was a time when boxing was thought to be the bee’s knees of fight sports. Then there was a time when above-waist kicking was thought to be the modern mind-blower. Above-waist kicking then went below the waist, followed by the inclusion of knees and then elbows. Surely, many people thought, you can’t get a more complete combative spectacle than Muay Thai? Then along came Mixed Martial Arts as a spectator sport (and yes, I haven’t forgotten about Pancrase, Shooto, Vale Tudo etc. predating UFC, this is just a bare essentials look at the evolution of the combat sports spectacle) which would have been unimaginable to the Rob Kaman’s of the world; just as Muay Thai would have been unimaginable to the Bill Wallace’s of the world; and kickboxing would have been unimaginable to the Jack Johnson’s of the world. Solely boxing as a combative sport would have been unimaginable to the figures on those ancient clay pots – and to any modern MMA fan.

Makes you think, doesn’t it?

By Michael Schiavello
ProFighting-fans.com MMA Guest Writer

Michael Schiavello is the voice of MMA and K-1 on HDNet and a regular correspondent for InsideMMA. He commentated the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne and The Contender Asia reality TV series. He can be found online at: www.thevoiceofficial.com and at Twitter "SchiavelloVOICE."