The Martial Chronicles: Why Mixed Martial Arts is Really Nothing More Than Professional Wrestling

I have been taken back by the amount of vitriol expressed in the comments of Matt Roth’s recent stories examining Brock Lesnar’s career in professional wrestling. While a lack of interest with anything relating to a "staged sport" from a segment of MMA fanbase doesn’t surprise me what does is the outright hostillity expressed by many readers. For them positing any link, no matter how tenuous, beween the UFC and the WWF is to defame the sport they love. What many of them are apparently unaware of is that mixed martial arts is really professional wrestling. No, not the professional wrestlng of Vince MacMahon, Hulk Hogan, Ric Flair, Jesse "The Body", and Bobby "the Brain" Heenan, but professional wrestling non-the-less, albiet under a different name.

As I’ve tried to chronicle over the last year, the sport that would eventually be named mixed martial arts is not a recent invention, having been born of two parents over a century ago. From out of Japan in the East came a number of practioners of (the often interchangeable) jujutsu and Kodokan Judo who travelled extensively throughout the Western World in their quest to spread their art. To assist in this they quickly began demonstrating the "gentle-ways" effectiveness by challenging and facing in a variety of matches the home-grown Western fighting disciplines of boxing and wrestling. The West’s contribution was provided by professional wrestling, which was already staging mixed bouts between the different schools of grappling by the time jujtusu appeared on the European or American landscape. In no time the two disciplines would be facing of against each other in the ring.

During the early 1900s, numerous contests between jujutsu and wrestling were held, often under the old prizefighting rules of "no holds barred", "anything goes", or "all-in": rules of wrestling that usually stipulated that no hold or tactic (with a few exception such as biting and gouging although sometimes even that was allowed) be banned from use, including striking. Eventually these evolved into an informal set of codified rules where both wrestling and jujutsu techniques where merged into a new style of wrestling, which was sometimes known as "jiu jitsu wrestling" when a jacket was worn (Will Bingham and Prof. Takahashi were strong proponents of this style). This was better known as "all-in" or "Slam Bang Western Style" wrestling and would become the basis for post Great War wrestling. Unfortunately, it was during the war years that wrestling metamorphosized from a somewhat legitimate sport into a completely staged one. Thus legitimate professional wrestling and the newly born mixed martial arts were eliminated in most of the world in one fell swoop.

Fortunately it didn’t die out completely. In South America during the war years traveling Western wrestlers and Japanese judokas (most notably Matsuyo Maeda) hoping to escape the conflagation in Europe brought this "anything goes" wrestling with them as part of their travelling shows to the more hospitable lands of Brazil. These matches found some popularity in Rio de Janiero, São Paolo and the state of Bahia, becoming known as vale tudo (which translates as "anything goes" in Portuguese), eventually being televised on "Heróis do Ringue" from 1959-60. This widespread popularity wouldn’t last, being deemed too brutal for the masses, but would continued to be practiced as a fringe "sport" in Rio and the northern and southern regions of Brazil. Amongst the more well-known combatants to participate in these matches where Geo Omori, Manuel Rufini, Dudu, Wladimar Zbszko, Masahiko Kimura, Walkermar Santana, Euclides Pereira, Rei Zulu, Ivan Gomez, and, most famously, the Gracie family. It was a Gracie, Rorion, who would bring this (at least real and not staged) "anything goes" wrestling back to the United States on November 12, 1993, with the first Ultimate Fighting Championship.

America was not the only place seeing a revival in real professiona wrestling that year, for a month earlier in Japan Masakatsu Funaki’s Pancrase held their first event, one where matches would be contested without predetermined outcomes. Puroresu in Japan, while having been as a staged (and staged being the correct term as opposed to fake when discussing the Japanese or pre 1980s American wrestling scenes) as their Western counterparts was much more obsessed with keeping the illusion of reality alive, going so far as having their top star, Antonio Inoki, "prove" its superiority to other fighting disciplines (perhaps inspired by the "Heróis do Ringue" program which aired in Brazil while he resided there as a youth) or bring in such practiced catch-as-catch-can wrestlers as Karl Gotch and Billy Robinson to ensure that the Japanese wrestlers could deliver a realistic performance. Eventually a group of young wrestlers led by Masakatsu Funaki, Minoru Suzuki, and Ken Shamrock, tired of only practicing and decidedto finally compete for real. They did so under the rules of professional wrestling, rules which allowed contestents to use painful submission grappling techniques and strikes (with open hand to the head). These rules had changed very little since being developed in the era of the wrestling versus jujutsu feud at the beginning of the century.

The following year the Vale Tudo Japan tournament kicked off and shortly thereafter other real professional wrestling promotions (such as RINGS and PRIDE FC) followed, kicking off the era of sōgō kakutōgi in Japan. During this era very little was done to differentiate between MMA and puroresu.

In the United States, the UFC too gave birth to other fighting promotions, but unable to use the name Ultimate Fighting, and apparently unaware of or unwilling to highlight its direct linkage to professional wrestling, they would take to calling the sport "No Rules" and "No Holds Barred" fighting until Rick Blume coined the term mixed martial arts while promoting his Battlecade card. The name would soon be the acknowledged name for not only the "no rules" fighting of that time, but also the modified professional wrestling matches taking place in Japan and later events held under the Unified Rules. In fact, when the UFC and other MMA promotions were trying to move away from the ‘human cockfighting" image the sport had gained and began to enforce new rules they turned to the Japanese promotions for some of their inspiriation.

Thus the current UFC, as fought under the Unified Rules, is descended from Japanese promotions of the 90s and the "anything goes" vale tudo of Brazil. In turn, both of these are the direct descendants of pre First World War professional wrestling matches. In fact, the UFC’s lineage and claim to professional wrestling is as strong as what they pass of as a sport in the WWE.

And we didn’t even have to touch on the fact that the UFC has built its business completely off the back of pro wrestling and pro wrestling fans.

For the complete story check out the Forgotten Golden Age of Mixed Martial Arts parts I, II, III, and IV and my previous Martial Chronicle looking at Hélio Gracie's bouts with wrestlers. And in the coming weeks stay tuned as I look at how Brazil saved mixed martial arts, how the Japanese helped invent it, and, if I have time, how Mr. Roth is killing it.

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Kimura applying his namesake on Hélio via moscow.kyokushinkai.ru

Sakuraba walkout via prommanow.com