MMA in Vancouver: Paving the Way for Other Sporting Events
by Dave Shindel in Entertainment on January 22nd, 2010
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TweetEven though the Olympics are heading to Vancouver in a few days, there is another form of sport that will be making headlines in the upcoming months: Mixed Martial Arts. On December 16th, 2009, the Vancouver City Council and the Vancouver Athletic Commission approved a bill to allow Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) to be sanctioned within city limits on a two year trial.
This is a monumental event for West Coast sport lovers, as it brings the fastest growing sport to a city that was once thought to be such a backwater town that it couldn’t host an NBA franchise or an Indy event. However, with the announcement of the largest MMA organization, the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), planning a June show at GM Place, coupled with the Winter Olympics, Vancouver is quickly becoming a hotspot for modern athletes.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with this brand of combat, please allow me the opportunity to educate you on the basics of MMA, while attempting to dispel some archaic myths about what Senator John McCain once referred to as ‘human cockfighting’. In fact, many anti-MMA protesters try to smear this fledgling sport by typecasting it as barbaric and primal.
The Beginning
While the original concept of MMA was indeed primitive, I believe it no longer should be labeled in such a manner. The Ultimate Fighting Championship was first displayed in 1993, in an attempt to decipher the greatest form of martial arts style this side of a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie. Combatants from the striking disciplines of Boxing, Savate, Kickboxing, and Karate, as well as from the grappling disciplines of Sumo, Shootfighting, and Brazilian Jiu-jitsu all stepped forward to prove their style superior. The fighters were pitted amongst each other inside a chain-link cage in a 16-man tournament held for one night of pugilistic warfare. Originally, the UFC consisted of very few rules: there were no weight classes and the only striking restrictions were no eye gouges and no biting. Imagine a primitive no-holds bar form of fighting that even Mike Tyson wouldn’t have been exempt from. The winner of the first UFC event was the 175 pound Brazilian Jiu-jitsu ground wizard, Royce Gracie, who came to fight in a kimono that another fighter mistook for pajamas. Royce Gracie and his family of ground technicians will forever live in infamy as pioneers of MMA due to this performance, as well as those displayed at UFC 2, 3, and 4 (but not so much in UFC 60).
Present
Today, Mixed Martial Arts consists of a plethora of rules and regulations to minimize injuries and maximize fighter protection. There are strict drug testing policies that often supersede the hosting cities guidelines to promote fairness, something in which other major professional sports have not yet adopted. Yes, Major League Baseball, I’m talking about you. There are also trained medical professionals cage-side to ensure fighter safety. Although there are strikes used that are somewhat foreign in the history of North American combat sports (i.e. elbows, knees, joint submissions and strangulations), statistically, MMA has proven a much safer sport than that of its’ established older brother: Boxing.
Not Just Any Martial Art
Boxing purists have attempted to discredit MMA through attacking striking techniques, the homosexual positions that two fighters often find themselves in when grappling, and the types of people who view the sport. These are nothing more than ignorant, uneducated claims from sporting figures that have defamed a once great combat art through perversion and corruption. To lay claim that Jiu-jitsu promotes homosexuality is as fruitless as stating that reality television promotes abstinence.
Although the styles used in MMA vary from fighter to fighter and can be viewed as unorthodox to downright sloppy, depending on the user and the viewer, what is difficult to process (especially for boxing promoters like Bob Arum), is that in order to be successful in MMA in the 21st century, fighters must train in at least three disciplines full-time. To focus on only one art and expect to be superior in today’s world of Mixed Martial Arts is to discover what hurt feels like (again, see Royce Gracie’s performance in UFC 60 for a better understanding). With that kind of training, the perfection of one form will obviously take three times as long to achieve. I, myself, have been trained in Kickboxing, Can-Ryu Jiu-jitsu, and Judo which allows me an educated, but hardly expert, opinion on this matter.
When I tend to focus on my striking, the skills I achieved in my grappling suffer and vice versa. However, there are indeed fighters on the UFC roster that exhibit amazing proficiency in all aspects of MMA. One such fighter is the Montreal native and UFC Welterweight (170lb) champion, Georges St. Pierre (or GSP). GSP has twice earned Canadian Athlete of the Year and is perhaps the most dominant fighter in recent memory. GSP is a modern hybrid-fighter who has amalgamated wrestling with Brazilian Jiu-jitsu and Kyokushin Karate to enable him the opportunity to be apt wherever the fight goes. Although fighters like GSP are few and far between, the evolution of these modern warriors is increasing as well as prominent in bringing MMA to a higher level of mainstream viewership.
Make no mistake about MMA however; although it is a neophyte sport, it is here to stay. I have witnessed the first hand experience of a UFC event having taken in UFC 102 in Portland, Oregon and can honestly attest to the excitement and enjoyment. Perhaps, this is not your cup o’ tea, so to speak, but one thing that is exciting for Vancouver, is that we are finally being targeted as a city that is progressive and prominent. Good for us.
Sources:
Mixed Martial Arts – Sanctioning by the Vancouver Athletic Commission
Research – Combat Sports
Bob Arum Blasts Floyd Mayweather, MMA
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