to keep this going, exceptions often break the rule, and become the superstars, ot champions jordan gretzky magic vick etc.
Yes but they are often NOT replicated. Those men represent the pinnacle of achievement and aren't the norm.
so? that's life...sports too you have a bunch of people, some stand out, and only a rare few are at the top, usually by being able to do thing better or differently than the masses
I see your point but to me it's not mixed martial arts. The sport is now limited practically to Wrestling BJJ and some striking. That's effectively Hybrid Wrestling. Not MMA. The sport doesn't represent the variety that we see in Martial Arts nor the variety that we saw in it's inception. Either because of a lack of quality (which i believe to be the case). As well as an adjustment by fighters towards a style that is universally successful.
But my original point still stands. You've gone off slightly on a tangent and inferred something that i never mentioned. Of course there will always be exceptional athletes in any discipline but that wasn't my point.
no, don't get me wrong, i totally agree, it's a dumbass name now it isn't kung fu vs. kick boxing or jiu jitsu vs. karate there is a standardized set of skills one needs to compete at this point
I'm very confused. The term mixed martial arts had nothing to do with the early 'style vs style' UFC and indeed its adoption as the name of the sport was part of the trend away from that*. The era of the UFC that really focused on 'style vs style' was the early years when the sport was still billed as No Holds Barred. And that process soon established with styles worked and which didn't. Wrestling and Jiu-Jitsu became recognised as the dominant styles very early on - indeed until UFC 14 its difficult to think of a significant win in the Octagon for a striker. But from a very early stage, it was clear that style vs style could not last if you had fighters commit themselves fully to the sport. Why? Because defeated fighters from one discipline would go away and learn the techniques that the other discipline's fighters defeated them with. I mean this was shown as far back as Shamrock vs Gracie II. The last truly one-dimensional champion in the UFC is Mark Coleman - and his limitations were exposed by a kickboxer in Maurice Smith outgrappling him. And that wasn't an isolated example, Couture would use a mix of boxing and wrestling to pressurize and break Vitor Belfort while Frank Shamrock grappling and ground strikes to defeat Tito Ortiz. The style vs style contest was becoming a hybrid sport. The move towards regulation and the adoption of the name MMA was all part of the efforts to turn the UFC from a contest between sports to a sport in its own right - with a rulebook, weight classes, defined match format, championships, etc. Far from the modern sport somehow being a repudiation of the impulses behind the name change to MMA, its actually a culmination. *For the purposes of this discussion, Pride really is irrelevant. Until they tried to market it to Americans, Pride was never officially known as Mixed Martial Arts. It was billed as a new attempt at what prototype-MMA organisations like Pancrase or worked-shoots like UWFI were; a new, more real version of puroresu (pro-wrestling). Indeed they even billed the early broadcasts in America as pro-wrestling much to the confusion of the viewers.
I think it's too early to say that, but that was the reasons the Gracie family gave for leaving the UFC when the rules changed as the point is to proove who is the best fighter, not who has the best acclimatization to a set of rules. That said, we're only 10 years into the zuffa reign, we've seen wrestling probably become the most important discipline, either offensively ala matt Hughes or defensively to keep fights standing ala chuck lidell. The sport will evolve and change, creative stylists will incorporate more elements of their chosen discipline. Personally I'd like to see a more pride-esque weighting of scores to discourage lay and pray.
But again...how can that be a sign that MMA is dead? The sport that the Gracie's walked out on in 1995 wasn't called MMA. The fact Royce realised that his style of fighting was becoming increasingly less effective had nothing to do with it.
Agreed it was called Vale Tudo ( Portuguese for anything goes ) or No holds Barred combat. But not long after 95 it was being referred to by journalist, fighters and those in and around the sport as Mixed Martial Arts. What we have now is not Mixed Martial Arts. It's hybrid wrestling.
But it was very much style vs style. Sherdog used to list a fighters background MA and anyone who was a "freestyle" fighter was basically laughed at. It was a strange concept to not understand what a fighters background was. Sherdog stopped listing that quite some years ago because the sport has moved on.
Its a culmination of a trend. The sport was moving away from style vs style when the name change was made. Its just further along the same road upon which it had already set out on. And I wouldn't call it hybrid wrestling - that name doesn't make any sense. Hybrid wrestling would just be a mixture of different types of wrestling. As I said before I like freestyle fighting as a name and I think that describes the ultimate destination of the sport's evolution where there is a clear style to fighting and people are refining and adding to that style.