The thing the MMA fanboys always get wrong about boxing

look at those other competitors. There were 100x better fighter around. Gracie family didn't want to pick the best. They hadpicked the opponents. So they could send the smallest Gracie to there. Only looked great on paper.

 

Yes it was rare. But you could find dudes who knew grappling and striking. But as Gracies said.it was about the best single disipcline. There were Gracies who knew little bit stand up too.

 

Proof is needed

 

biting, gouging and nut shots are illegal in MMA as well. Only in the very earliest bouts were groin strikes allowed.

However, my point, in that dishonourable tactics abound even at the highest level of boxing, stands

It's not as noble as you think.

 

Even when UFC became MMA proper the competitors around Gracie's weight class were few and far between.

Pat Miletich was one of the first. Maybe more in Japan but they were hard to gauge ability wise. Sakurai was probably the best of those.

 

I highly doubt that when ufc quickly increased in popularity and started to be looked at as the sport of mma, around 2005, it was because Jiu Jitsu guys came in by the thousands, beat strikers, and therefore shifted no holds barred cagefighting to mixed martial arts. Weren't more safety standards implemented, rules more formulated, weight classes added, and especially efforts made to tone down how ufc was marketed? Didn't those changes have to happen so ufc could be accepted, before it could become popular enough to appeal to guys from more various martial arts backgrounds?

I can say when I came across ufc in the early 2000s the APPEAL whether or not the actuality was blatantly that it was brutal, largely illegal fighting: choking, hitting a guy on the floor, dismembered body parts. Obviously not the appeal of whether wrestling beats karate, or whatever. But in the later second half of the last decade it was all over TV, it was written about with respect on a lot of general sports sites and in papers, and the talk and appeal wasn't the brutality but that it was multidisciplinary fighting. I think you're probably getting cause and effect mixed up.

Anyway, I bring up its roots because punching someone in the head while he's on the floor and defenceless is more a ufc tradition than a component of any martial art that mma purports to consist of. Even current, evolved 'mma' allows these hits and holds that I and obviously the OP see as at best easy and at worst cheap and disgusting. And winning like that therefore shouldn't bring personal satisfaction or honour and respect.

Boxing has held onto its gentlemanly roots that give it inherent honour. But I think it's a sign of the times of this last century if we compare even boxing to that pre-modern tradition of sword or pistol duelling. Duelling was about not just proving your superiority in a violent confrontation, but doing so without barbarically relying on any unfair advantage, and with the purpose of demonstrating dignity and attaining honour. They didn't need a referee because the dueller's honour depended on even making sure he didn't attack his opponent while he was facing the sun. Now those were men!

 

Well by 2005 soccer kicks had long since been banned and the MMA sport was real.

Either way UFC was created to show case the abilities of the Gracie family in terms of Brazilian Jiu-jitsu. Whether you doubt it or not changes nothing really

 

What marital arts discipline is punching someone's head while it's on the floor defenceless part of?

 

Jiu Jitsu doesn't involve punching.

 

Bingo.

 

Which is exactly why Gracie won all of his tournaments by submission attempts, not g&p

 

It doesn't matter and I don't care if some Jiu Jitsu guys are able to avoid it, 'ground and pound', hitting someone in the brain stem while he's on the ground defenceless, etc is permitted in so-called mma, yet those moves are not part of any martial art. MMA is therefore more free for all fighting, more regulated as it might now be, than mixed martial arts. My bringing up that mma is more a ufc invention than natural evolution of mixing martial arts is relevant but a tangent to the point anyway: the point being that mma allows winning fights by COWARDLY means.

 

Ok first of all a fighter in the UFC can't just hit a guy who's knocked out. There are rules. If he's downed but conscious yes he can still get hit. But this doesn't mean there is no honour. Both fighters have agreed to fight on the usual rules and terms of MMA. If one goes to the floor they know exactly what they're getting into. I actually consider winning by submission in MMA to be more honourable than KO in boxing or MMA because there is less chance of brain damage, injury etc.

Also, if you look at pankration, the ancient greek martial art, this involved all styles of fighting from boxing to wrestling to ground and pound.

Stop hating on MMA because you're a boxing purest.

 

Bad thread IMO and a lot of historical naivete / ignorance displayed here about the origins of both eastern and western martial arts.

DougTheThug, BCS8 thumbs up for knowing your stuff - shoud have mentioned the usage of the cestus, leather, lead and vegetable saps, straight razor, etc to cap it off as to the honourable origins of punching.

The mob love blood and it has always been so and will always be so.