Mixed Martial Arts

Growing up we've all heard tales of great Romanfighting and human cock fighting, in association with
gladiators fighting until the death. These warriors wereMMA but these detractors couldn't be further from the
trained fighters, in various disciplines, and gifted athletes.truth. The biggest misconception is that your average
The thing that separated them from all others was thetough guy can enter one of these events and hold
courage and lack of regard for their own safetytheir own. Would people expect your average golfer
exhibited by these fighters. They honored having theto be able to keep up with Tiger Woods or your
opportunity to fight for and entertain the fans and theyaverage basket ball hobbyist to stand a chance
had the utmost respect for the other combatants. Youagainst Michael Jordan? The answer is no because
may be asking yourself what this has to do with MMAthese athletes are extremely trained and incredibly
(Mixed Martial Arts) or any martial art for that matter. Ifathletic. This holds true for MMA as well. No, the
you subtract the fighting until death aspect you will seefighters you see competing in mixed martial arts are
that MMA fighters exhibit many of the characteristicsnot street fighters or thugs they are highly trained
of these past warriors. You could even say they areathletes. The average fighter trains for 1 hour a day
our modern day gladiators!What is MMA? Firstly iteach in boxing, jiu-jitsu and wrestling. They also do an
stands for Mixed Martial Arts and it is a relatively newhour of cardiovascular training as well as an additional
combative sport that combines wrestling, boxing,hour of strength training. That's 5 hours of intense
karate, Jiu-jitsu and pretty much any other Martial arttraining in martial arts and conditioning. You're not going
you can think of. Some events are held in a cageto find many other pro athletes with that much of a
while others go the traditional combative sport routework ethic.Mixed martial arts, is becoming the fastest
and use a ring. A match pits two competitors againstgrowing combat sport in the world with many
each other usually for 2-3 five minute rounds. A fighterrepresentatives from every continent. When you look
is allowed to use strikes consisting of elbows, kicksat the fact that just 5 years ago there weren't many
and punches and is allowed to grapple with theirmixed martial artists taking home more then ten
opponent both while standing and while the two are onthousand dollars a fight and now some of these same
the ground. A fighter can win a match by eitherfighters earn 250 to 500 thousand dollars a fight it
knocking their opponent unconscious, applying adefinitely shows how far this sport has come. Boxing
submission hold and having their opponent submit or bybetter make way because mixed martial arts is here
going the distance and having the judges decide uponto stay.
the outcome.You often hear various slurs, like street