Why is MMA so popular

There is a feeling that sports get stratified over years and people generally look forward to excellence in pre-established sports rather than looking for an altogether new sport. However, MMA, or the mixed martial arts sport has proved the assumption wrong and done so in style. Still climbing the popularity charts of worldwide sports, MMA is actually a very ancient concept. In times as old as the Greece Olympics of 648 BC, mixed martial arts was a popular form of competitive contact sport. The Greek soldiers participated in the sport to develop the sense of combat and even as an amusement activity. However, it would be pertinent to mention here that there were cases where the no holds barred style of the sport led to severe injuries to participants.

MMA did not have any structure to it, and was more or less an equivalent of uninhibited street fighting and brawling. However, the contemporary form of the sport has been redesigned to ensure that the inherent life risks of the ancient form get mitigated. There are restrictions on use of inappropriate attacks such as eye gouging, biting the skin, hair pulling and cheeky pokes at the genital organs. To add to the competitiveness, the sport of MMA involves several structures fight forms like judo, karate, the Brazilian jiu-jitsu and the intriguing shoot wrestling. The fact that the viewers get an amalgamation of all these superlative forms of fighting in the form of mixed martial arts ensures that more and more professional fighters get into the sport.

MMA, with all its inherent excitement and exhilaration, is like a breath of fresh air both for the fighter community as well as the viewers. Each fight is an exhibition of some stunning fight moves and some serious manly fervour to down the opponent. Gone are the days when mixed martial art was considered an inhuman activity aimed at simply decimating the opponent. Each fighter in the modern MMA brings to the fight a sense of uniqueness in terms of the style of attacks and defence, thus adding to the charm and popularity of the sport.