MMA and Martial Arts in the US MMA Martial Arts,Martial Arts, USA Martial Arts,MMA Martial USA, Hollywood Martial Arts

1. MMA and Martial Arts in the US
In the span of 20 years, mixed martial arts has gone from a very specific niche, seen as the realm of weirdos, to a
mainstream sport, which has largely supplanted boxing as the most popular combat sport. In this time, MMA has
popularized what some martial artists have always known; mainly, that almost every fight ends up on the ground, or at
least in a clinch. The delusion of jump kicks and magic chi waves would soon be exposed as mystical nonsense. Today,
MMA is a full-fledged, sanctioned sport, complete with rules, standards, drug testing, and other medical regulations.
Today, what we know as "MMA" combines the best of several styles/arts/sports. These include boxing, wrestling, Jiu
Jitsu and Muay Thai. The best MMA fighters tend to be those who can show competence in all of these.
Hollywood and martial arts
Prior to the popularization of MMA, the American view of martial arts was often clouded by choreographed fight scenes
full of flashy high kicks, as well as video games (which were also influenced by movies). This effect was so powerful that
it even inspired racial stereotypes (with Asians generally being associated with Karate, Kung Fu or other martial arts).
The UFC, and other MMA (often dubbed "no holds barred" at the time), organizations would make it clear that such
flashiness had little effectiveness in real fights. What's more, is that the importance of grappling/ground fighting was
made apparent.
Bruce Lee and Jeet Kune Do
The irony in the Hollywood effect is that Bruce Lee (whose choreographed high kicks and other flashy moves were a big
part of the silver screen) actually developed Jeet Kune Do, which was somewhat of a precursor to MMA. JKD was the art
of using what worked, and discarding what didn't. It was quite literally, "the way of no way."
Other Predecessors to MMA

2. Many consider arts like Pankration to be a "precursor" to MMA. In some ways, it is, Pankration was essentially the MMA
of the Hellenistic (Greek) world. That said, the uprising of modern MMA is unrelated to Panktration. It rose
independently, with no relationship to its very similar ancient Greek counterpart. The same goes for other, similar
historical instances of "open rules" fighting systems and organizations that have arisen in the past. They may have
parallels to modern MMA, and we may even dub them "MMA" as well, they did not "lead" to what we call MMA today.
Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed_martial_arts
http://mmahistory.org/who-invented-mma/
http://www.imbacademy.com/