MMA
Mixed Martial ArtsA full-contact sport combining strikes, throws and ground fighting; today the most widely followed fighting format in the world.
Quick Facts
United StatesCharacter & Origin
Training
Who It Suits
Organisation & Competition
What the style is built from
Editorial rating on a 0–3 scale, based on how much room each area gets in ordinary training.
Catalogs & Databases for MMA
About MMA
MMA is a competition format, not a single style. It grew out of a question martial arts asked themselves throughout the twentieth century: what happens when a grappler meets a striker under rules that favour neither. The early UFC events of the 1990s answered it — decisively in favour of grappling, because most strikers could do nothing once the fight hit the floor. The discipline has since converged. A modern MMA fighter does not train one style against another but a single connected whole: striking on the feet (boxing, muay thai, kickboxing), clinch work and takedowns (wrestling, judo, sambo), and ground fighting with submissions (Brazilian jiu-jitsu). The decisive skill is not any one of these areas but the transition between them. Bouts take place in a cage or ring, in roughly four-ounce gloves, over three five-minute rounds (five in title fights). A fight ends by knockout, submission, decision, or referee stoppage. The unified rules forbid, among other things, downward elbow strikes with the point, kicks to the head of a grounded opponent, and strikes to the back of the head. MMA is the most physically demanding of the widely available combat sports and carries a higher injury risk than the disciplines it draws on. Most gyms therefore start beginners in the component classes and only bring them into full MMA training as they progress.
Styles & Branches
Similar styles
Selected by overlap in the style profile, not by historical lineage.