Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) is a full-contact combat sport based on striking, grappling and ground fighting, incorporating techniques from various combat sports from around the world. The first documented use of the term mixed martial arts was in a review of UFC 1 by television critic Howard Rosenberg in 1993.
Junior dos Santos vs. Shane Carwin, main event of UFC 131 in Vancouver in 2011
A Chinese martial artist preparing to throw his opponent during a lei tai contest in Ancient China.
The Pancrastinae: A statue portraying the pancratium, an event which took place in the Roman Colosseum. Even as late as the Early Middle Ages, statues were put up in Rome and other cities to honor remarkable pankratiasts. This statue, now part of the Uffizi collection, is a Roman copy of a lost Greek original, circa 3rd century BC.
Bruce Lee popularized the concept of mixed martial arts via his hybrid philosophy of Jeet Kune Do during the late 1960s to early 1970s.
Capoeira is an Afro-Brazilian martial art and game that includes elements of dance, acrobatics, music and spirituality.
Capoeira or the Dance of War by Johann Moritz Rugendas, 1825, published in 1835
Negroes fighting by Augustus Earle, c. 1824. Painting depicting an illegal capoeira-like game in Rio de Janeiro.
San Salvador, 1835, by Rugendas. "The scene is set in a clearing surrounded by tropical vegetation and palm trees, corresponding precisely to the space called capoeira in Brazil."