Pride Fighting Championships
PRIDE Fighting Championships was a Japanese mixed martial arts promotion company. Its inaugural event was held at the Tokyo Dome on October 11, 1997. Pride held more than sixty mixed martial arts events, broadcast to about 40 countries worldwide. PRIDE was owned by the holding company Dream Stage Entertainment (DSE).
A Pride Fighting Championships fighter introduction in 2005
Fedor Emelianenko vs Mark Coleman at Pride 32 in 2006. It was Pride's first international event, taking place in Las Vegas, United States.
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.