While people from various fighting styles have been cross competing since time immemorial, modern mixed martial arts was born at UFC 1 on November 12, 1993 . It was a continuation of Vale Tudo contests had been going on for generations, inspired by the desire of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu practitioners to see what really works in a fight.
Thus Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is widely acknowledged as the origin of mixed martial arts. However, professional wrestling also played a massive and relatively unheralded role.
While the UFC was founded by Rorion Gracie, if you follow the lineage back, you hit pro wrestling. Rorion learned the art from his father Helio. Helio learned it from watching his older brother Carlos Sr, who in turn learned the basic techniques, from high ranking Judoka Mitsuyo Maeda. Maeda came to Brazil as a professional wrestler.
Further, before UFC 1, there were mixed rules bouts in Japan with submissions on the ground and KOs from strikes standing, the definition of MMA. Again, the lineage goes back to pro wrestling.
Karl Gotch learned Catch-As-Catch-Can wrestling at Billy Riley’s “Snake Pit” in Wigan, England. In the 1970s he taught those skills to Antonio Inoki, Tatsumi Fujinami, Yoshiaki Fujiwara, Satoru Sayama, Masami Soranaka, and Akira Maeda, among many others. That group of Japanese athletes was in addition variously skilled in a variety of other martial arts, including sambo, karate, kickboxing, Muay Thai and Judo.
In 1984, the Universal Wrestling Federation was formed; it showcased a new “Strong Style” form of professional wrestling, using real technique and real contact, but with a predetermined or “worked” ending. When the UWF closed, the wrestlers took things in a variety of directions, many of them real combat sports.
Yoshiaki Fujiwara’s proteges Masakatsu Funaki and Minoru Suzuki founded Pancrase. Satoru “Tiger Mask” Sayama founded Shooto. Caesar Takeshi founded Shoot boxing. And Akira Maeda founded Fighting Network Rings. Shooto began holding amateur matches with what we would describe as MMA rules in 1986, and pro fights in 1989, several years before UFC 1.
This group produced some of the greatest fighters in the history of the sport. The greatest heavyweight fighter in UFC history for example, in Fedor Emelianenko, who got started in RINGS.
And this UWF-1 match from On December 5, 1993, features a man who went on to become one of the greatest MMA fighters of all time, Kazushi Sakuraba. The opponent is Allen “Bad News Brown” Coage, a former bouncer from Bayone, New Jersey, who won a bronze medal in Judo in the 1976 Olympics.
