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Richard Ryan (right). The mixed martial arts are simply its latest incarnation. PHOTO BY RICK HUSTEAD |
Ever since the martial arts were introduced to America in the 1960s, they've gone through a series of booms. It started with public awareness of what a black belt represents. In the '60s, we learned that being a black belt in judo or karate meant you were a master of an exotic fighting method. That marked the first major Western perception of the Asian arts. Even today, a black belt remains the standard for accomplishment in most styles.
The first martial arts competition to distinguish itself from boxing and wrestling, at least in the public eye, was tournament karate. For the first time, athletes faced each other and used their whole bodies as weapons. Offering more combat intensity than its predecessors, tournament karate caught on big. Home-grown champions like Mike Stone, Joe Lewis, Bill Wallace and Chuck Norris ushered in a golden age that lasted decades.
It didn't take long for the entertainment industry to get wind of the public's fascination with the martial arts and present a new breed of heroes on television: Bruce Lee as Kato in The Green Hornet, David Carradine as Kwai Chang Caine in Kung Fu and so on. In theaters, we had Chinese Boxer (1970), directed by and starring Jimmy Wang Yu. It's Often credited with having launched the kung fu craze, as well as a deluge of "chopsocky" films like Five Fingers of Death, which filled box offices and dojo nationwide.
A few years later, that Kato guy returned with a vengeance, and the industry would never be the same. The hypertalented 135 pound, relatively unknown Asian became the biggest box office star of the era, and his fame skyrocketed a year after he died when the first martial arts blockbuster, Enter the Dragon, was released. That established the martial arts movie genre and opened the door for the rise of names like Chan, Van Damme and Seagal.
Meanwhile, the arts experienced another shift because of public taste, which was now permanently linked to television and film. The next fad revolved around a fascination with deadly Japanese assassins trained in ninjutsu. The ninja were everywhere, hiding in plain sight of the media, and their popularity lasted for years.
The sport martial arts continued to evolve from no contact "touch" matches into semicontact and finally full contact karate, which then became kickboxing. Kickboxing never broke through to mainstream success, and that failure was followed by an industrywide lull. There was little to define the new face of the martial arts until November 12, 1993, when a Brazilian family named Gracie changed everything.
The idea was simple: Take away the gloves, the ropes and the square ring, then add mats and a chainlink fence so a "no holds barred" tournament – dubbed the Ultimate Fighting Championship – could be held until one person was declared the winner. Of course, the Gracies knew something that many kickboxers and karateka didn't know: Once most fighters are taken down, they're practically defenseless.
Many people I meet still regard the UFC as something new and revolutionary, as if its creators somehow "discovered" human combat. Nothing could be further from the truth. Since the dawn of time, men have faced other men in combat to wage war, to settle disputes, to engage in athletic competition and even to entertain others.
Despite the UFC's comparative permissiveness regarding techniques, you need go back only 100 years or so to uncover a form of sport fighting that would make UFC refs and fans cringe. In the saloons and town halls of the Old West, unrestrained fighting was a popular form of entertainment. The rules of those bareknuckle bouts were much more lax than they are today. The men wore no gloves. (If you've ever been in a real fight, you know what a difference it makes to use your bare fists – you can easily break your hand, but you can also inflict an enormous amount of damage.) Old time fighters got away with kicks, elbows and head butts. On occasion, one of them would lose an eye or find a chunk of flesh missing after a bite. The battles could go on for hours until one or both participants were so badly bloodied and beaten that there was a real possibility of someone dying. Many of the greatest brawlers of all time, including John L. Sullivan and Jack Dempsey, rose to fame during this era.
So why have the UFC and its clones grown so quickly? Is it because they're the biggest thing to ever hit the martial arts? Is it because the idea is new and revolutionary? Not likely. I believe there are three reasons: First, the UFC arrived at a time when the martial arts needed "the next big thing" to breathe life back into the industry. Second, and perhaps most important, the UFC has access to a degree of publicity and marketing that no other martial arts phenomenon has had. Third, the UFC is good entertainment. It has all the ingredients of a hit: drama, excitement, unpredictability, and good guys and bad guys.
Yes, the UFC provides us with good, clean fun except for the blood and the occasional broken limbs. Overall, it's been good for the martial arts, for it's taken public interest to a whole new level. At the very least, it's provided a boom for an industry that badly needed one. For now, the UFC is the biggest show on earth until the next martial arts phenomenon comes along.
About the author. Richard Ryan is the founder of
the Dynamic Combat Method and co-founder of Integrated Combative
Arts Training. For more information, visit http://www.blackbeltmag.com and click on Community, then Black Belt Authors.
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