Bruce Lee's name is thrown around CASUALLY as a comparison in styles to the sport...

The guys look more like body builders, and essentially are. (not all)

It combines wrestling, boxing, and martial arts.

Anyone feels they can compete in MMA because it is not a sport of tremendous endurance such as boxing, basketball, or even tennis for that matter.

Football, baseball, mma, all sports with large rest times to build up energy for next attack.


Anyways what are your reasons why you think MMA is so popular

It's still relatively new and fresh with in compaison to other combat sports which helps. Also like boxing or kickboxing it doesn't need much explaining to people with regards to what is going on. If you didn't know about it and you switch on your TV set and it's on, you know full well that it's just like boxing in that there are 2 guys in there looking to beat the other up.

Bruce Lee's name is thrown around CASUALLY as a comparison in styles to the sport...

The guys look more like body builders, and essentially are. (not all)

It combines wrestling, boxing, and martial arts.

Anyone feels they can compete in MMA because it is not a sport of tremendous endurance such as boxing, basketball, or even tennis for that matter.

Football, baseball, mma, all sports with large rest times to build up energy for next attack.


Anyways what are your reasons why you think MMA is so popular

must be be careful not to start another boxing vs MMA thread. MMA is popular now because of UFC. They market their pay per views very well which plays a very big role. Their reality show "the ultimate fighter" is very poplular with the 10th season coming up.

I believe it gives the feeling of a "complete" fight with some safety rules and there are more elements to it... punching, kicking, elbows, kicks, take down, ground and puound... submissons etc etc... The fighters need alot of endurance... not sure why you think afterwise...

Im not sure that MMA is that popular, but the UFC is huge.

One of the big reasons behind that is that the cards are usually stacked. There arent many mismatches.

Yeah the cards are usually decent and stacked with good fights throughout the night.

Because it's simple, like all combat sports (from a viewer point of view). You don't really need to study the rules to enjoy it.

What I have noticed though is the majority of mma fans are not fans of regular sports. Many of them seem new to following professional athletes compete and have never competed in there life, which maybe explains why many fans seems immature and don't appreciate good sportsmanship.

Also, wrestling is a big sport in the US. Thousands of kids wrestle in high school, and most of them immediately enjoy mma, and follow it because of the success of wrestlers in the UFC.

Im not sure that MMA is that popular, but the UFC is huge.

This is true too. Affliction 3 is better than 95% of the UFC cards, yet it will only get about 100,000 ppv buys.

Most casual "mma fans" don't even know what Strikeforce is.

must be be careful not to start another boxing vs MMA thread. MMA is popular now because of UFC. They market their pay per views very well which plays a very big role. Their reality show "the ultimate fighter" is very poplular with the 10th season coming up.

I believe it gives the feeling of a "complete" fight with some safety rules and there are more elements to it... punching, kicking, elbows, kicks, take down, ground and puound... submissons etc etc... The fighters need alot of endurance... not sure why you think afterwise...

in theory that is very true point.
i have yet to see such a case though. usually they both look like they have pretty lousy endurance and just hump each other on the foor..

ya it's not a boxing vs. mma. im just curious why people are so into it.

@jackupps

agreed!

When I FIRST ever watched MMA, i was quite looking forward to it, but it sucked (this was in the early days) it was just grappling for like 5 minutes and it was so boring, but its a lot better now

Anyone feels they can compete in MMA because it is not a sport of tremendous endurance such as boxing, basketball, or even tennis for that matter.


I'm assuming you've never wrestled or taken part in any kind of grappling before huh? All the "gay humping" they do, with all the positioning, takedowns, throws, submissions, take A LOT of endurance. There's a reason why wrestlers are among some of the best athlete's in the world. Grappling is a very grueling way of fighting, it might "look gay" to some people but it's tiring and it works.


But to get back on topic...why it appealed to me anyways was because i've always loved martial arts, participated when i could but never was as active with it as i should have been. MMA was kinda like an opening into it. MMA isn't boxing, kickboxing, wrestling, or submission grappling...it's everything. Whereas boxing is the art of the hands, MMA is the sport of every aspect of fighting. Grappling, striking, clinching. A person has to be good at everything to be successful in MMA, which is why i like it. It's not just one way all the time, it's a combination of 3 types of fighting and they can come from any style as long as it works. There is no restriction on how to fight, you just fight with your own style. Maybe someone who's a very good kickboxer will learn to wrestle and grapple so they can defend the takedowns/throws and escape from the ground to get back to their feet. Maybe someone who's a very good grappler will learn the stand up and use that to help get the fight to the ground. I dunno, there are so many ways to fight and so many different clashes of style, that's why i love it at least...a lot of the kids you see nowadays just think of it as a streetfight on t.v. but anyone who's taken the time to understand what's going on would know that this is far from that. It's a combat sport with top tier athletes who wok their asses off everyday.

And the reason why Bruce Lee's name is brought up so much is cuz Bruce was one of the first guys to speak up about crosstraining in different styles from all aspects of fighting...which is MMA.

check out the ufc100 website! The fights lined up are great! If you are an MMA fan you will look forward to it. Cool site and good marketing!
http://100.ufc.com/#/splash/

it kills me that you don't understand why mma is so popular because you don't know that much about it. boxing has been around for so long and is the best sport to date if you ask me. ground is a diffrent kind of cardio and is just as hard as boxing or stand up kickboxing and so on. yeah it looks boring when you are on the ground to someone that doesn't know anything about bjj,judo,werstling. i have been boxing for 7 months now and boxing is the hardest sport to learn and be great at. mma you can be ok at stand up and great on the ground and you can win. boxing you have to be better than the other guy or have a better game plan that is what makes boxing great to me.

The guys look more like body builders, and essentially are. (not all)

Most of them look good (no homo) but usually that muscle isn't all for show.

There is "being in shape" and then there is "looking good"

Some guys look like **** but are cardio machines

Some guys look good but have ****ty conditioning

Then you have the breeds that look good and have great conditioning




Anyone feels they can compete in MMA because it is not a sport of tremendous endurance such as boxing, basketball, or even tennis for that matter.

That's a ridiculous statement. It may look easy but grappling requires a different level of muscular endurance. There are guys that come into my submission grappling class that claim they are in great cardiovascular shape. The do a **** ton of running and roadwork and after 2 minutes of rolling they gas and are completely spent.



Anyways what are your reasons why you think MMA is so popular

MMA is popular because like the FreshPrince said, it's not too hard to understand what is going on. Fighting is a universal language, everybody understands whats going on but at the same time it takes a relative amount of knowledge to understand more complex parts like grappling.

Another thing that I believe is the reason it's popular is because it's so diverse. You can't expect the same result every time. This makes it more exciting, at least to me.

And last you usually get more bang for your buck when you buy a UFC PPV or any other event.

You get the main event and then you get 3 or 4 more fights that have the potential to be just as exciting as the main event.

Another thing that I like as opposed to boxing is sportsmanship and comradery that you can't always find between two boxers.