"MMA fighters generally aren’t very good at avoiding punches"

Unbelievable. At least you were up front about your bias. Perhaps they'd be better at avoiding punches if they weren't also worried about kicks, knees, elbows, and takedowns. It's a different game. It's not all about punches. By the way, who is Henry Abbott? I presume you were referring to David L. "Tank" Abbott.

For a better education about MMA, and a much better read, check out "Total MMA" by Jonathan Snowden.

We all were. We were dying to know which martial art was really truly the best one. It turned out to be Gracie jiu-jitsu (which is actually spelled jujutsu if you're into correct Japanese translation). Then, when the UFC started adding more rules, specifically the time limit, it wasn't a done deal anymore. The Gracie practitioners weren't the biggest guys, and they relied on being able to tire the big guys out. That requires time. It wasn't pretty back then, but it sure was interesting. Now the UFC seems to have morphed into its own martial art.

Fencers would kill all these guys in .7 seconds, max. That's why swords were invented. A neat hole though the lungs, and fini!

Nothing gets insecure guys' freak show on like bringing up MMA. Prepare for a truly sad batch of letters on this article.

It turns out that there isn't one "best" martial art. You're right in a way by saying the UFC has created its own sort of martial art, but it seems the most successful fighters have at least one good grappling skill and at least one good striking skill. I don't think, though, that there's any one combination that works "best" as a rule.

From the grappling category you can find BJJ, wrestling, judo, sambo, and others. Striking could be boxing, Muay Thai, kickboxing, street fighting, even karate (which Lyoto Machida has brought to the forefront recently).

If I had to guess I'd say the BJJ/Muay Thai combination has worked best historically, although wrestlers have had plenty of success as well.

I'm excited by the evolution. No longer could a guy like Royce Gracie, an expert at just one discipline, dominate the sport.

Unfortunately, our big star BJ Penn lost to Georges St Pierre last Saturday!

The article mentions the popularity of MMA among the white population on the continental US!

It's also mega-popular among many Asians & Pacific Islanders in Hawaii! (by the way, BJ Penn is part-Native Hawaiian) Just go to any bar in Hawaii when there's a big MMA event, and you'll see what I'm talking about!

Whereas some on the continental US stereotype Asians as "soft and quiet", just come to any bar in Hawaii showing a televised MMA event. The Asians watching MMA are the POLAR OPPOSITE of "soft and quiet", they're tough and loud! You would want to stay on their good side :)

"What the suburbs do have in abundance are wrestling teams and the martial arts schools that became a suburban staple in the chop-socky craze of the 1970s. (No strip mall is complete without a karate, akido or jujitsu dojo.) Former high school wrestlers found that they had been given a good foundation for a successful MMA career. Even now, a talented athlete with a background in martial arts or wrestling can pick up enough skills in a year or two to compete in MMA -- something impossible to achieve in boxing."

I'm not entirely sure this is true.

What you could say is that the popularity of suburban martial arts centers led to a faster saturation of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and Muay Thai kickboxing in the 90s (I'm not entirely sure of when Muay Thai gained popularity, but it seemed to gain a huge boost in the 80s and 90s.) Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, however, was extremely rare in the United States prior to that.

It seems slightly misleading to say that martial artists can pick up the skills in a year or two thanks to the system set up in the seventies though.

I mean, there are plenty of guys who can pick up the skills to be a decent MMA fighter quickly. I'm thinking Tetsuya Kawajiri, BJ Penn, and Tetsuya Kawajiri, all of whom didn't have any real combat experience 2-3 years prior to starting their rise in MMA. But the system of traditional martial arts taught in the US (Karate, Kung Fu, Akido, Judo, Jujutsu) doesn't have much to do with it.

*Rich Franklin, BJ Penn, and Tetsuya Kawajiri

I'm still waiting for that flood of sadness Tobbar was worried about...

Don't know if I'll read that book -- sounds a little like Wertheim tried to get to the heart of MMA by reading Palahniuk. And I'll agree with Anasi; if you don't know what you're looking at, MMA won't make a lot of sense. That doesn't mean it has to be that way; as the above letter from Hawaii shows, knowledgeable fans do emerge and forge a base.

But I don't buy the post 9/11 machismo thing for a second. MMA was already well on the rise in Asia long before it had any hold here. But as goes the rise of globalization, so goes the rise of MMA; as the world became smaller, more avenues for techniques to be transfered from one school to another opened up. Techniques from all over the world were being adopted and adapted as strategies, through travel and through email correspondence, web sites, and other ways to share info, and that's still going on. (I know a few people who traveled abroad to learn from others, then incorporated those techniques in their wrestling, jujitsu, and MMA toolkits, back in the early 1990's.)

There was also the natural push from the slew of great wrestlers coming out of the college ranks to professionalize in their sport. Early attempts and real professional wrestling leagues didn't fly, and we don't have the sort of support system here that countries like Russia do. But we have the talent. Wrestlers used to be able to go into coaching and train while coaching, but colleges are now axing NCAA wrestling programs left and right as a quick fix for Title IX, leaving talented wrestlers with fewer options for coaching. So that meant a supply of talented wrestlers with few other professional options, and supply met demand in MMA.

Both the social phenomenon of globalization and its attendant information technologies play a huge role in the history of this sport. That's a story that should be told.

(I'd also be careful about assuming MMA fighters are just a bunch of tattooed rage-aholics; the best fighters have phenomenal control.)