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Modern MMA in 20 clicks
Modern MMA in 20 clicks
There’s no lack fight videos on the internet. GRACIEMAG.com sifted through what is out there and compiled this list of links to videos essential for you to understand MMA’s recent history
MMA owes the internet a lot. Almost everything network television and newspapers don’t report about the sport (which is by no means little) can be found on the great web. All you need to do is click on, for example, the first The Ultimate Fighting Championship show, which happened in 1993, revealing a radical spectacle, now called Mixed Martial Arts.
From then till now great battles have taken place and many heroes born, starting with the scrawny Brazilian named Royce Gracie, practitioner of Jiu-Jitsu, the style that, before the UFC, was little known outside of Brazil.
Another click of the mouse and you go forward in time, more precisely to the year 2000, when Royce himself was taken by surprise by Kazushi Sakuraba, another of the sport’s legends, in an event called Pride, a powerful organization that transferred the axis of world MMA to Japan for many years, till it’s recent fall from grace.
All this with just two clicks?
The internet offers as many MMA videos as you are prepared to see. GRACIEMAG.com intended with this article to offer a scri pt of the essential. Twenty moments that cannot be missing from any MMA encyclopedia. It’s all very quick and practical, unless you have dial-up internet access. In this case, partner, you’re in for another kind of battle…
*If you are having problems with Internet Exploere, try Mozilla Firefox…
1) Carlson Gracie vs Valdemar Santana
Among the roots of MMA available on the Internet, this vídeo from 1956 of Carlson Gracie in action is a gem; it’s so rare that not even Osvaldo Paquetá, the grandmaster’s cinematographer, collector and shield bearer, has it in his archives. The scenes, black and white, show a still archaic MMA, but one with the status of sport of the masses and guaranteed space in the country’s biggest newspapers…
Dailymotion - Share Your Videos
carlson+gracie/video/x1gnxs_carlson_creation
2) Closed door challenges
Still on the MMA of old, a record of when the battles to take place in academies were called “challenges” is in order. In this one, legendary Rolls Gracie puts on a show of Jiu-Jitsu.
YouTube - Rolls Grace Fight-Brazilian Jiu Jitsu
3) Wallid Ismail vs Eugenio Tadeau
In September of 1991, there was no kid in Rio de Janeiro, mainly, that didn’t know what Jiu-Jitsu was. All thanks to TV GLOBO network, which ended up getting caught up in the rivalry between those adept in the Gracies’ art and those of luta livre and muay thai. The climax was the dispute in the 1990’s, which started in the 1980’s – when there was a classic event in the Maracanazinho (see BOX “The images to see in slow motion”) – ended up being shown in a televised event, and shocked the public with the same intensity with which it conquered the young spectators.
Part 1
YouTube - Wallid X Eugênio Tadeu Parte 1
Part 2
YouTube - Wallid X Eugênio Parte 2
4 – Royce against the world
On November 12, 1993, of normal birth, accompanied by a Gracie train, modern MMA was born, by the hands and chokes of Royce.
YouTube - Early Royce Gracie
5 – Rickson conquers Japan
With the promotion of Vale Tudo Japan Open, in 1994, it’s not just the name of the sport, in proper Portuguese, that conquers Japan. The feats of Rickson Gracie, from then on, would be etched into the imagination of Japanese fans, including in films like “Choke,” about what went on behind the scenes in the 1995 edition of the event. Three years after the Samurai’s first fight in Japan, the country would throw another unforgettable party to receive him again. They would call the event Pride.
YouTube - Rickson Gracie -vs- Yoshinori Nishi
6) Amaury Bitetti vs Mestre Hulk
In 1995, Bitetti was the first great defender of Jiu-Jitsu to hit the canvas, one night that left the Maracanazinho silenced and made the lesson clear to all that, to win in MMA, whoever it may be, the fighter has to bring it on hard the whole time. “The mood in the dressing room was one of celebration and I got caught up in it. I went in unfocused, ready to fight standing and I gave that opening for bad luck,” the Jiu-Jitsu champion explained later.
YouTube - Matéria sobre o Desafio Internacional de VT
7) Mark Kerr vs Fabio Gurgel (1997)
As an ironic joke by the MMA gods, the age of the wrestler began in Sao Paulo, a time when big stars (like Randleman, Liddell, Tank Abbott and others) didn’t hesitate to go to Brazil for a good challenge, and good purses. “When Dan Severn and Don Frye won the Ultimate Fighting Championship, I became motivated to go into MMA, since I knew I was a better wrestler,” the muscular, 115kg Kerr would say. Broadcast on TV Bandeirantes channel, Kerr swept through his first two opponents in this tournament organized by Sergio Batarelli, till the final 30 min fight with the much lighter Gurgel.
Part 1
YouTube - Fabio Gurgel Vs Mark Kerr - Parte 1
Part 2
YouTube - Fabio Gurgel Vs Mark Kerr - Parte 2
Weight categories
With the advent of weight categories, launched in the pioneer event Extreme Fighting on November 18th of 1995, in North Carolina, MMA begins to see stricter rules, with the mandatory use of gloves and greater respect for balanced fights. The lightweights, more agile and technical, were thankful – and went to battle.
YouTube - Ralph Gracie Extreme Challenge HL
9) The success of cross-training
Cross training started with the Cariocas Marco Ruas, Renzo Gracie and their boxing coach Claudinho Coelho, and Carlao Barreto and his kicks that undermined Randleman, had its symbolic moment in the USA with the defeat of Mark Coleman, to the kickboxer Maurice Smith at UFC 14, in 1997. “I learned to kick on the ground enough to make the fight return standing, where I use my kickboxing,” explained the underdog. But, his training partner Frank Shamrock, has a more profound explanation, which became famous: “Wrestlers will win till they face someone with a game that annuls theirs – or knows wrestling like them or is good at submissions. We opt to annul them,” he said, shortly before proving how efficient his style is in practice, against Igor Zinoviev, in 1998.
10) Rise of the Japanese
Yes, the Japanese also know how to fight on the ground, and the proof is in their most outlandish compatriot, with his masks, orange hair and shorts, his brilliance in the ring and his refined technique. Every Brazilian MMA fan learned to spell the name Sakuraba.
YouTube - Caçador de Gracies ! Kazushi Sakuraba
MMA in 20 clicks 
Randy Couture’s consecration
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