What is the future of MMA?

We all know that in the words of UFC announcer Goldy that MMA is on a "meteoric rise". Put aside for a moment logic, which dictates that meteors actually fall and do not rise, and really think about how big can this sport get. Well, people all throughout the world and for all of history love to watch fights. The little picture in my About Me section is a close up of the wrapped hands of a statue dating to sometime around 200 B.C entitled "The Boxer" or "The Pugilist". With this piece of Hellenistic art as evidence, it is a given that people throughout the world have always been fascinated by some form of hand to hand combat.

In every corner of the globe, mankind has engaged in some type of striking or grappling for entertainment or ritual. MMA takes all of these regionally grown, and developed styles put in the crucible of reality, and has begun to produce Olympic caliber, professional athletes that are truly a hybrid of regional styles. Guys that are experts in Thai kickboxing, and American Catch Wrestling, and Brazilian Jujitsu, and Japanese Karate, and on and on and on. Modern MMA is an example of the globalization of pugilism.

That being said, just how big can MMA get? If there is one sport that most humans on the planet, everywhere have at least some cultural connection to, it is MMA. People everywhere love fights. In America we love football, in Canada they love Hockey...these are great sports that many people are passionate about. But huge swaths of the world could care less. They have little understanding and little appreciation for the intricacies of the games that fans in America or Canada grew up playing and being passionate about. Foreign fans often don't value a game they did not grow up watching or playing. Try to get an American excited about Cricket. But people everywhere can understand and appreciate fights.

Why, because world wide we have all seen and often probably been in a fight. So while American Football can only get so big, what is the limit on MMA? White and the UFC are already thinking globally putting on shows in Europe. MMA is growing in China and already established in Korea and Japan. Where is the roof? What stops this sport from continuing to grow on a global scale? What stops this sport from becoming bigger than baseball...bigger than soccer even? You heard me right one day, perhaps in my grand kids lifetime MMA will be bigger than soccer throughout the world. It is too exciting, to fast, to simple not to be. Maybe? We can still screw it up.

We are in the infancy of the sport still and we are just now seeing the truly hybrid fighters emerge. Imagine what the fighters will be like two generations from now when their is real money in this sport to attract all the best athletes from a young age. Imagine the caliber of fighters who will exist when fighters start getting well balanced training in multiple disciplines for MMA, from a young age. Most of our athletes now came from one discipline and then tried to transition it to MMA. Like the Collegiate wrestlers learning striking, or the kick boxer trying to learn Jujitsu for a MMA career. Can you imagine what the future athletes will look like when they started training wrestling, Muay Thai, boxing and Brazilian Jujitsu FOR MMA in childhood. We cannot begin to imagine these athletes and what they will be able to accomplish in the ring or the cage, much like the athletes and fans of American football during the era of the leather helmets could not imagine a Ben Rothlesberger or a Mario Williams.

So if the future athlete is nearly unimaginable and the popularity of the sport seems limitless, what can we guess about the future of MMA. We can guess that the stigma that marred the sport in the past is just that in the past. We can figure that new fans find MMA everyday. And we can hypothesis that one day in the distant future some amazing athlete probably not yet born will be standing on a podium somewhere, listening to his countries anthem playing, holding the first Olympic Gold Medal in MMA closely to his chest.