Issue 145

September 2016

Mixed martial arts at the Olympic Games is going to happen – somehow, somewhere, someday

Nick Peet

The FO gives respect to the people fighting for MMA’s Olympic future

I remember the moment, sitting in a hotel lobby in Stockholm, Sweden, a couple of days before the UFC fight card headlined by Alexander Gustafsson vs. Thiago Silva, when I was introduced to the founding president of the new International Mixed Martial Arts Federation (IMMAF). He said four words I’d never heard together before: MMA in the Olympics.

It was the first few weeks of the then Sweden-based IMMAF and, with the support of the UFC, its leaders met the MMA media for the first time and making clear their expectations and aspirations for the governance of the sport. 

The magnitude of the undertaking made my head hurt. It aimed to build a sport backwards –establishing a global amateur set of rules and regulations, along with the infrastructure to support national and international championships, when multi-million dollar professional pay-per-view promotions already existed. Even today, the size of the job that MMA’s emerging governing body is undertaking seems overwhelming.

But what stuck from my first meeting was the guile and even audacity of those within the early IMMAF setup – an attitude matched by the officials at the helm today. The names and faces have changed, but their irrepressible drive to see mixed martial arts included in the Olympics burns as strongly as ever.

The Olympic Games. Humanity’s greatest sporting parade that dates back to the 8th century BC, which, according to my Google search, was more than 2,700 years ago. MMA has barely been around for more than 20 years. There will be athletes in Rio de Janeiro this summer, going for gold, who have actually been competing in their sporting pursuits for longer than mixed martial arts has even existed. Think about that.

So, how can a sport that fails to predate half my underwear collection possibly be accredited enough globally to reach the oldest sporting institution in the world? Back in 2012, it seemed impossible to even think of such a thing. Yet just four years on it’s looking like not a case of if, but when MMA features under the banner of the five rings.

This summer’s IMMAF World Championships of Amateur MMA, staged for the third year running during International Fight Week in Las Vegas, was the biggest yet. And the European, Pan Am and African championships all planned later in the year show the sport’s amateur game is growing at an even more rapid rate than the pro level.

The fanbase is there, of course. Tune into any international event on Fight Pass and you can see butts in seats and eyeballs on screens. MMA is the biggest phenomenon to hit live entertainment in decades. It also had a place in the ancient times too.

Back when the Greeks were staging the early Olympiad, the sport of pankration was as popular as any other. That hand-to-hand combat died out when the modern Games was developed. But in MMA a more modern, vibrant and regulated form of one of the original events could come back sooner than we all may have dared to imagine just a few years ago.

Roll On Rio

Get your fighting fix 

This summer’s games features four combat sports: boxing, judo, taekwondo and wrestling. There are 53 gold medals up for grabs across the sports’ weight classes.