Issue 121

Every four years, over 13,000 athletes from 200 nations compete in 33 sports in a single-minded pursuit of the ultimate prize: an Olympic gold medal. Mixed martial arts is presently not one of those 33 sports. There will be no Junior Dos Santos or Dominick Cruz thrilling the crowds at Tokyo 2020. Despite its growing popularity, MMA is still too young, too underdeveloped and too misunderstood to have been brought into the exclusive club of Olympic events.

But, rather like mixed martial arts, the Olympics themselves are a relatively recent twist on a very old theme. The Olympics didn't start with the ‘modern’ Games revival in the 1800s, but can actually be traced back almost 3,000 years to the city-states of Ancient Greece. What viewers of this summer's spectacle may not realize is that a version of MMA was a key event of those ancient Games for almost 1,000 years. 

Pankration is believed to have been very similar to the early no-holds-barred days of the Ultimate Fighting Championship. There was no biting or eye-gouging allowed, but otherwise fighters were allowed to use whichever strikes and submissions they wanted to beat their opponent. However, when different ‘Olympic-style’ competitions gradually merged during the 19th century to become the modern Games in 1896, pankration was excluded. The founder of the Games, Pierre de Coubertin, went as far as to single it out, saying: “We accept all events, except pankration.” Clearly the sport had problems with its public image, even back then.

Other fighting arts did, however, make it into the Olympics and its no surprise that athletes from these disciplines have gone on to seek success inside the Octagon. Together, the five Olympic fighting styles cover a wide range of the skills needed to compete successfully in mixed martial arts.

JUDO

Introduced as an Olympic sport by the Japanese at Tokyo in 1964, judo has taken a while to gain the recognition it deserves in MMA. Despite the sweeps, trips, throws and submissions that are a part of the art, the lack of a gi to hold onto in the cage has limited the abilities of many judoka when they move away from the mats.

Gold medal-winning superstar Hidehiko Yoshida was the first high-profile crossover fighter, winning against a slew of big names in Pride (where he could still wear his gi) and elsewhere, but ultimately failing to take a championship belt.

Satoshi Ishii, another judo gold medalist, lost to Yoshida when the two met in the former's MMA debut. Ishii fought on in MMA but never made it into the big leagues, despite training with champions including judo black belt Anderson Silva.

For present-day judo Olympians who've gone on to become MMA superstars, look no further than Ronda Rousey, who competed in two Olympic Games, bringing home a bronze medal in 2008. “It was awesome," she tells THFE when asked about her Olympic appearances. "An amazing experience that cannot be replicated any other way."

As for many Olympians, the financial rewards didn't match the prestige, one of the reasons so many move onto MMA. "In the Olympics it’s not like you actually gain that much," explains Rousey. "It’s not like you win an Olympic medal and you’re set. It’s amazing that you can go and do something great representing your country, but then you’ve still got to come away and make a life for yourself. There is nothing set in place for Olympians after they’re done.”

Never one to rest on her laurels, Rousey is proud of her medal but always looking to the future. “I do look at it as a goal achieved for sure," she says. “At the time I wanted the gold medal, that was the one I’d work for, but you know what? I won the Junior World Championships gold medal and I got a second at the World Championships, and a bronze at the Olympics and nobody can say that I wasn’t at the top. It’s not like other sports where it can be about the luck of the draw or you performed on that day, in judo if you’re up there then you’re up there. 

“I realized that getting that bronze, instead of the gold, was what I was meant to get. It’s what led me to here. At first I used to think that would always be the biggest accomplishment in my life. But it’s more of a representative of a certain period of my life.”

Another Olympic judoka making big waves in MMA is former Bellator champion and now UFC middleweight Hector Lombard, who has backed up his grappling skills with a ferocious stand-up repertoire capable of delivering brutal knockouts.

GRECO-ROMAN WRESTLING

Greco-Roman wrestling, despite the name, was never a feature of the ancient Games but has been a part of the modern ones from the beginning. Its key feature is the prohibition of holds below the waist, leading its practitioners to develop powerful arm-drags and clinching techniques. These adapt perfectly to dirty boxing and positional control against the cage in mixed martial arts. 

The most famous UFC fighter to come from Greco-Roman is almost certainly Randy Couture, but ‘The Natural’ never actually made it onto the USA Olympic team. As an alternate on three occasions he came agonizingly close. But he founded Team Quest training camp with two fighters who did compete in the Olympics, Matt Lindland and Dan Henderson. 

Of the three, Lindland is the only one to be an actual medal winner (a silver at Sydney 2000) but Henderson feels that just being there was as big an achievement as anything he's done in MMA. “It's right up there as one of the greatest accomplishments in my career. It was definitely a great experience and something that made me feel very patriotic.”

Henderson also believes the Olympics helped prepare him for life in the cage, adding: “It's definitely a huge experience booster. It's just that experience of big competitions and where you're at mentally. Your work ethic in wrestling in general is a pretty good work ethic – even college and high school wrestlers will have that. At the Olympic level, it can give you an even bigger head start into MMA.”

FREESTYLE WRESTLING

While the spectacular suplexes of Greco-Roman are a consequence of not being able to use trips or grab the legs, for the skills to shoot single and double-leg takedowns we have to look towards the other Olympic wrestling discipline of freestyle. Once on the ground, a freestyle wrestler needs to hold and pin his opponent; perfect MMA preparation for positioning oneself to rain down strikes. 

It's no coincidence that the man considered the founder of ground ‘n’ pound, Mark ‘The Hammer’ Coleman, represented the USA in the 1992 Barcelona Games. The UFC Hall of Famer used his skills to devastating effect on the way to becoming the UFC's first-ever heavyweight champion and winner of the 2000 Pride FC grand prix.

The two most successful Olympic wrestlers to try their hand at MMA are gold medalists Mark Schultz and Kevin Jackson. Unfortunately, MMA's public image was so bad back in the 1990s when they competed that they were both threatened with losing their jobs as wrestling coaches if they continued in the UFC and both retired early from fighting rather than take the risk.

Of today’s current crop of MMA stars, Daniel Cormier is another ex-Olympian who competed in the 2004 Games and was USA team captain in 2008, despite being unable to compete due to kidney failure.

Like Henderson, Cormier believes the experience of being in the Olympic spotlight can't be surpassed. He told FO: “There is nothing like walking out during the opening ceremony. When the US team comes out, the ovation is just insane. Flashing lights everywhere. People are crying. It's just an experience that I don’t think I can ever match. I trained to be an Olympic champion so I already knew that I would have success at the Games. But at that moment when I walked out there and my childhood dream was finally a reality, it felt awesome.”

Knockouts are the raison d'être of professional boxing but the points-based amateur rules of the sport, as used at the Olympics, tend to restrict one-punch KO moments. With only three, three-minute rounds, thick gloves and headguards, along with a push-button scoring system, Olympic-style boxing rewards fighters with a high workrate and fast hands.

While boxing at the Olympics has produced professional boxing legends – like Muhammad Ali, Oscar De La Hoya and Sugar Ray Leonard – it has yet to contribute to the ranks of UFC title-holders. Boxing techniques are an indispensible part of any MMA fighter's arsenal but the financial rewards of pro boxing are still too big to lure top Olympian boxers into careers inside the cage. 

However, it's possible that at least one famous mixed martial artist may move in the opposite direction. Current UFC heavyweight champion Junior Dos Santos has spoken before about his dreams of representing Brazil at the 2016 Games in Rio De Janeiro, but it seems unlikely that he'll quit MMA for an amateur sport as long as he continues to blast a lucrative path through the MMA heavyweight rankings.

TAEKWONDO

The national sport of Korea, taekwondo only joined the Olympic Games in 2000. Primarily a kicking art, its acrobatic spinning moves were for a long time derided by mixed martial artists as being inferior to the less flashy but very powerful strikes of Muay Thai. 

That opinion has been challenged recently, however, as fighters with taekwondo backgrounds – such as Anthony Pettis – started to pull off moves like his famous Matrix kick from 2010. Like boxing, the Olympic taekwondo podium is yet to produce a mixed martial artist of serious note, but a long list of fighters, including UFC champions Benson Henderson and Anderson Silva (again), have black belts in the fighting style.