It's tempting to think that mixed martial arts has reached its final form. Once dominated by specialists of one fighting style or another, the sport has evolved to require at least a basic understanding of several core disciplines.
Despite what Royce Gracie thinks, the notion that anyone can succeed at the highest level of MMA with an exclusive expertise in Brazilian jiu-jitsu is eye-rollingly silly. Indeed, this fact applies to any single style of martial arts.
It has been the general consensus for many years now that a combination of wrestling, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, boxing, Muay Thai and kickboxing is required to compete at the elite level. There are certainly other relevant disciplines, but the basic goal is to become proficient at striking and grappling, both vertically and horizontally.
As I argued back in 2013, this combination proved so successful that MMA “theory” was rendered largely stagnant. Settling down to watch a UFC pay-per-view in the mid-to-late 2000s yielded very few technical surprises. There were great fights galore, but game-changing creativity was far from abundant.
It is only in the last few years that MMA has started to move beyond this period of developmental dormancy. "Different" is so commonplace now that it’s debatable whether the current preponderance of creativity can even be called different.
Fighters are more willing than ever to take creative risks; styles that were previously dismissed as fantasy martial arts have been adapted to MMA in unique and interesting ways; techniques that were only ever successfully employed by Jean-Claude Van Damme in '80s action flicks are now a firm fixture of reality.
With that in mind, let’s take a few minutes to celebrate those fighters who continue to push the creative envelope with their aptitude for violence.
