Welcome to “Inside the Octagon”
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- September
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Welcome to “Inside the Octagon�, a blog dedicated to the rapidly growing sport of mixed martial arts.
Mixed martial arts (MMA) is a one on one sport where a wide variety of fighting techniques are used to defeat your opponent. Among many others, boxing, kickboxing, Muay Thai, Jiu-Jitsu, Judo, and Greco-Roman wrestling are the most common forms of martial arts found in the sport today.
This blog will be dedicated to readers of LoHud.com and The Journal News. This forum will serve as a place for our readers to intelligently discuss and debate MMA. I will be interviewing the athletes of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, World Extreme Combat, and other mixed martial arts organizations, while also bringing you the latest news and updates from the exciting world of MMA. I look forward to providing our readers an exciting place to discuss and debate the world of mixed martial arts.
MMA is invading all regions of New York in a big way.
There are plenty of practicing martial artists in the lower Hudson Valley. Yellowpages.com lists 234 martial arts schools in Westchester, Rockland, and Putnam counties. If you wish to practice mixed martial arts, Tiger Schullmann’s school of mixed martial arts has two locations in Rockland County and one location in Yonkers. If you venture into New York City, you will find some of the most elite mixed martial arts schools and competitors. MMA legends Renzo Gracie and Pat Militech own schools in Manhattan and Queens. Fighthouse NYC, Ronin Athletics, and Tiger Schullmann’s all have prominent schools in New York City. The International Fight League, the first MMA organization to land a basic cable TV deal, houses its headquarters in Manhattan, NY.
The leading organization in the MMA revolution is The Ultimate Fighting Championship. The UFC started organizing MMA fights in 1993. The premise of the competition would pit different fighting styles against one other with minimal rules in place. The objective of the competition was to determine which fighting style would be more effective in a real, unregulated combat situation. The UFC gained steam very quickly in the early 90’s. As the sport gained popularity among pay-per-view customers, it gained a political adversary. Senator John McCain succeeded in expelling the sport from national pay-per-view carriers, and convinced several states to ban the sport. The four year hiatus that the sport experienced from 1997 until 2001 was a result of the aggressive political tactics used by Senator John McCain.
In 2001, Zuffa inc. purchased the Ultimate Fighting championship and their main goal was to get MMA back on PPV. In order to accomplish this goal, many rules were adopted. The new set of rules include no head butting, fish hooking, hair pulling, biting, eye gouging, groin attacks, striking downward using the point of the elbow, striking to the spine or the back of the head, kicking/kneeing/stomping the head of a grounded opponent and many others. Fighter safety is heavily stressed.
Since the acquisition of the UFC, the sport has morphed into a legitimate, sanctioned competition environment for the world’s finest mixed martial artists.
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, September 11th, 2007 at 3:04 pm by Larry Vollmer.
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I’ve seen this stuff on TV and it looks pretty wild. Do you see a lot of turn over where you train? I mean like. . . do lot a people try the sport and quit because it . . um . . . hurts too much? And have you ever been knocked out in the ring?? Scary stuff man!
Hey Aaron – thanks for checking in. There is some turnover where I train. Not too high, but a noticeable amount.
The training is a lot harder then it looks . We watch these professional athletes compete and they make it look so easy. What you don’t see is the thousands of hours of sparring, grappling, endurance training, weight training, and cardio training that goes into match preparation.
It is vigorous, but it is fun.
Luckily I haven’t been KO’d yet!
Thanks for the quick reply Larry. Sorry for all the questions but I had one more. What kind of endurance training do you typically do and how often do you actually get to fight? Well, that was two questions.
Any type of exercise that will maximize your heart rate and keep it close to max level for a longer period of time. Think 100 yard sprints, stair climbing, biking uphill running, etc. Resting time would typically 30, or less, seconds in between sets.
The amount of sets would probably depend on the time duration of the rounds in your match.
MMA is very addicting. I know many former high school and college standout wrestlers that are training and competing. With the proper rules enforced I believe it will become a huge spectator sport. Sorry soft people of the world, this is a real sport!
Coach – MMA seems to be a natural progression for high school and college wrestlers. Enjoy the blog.