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With the advent of broadcast sporting events in the first half of the 20th century, fans have clamored for more action and variety. Once the bastion of football, baseball, basketball and boxing, radio, then television, and now the Internet, have driven the development of new and “extreme” sports. With this, new fans have flocked to the fledgling sports. Since most adults were not been raised with these, we bring you this short primer to the mixed martial arts. Ed.
Courtesy: Wikipedia As a result of the MMA sporting events, martial arts training and the understanding of the combat effectiveness of various strategies have been argued to have evolved more in the ten years following 1993 than in the preceding 700 years. The early years of the sport saw the widest possible variety of traditional styles - everything from sumo to kickboxing - but the continual evolution of the sport has practically eliminated less effective and "pure" styles, usually because specialized fighters were lacking in skills to deal effectively with broader techniques. In the early 1990s, three styles stood out for their effectiveness in MMA competition: Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Amateur wrestling and Shoot wrestling. This may be attributable in part to the grappling emphasis of the aforementioned styles, which, perhaps due to the scarcity of mixed martial arts competitions prior to the early 90s, had been neglected by most practitioners of striking-based arts. Even though fighters that combined amateur wrestling and striking techniques dominated the standing portion of an MMA fight,  Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu stylists had a distinct advantage on the ground. Those unfamiliar with submission grappling proved to be unprepared to deal with its submission techniques. Shoot wrestling practitioners offered a balance of amateur wrestling ability and catch wrestling based submissions resulting in a generally well rounded set of skills. The shoot wrestlers were especially successful in Japan, where the martial art initially dominated other arts. As MMA competitions became more and more commonplace, those with a base in striking became more competitive as they began to acquaint themselves with takedowns and submission holds, leading to some notable upsets against the dominant grapplers. Subsequently, those from the various grappling styles learned from each other's strengths and shortcomings and added striking techniques to their arsenal. This overall development of increased cross-training resulted in the MMA fighters becoming increasingly multi-dimensional and well rounded in their skills. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed_martial_arts 
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