Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) is credited with having originated in Ancient Greece in 648 BCE in the art form of pankration that combined boxing and wrestling, and also in Ancient China in the discipline of Leitai, which possessed similar underpinnings.
At its core, MMA is an incorporation of several fighting disciplines that are impeccably combined to perfection and is regarded by its many proponents as the most complete unarmed combat discipline. Amongst these fighting disciplines are the grappling arts which include judo, sambo, Greco-Roman wrestling, and jiu-jitsu, and the striking arts such as tae kwon do, boxing, karate, Muay Thai, and its derivative, kickboxing. It is indeed a conglomerate of styles.
The modern incarnation that birthed the eventual mainstream phenomenon, was Brazil’s ‘Vale Tudo’, which is an unarmed, full-contact combat sport with relatively few rules, that emanated intentionally or otherwise, out of the nation’s adaptation and alteration of traditional Japanese jiu-jitsu. It was essentially the grandfather of MMA.