For many people, Mixed Martial Arts and combat sports can be a new, foreign and even particularly scary activity to partake in. Due to the sport’s relative youth (The first UFC event was only held in 1993), it is only now that the mainstream masses and sports audiences are witnessing the growth of combat sports, especially MMA. For me, MMA has represented a sport for most of my time during my teenage years. It served as a niche viewing for people drinking at a bar, or an extreme junkie looking for an extra kick. Perhaps even a martial arts nerd who loved Bruce Lee (Bruce Lee is awesome by the way). I was none of the above. I played mainstream sports and, like so many others, randomly stumbled upon the sport by chance, and I eventually fell in love with it. In this article, I will be speaking to two fellow martial artists to discover where their passion for this sport has emerged. King Simon, a champion Kick boxer and mixed martial artist out of Compound Martial arts in Dublin delved into his journey into what would turn into his passion. He explained how after recovering from a knee injury from playing football he decided to do a MMA class due to the insistence of his older brother. His brother Sam had been competing frequently at the time and it piqued his interest. “Confidence and lack of complete fear” was his answer when I asked what it was about MMA that made him stick with it at the start. He is right though, when you first start to learn the intricacies of the sport, you may not go on to be a UFC champion but it does help to have something in the back pocket if you do happen to find yourself in a sticky situation, for Solomon self defense was the sole motivation before competition became serious for him. He went on to become a very competent fighter and the young man who described himself as “boy who was more bark than bite” has proved other wise in the ring and on the mats. From what I’ve noticed in current state of grassroots MMA is that while many people engage in the sport as a hobby, maybe to learn some cool moves or maybe to understand what they see on TV a little better, many of these young fighters are becoming very focused and highly skilled from a young age.
The UFC is not the niche sport it once was ten, twenty years ago. It is now a sports industry on par with the NBA, the NFL and above many other sports, which have been around a lot longer. Due to this sudden popularity rise and the creation of MMA superstars such as Conor McGregor, Jon Jones, Demtrious Johnson and many others, kids are picking up the sport earlier with the intention of “making it to the top”. One young man who has no such intention however is Asis Sunny a fitness and engineer student who despite being around the sports since he was a child, never had any intention to pursue it. He was just happy to experience the sport for what it was. To learn techniques, make friends and develop a skill set that may be transferable to many other things. “I study fitness and through MMA it has given me unique way of understanding how the body moves”. To conclude MMA as new as it may be has a very low barrier to entry. Many of the youth enjoy this new sport for fun and leisure while there are the few, like all other sports, who want to get to the top, its no question however that these two groups are both contributing to the growth of the sport for the next generation.
