Juujutsu (柔術)

Recently in the post-World Series, football ratings-diminishing, getting-tired-of-the-same-old-sports I grew up world, I started taking interest in a new, fast-growing sport ( I hope this isn't like poker in the mid-2000's that quickly fizzled): Mixed Martial Arts, which has been taken up by many different organizations, but the organization that has the most publicity and the most money and therefore draw the best fighters in the world and the most fans around the world: Ultimate Fighting Championship, or UFC.

MMA involves a variety of disciplines, but one of the most pervasive is a technique called juujutsu, originated from the Japanese art. Or as the English version spelling goes, jujutsu. There's also karate, Brazilian juujutsu, wrestling, and judo, muay thai. I can't tell very well one from the other (I believe muay thai is heavily kick-based), but I do enjoy the hell out of watching it. The sport capitalizes on a lost art of fighting without weapons (sorely needed break from the gun-fighting in the world as well as in movies, and not just the pre-choreographed hand-to-hand combat scenes from movies, these fights are very real and the fighters are very much suffering pain/trying to outmaneuver an opponent who's hitting them back. The best part about the sport to me is the pace of a match, a match is usually scheduled for 3 rounds of 5 minutes each (sometimes 5 rounds) but can end at any time due to knockout or submission, so the viewer's gotta keep his or her eyes peeled, there's a guarantee it won't last for 3 hours like the traditional sports, and it's high-flying, action-packed, hands and bodies moving everywhere. That also leads to the worst thing about the sport: the constant, violent movement causes a lot of violence, blood, and the worst thing in sports nowadays: concussions. Oh and there's doping issues, as many fighters are suspected to be on steroids, using some sort of masking agent to get away with it.

MMA in my opinion will overtake boxing (if it hasn't already) in popularity, if only for the nature of MMA: it's boxing PLUS other stuff, so more elements of fighting are incorporated. Boxing has the tradition and legends of the past, but there's really not many great fighters with names out there, and Mayweather v. Pacquiao last year might have been the last great fight people would pay to watch, and the fight turned casual fans away from the sport: "great, I spent an hour to watch Mayweather dancing away," etc., etc. The submission element in MMA brings a whole another element where a fighter can be pounding away at his opponent but make one mistake against a grappler (fighter who's good at wrestling, fighting on the ground, etc.) and somehow win out of nowhere. Fascinating stuff, and a lot more strategy involved it seems like than just pounding the hell out of somebody. 

Future ideas: possibly incorporating some kind of fantasy element to it, would do a lot to get the fantasy nerds into the sport and invested in the results. 

Hopefully the rise of MMA will foreshadow the rise of another sport that no one knows about but is unbelievably enjoyable and thrilling to watch: Dodgeball! 

Fantasize on, 

Robert Yan