In 1520, the twenty-nine-year-old King Henry VIII of England challenged fellow monarch King Francis of France, to a wrestling match at the historic “Field of the Cloth of Gold” meeting. Although Francis was able to throw the older and larger Henry to win the match, the two left the meeting as friends, despite Henry’s historic bad temper. Folk wrestling, in fact, was regularly practiced by young country girls in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. There are numerous examples of young women competing in wrestling, which we will explore in this book, although wrestling was not as popular as boxing.
The twentieth century saw wrestling emerge as a popular form of entertainment in traveling circuses. One result of this popularity was that by the middle of the century, grappling became bifurcated into entertainment-style wrestling that was primarily staged and sport wrestling practiced in schools and universities, as well as the Olympics. Men can compete in Greco-Roman wrestling, which is actually French folk wrestling dubbed Greco-Roman in the nineteenth century during a furious revival of all things Greek. The other wrestling style offered in the Olympics is freestyle wrestling, and in 2004, women’s freestyle wrestling entered the Olympic Games. Wrestling continues to be one of the most widely practiced sports in the world by numerous cultures and subcultures, despite the 2012 attempt by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to remove the sport from the Games’ roster. The immediate uproar incited by celebrities, athletes, and fans of wrestling helped reverse the IOC’s decision, and wrestling returned to its rightful place in the Olympic Games.
Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Judo, and Submission Wrestling
Submission wrestling is often identified as the ground game for MMA. Like sport wrestling, submission wrestlers wear shorts or a singlet instead of the gi (also called a kimono) seen in Brazilian jiu-jitsu and judo. The Japanese throwing art of judo became popular in the United States after World War II, when GIs returned home from battle. But judo has long captivated the West. Famed fictional sleuth Sherlock Holmes practiced judo, and in his wake, several other literary detectives declared to be proficient at the art. Judo is an offshoot of Japanese jiu-jitsu created by Kano Jigoro to teach to school children in the early twentieth century.[21] The art concentrates on throwing or taking down an opponent. Once on the ground, judo players fight to pin their opponent to the mat or submit him or her in a joint lock or choke.
In addition to practicing wrestling and boxing, President Teddy Roosevelt enjoyed judo and installed a small training space in the White House, where he was joined by his wife and sister-in-law. Judo officially became an Olympic sport in 1972 for men, and in 1992, women were added to the program, making it the first Olympic fighting sport to include female practitioners. The most famous judo player today, at least to the general public, is Ronda Rousey, the current Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) women’s bantamweight champion. Her involvement in the art has probably helped increase its practice in the MMA world.
BJJ has a fascinating history; in the late nineteenth century, many Japanese men immigrated to Brazil and taught their country’s art of jiu-jitsu. One man, Carlos Gracie, who learned jiu-jitsu from Master Esai Maeda Koma when he was fifteen years old, is responsible for the origin of the Brazilian version of the art. Gracie and his family morphed the Japanese art, which primarily concentrated on takedowns and throws, into a more ground-based fighting system. Practitioners wear the traditional Japanese gi, or kimono, and can use the jackets and pants to help manipulate their opponents into takedowns, sweeps, submissions, and chokes. One of Gracie’s nephews, Royce Gracie, was in the first UFC event, sparking the zeitgeist of MMA in the United States and abroad; however, BJJ and judo were not the only “traditional martial arts” that helped generate the new sport of MMA.
The Globalization of Martial Arts
Boxing and wrestling were the most dominant forms of fighting sports in Western history prior to the 1970s, but that changed when the twentieth century witnessed a rise in other types of martial arts competition. Martial arts legend Bruce Lee popularized Eastern fighting styles when his films were released internationally beginning in 1971, with The Big Boss. The following year, the popular Kung Fu television series aired on ABC, creating a cultural fervor for all things from the Orient, to use the parlance of the time. Martial arts schools sprung up throughout the United States, offering, amongst others, Chinese kung fu, Korean tae kwon do, the Japanese arts of jiu-jitsu and judo, the Okinawan art of karate, and Muay Thai (the martial art of Thailand). These martial arts were already being taught in some parts of the United States prior to the Bruce Lee phenomenon, but Lee’s films and cultural influence heightened the American populace’s interest. Thus, martial arts schools proliferated in the 1970s. As a result of this concomitant growth, options for fighting sports events expanded beyond the two primary sports of boxing and wrestling.
Traditional Fighting Arts
The globalization of martial arts in the postmodern era led to an explosion of martial arts schools throughout the world, but certain arts remained as dominant as the cultures from which they originated. For many years, and even today, karate and tae kwon do were the primary martial arts taught in the English-speaking world. In the Western world, both arts center on technique, discipline, tradition, and spirituality. Tae kwon do uses swift, high kicks to generate points against an opponent, but there is little use of hands and little defense.[22] In 1988, tae kwon do was introduced as an exhibition sport in the Summer Olympics, and in 2000, it became a full medal sport. When tae kwon do became an Olympic event, both men and women were included in the sport, a historic moment for women’s equality in the fighting world. There are four weight classes for both men and women, and the attire and basic equipment are the same.
It may seem surprising to some martial artists that tae kwon do, and not kickboxing, Muay Thai, or karate, became an Olympic sport. Karate, which some people unfamiliar with martial arts use interchangeably with tae kwon do, is a style of fighting that originated in Okinawa. Karate is an all-encompassing martial art that includes striking with hands, feet, elbows, and knees, as well as throws and ground fighting. Like many fighting arts, karate began as a self-defense style but eventually evolved from techniques and katas (forms) into the sparring practice of kumite. The kumite has many different iterations, from point sparring to full-contact, bare-knuckle fighting, seen most famously in the 1988 Jean-Claude Van Damme film Bloodsport. While it may seem a bit hyperbolic to claim that the kumite evolved into the sport of MMA in the 1990s, there is no doubt that karate is one of the many fighting styles that generated the idea of an anything-goes venue. Such early UFC fighters as Chuck Liddell and Bas Rutten have as their foundations traditional, Eastern martial arts. Today, some professional MMA fighters have returned to traditional martial arts to set themselves apart from the standard MMA style that has proliferated during the last few years.
Kickboxing and Muay Thai
The term kickboxing is a new one, although fighting styles worldwide include striking with hands and feet. Many accounts of early boxing, before the institution of the Queensbury rules, tell of boxers kicking one another in frustration. The French art of boxing, savate, has many of the same rules as kickboxing, and in the twentieth century, savate fighters often fought using other styles in early MMA bouts.[23]
Muay Thai is one of the most popular martial arts in the world, despite its humble beginnings in the rural areas of Thailand. Most MMA fighters today train in some form of kickboxing, but oftentimes it is assumed that MMA is comprised of kickboxing and Brazilian jiu-jitsu simply because of the prevalence of both styles in the martial arts world. Muay Thai allows kicks, punches, elbows, and knees, which makes it a solid foundation for MMA fighters. Kickboxing and Muay Thai remain popular today and have enjoyed more than thirty years of grounding in American and European cultures. Surprisingly, however, neither kickboxing nor Muay Thai are Olympic sports.
Women participate in all of these martial arts in the United States, although limitations,
of course, continue because of various gender biases. In some of the countries of origin, women are dissuaded from competing. Thailand’s Lumpini and Ratchadamnoen stadiums, for example, do not allow women to enter the sacred fighting ring. In the countryside and other rural environments, such rules are relaxed and women do indeed fight, but women’s Muay Thai is practiced more outside of Thailand. These cultural biases against women will undoubtedly change in the future as the culture becomes less conservative regarding these issues, but for now, women have a limited role in practicing and competing in Muay Thai in Thailand.[24]
Different types of fighting sports other than the traditional boxing and wrestling expanded in the twenty-first century. Many people have expressed concerns in the twenty-first century that boxing may be on the decline, although fighters like Manny Pacquiao have reinvigorated interest in the sport globally. The sport of wrestling was endangered in 2012, when the IOC decided to eliminate wrestling from future Olympic Games for lack of popularity or interest. There was a tremendous outcry from the international wrestling community and general public. Not only was wrestling an original sport in terms of the ancient Grecian games, it was also one that included women. Luckily, the IOC overturned the change, and wrestling was returned to its rightful place in the Olympic pantheon before the start of the next Games.
Mixed Martial Arts
Although the term mixed martial arts, or MMA, as it is more commonly known, is relatively new to the pugilistic lexicon, the idea of a mixed fighting sport is an ancient one. It has been called many things throughout the years: mixed martial arts, anything goes, no-holds-barred, vale tudo, as well as the UFC, the business now functioning metonymically for the sport. The history of MMA, in its current iteration, deserves a book of its own; however, I provide a brief examination of the history of MMA to facilitate the entrance of women in the sport in chapter 5.
The Pankration
The best-known historical version of a MMA format occurred in ancient Greece. The Greeks competed in the Pankration, which translates to “complete strength” or “complete victory.”[25] The Pankration was an amalgamation of boxing and wrestling, with the added techniques of leg sweeps, kicks, and knees; the only prohibited techniques were biting and eye-gauging. Other martial arts elsewhere in the world ranged from standing techniques to those carried out on the ground, although none appeared to have risen to the same level of competition as the Pankration.
As the Roman Empire rose to prominence, the bare-fisted Pankration was made more violent by the addition of caestus, “hard leather gloves that covered the hands, wrists, and forearms and into which metal studs, teeth, and spikes were inserted.”[26] The caestus morphed the Pankration from a brutal but technical art into a violent spectacle that exhibited little technical proficiency. These gladiatorial bouts ceased with the fall of the Roman Empire, but the Pankration’s “anything goes” fighting style is said to have influenced martial arts worldwide, from karate and the Chinese shuai jiao to the eventual cultural phenomenon of the UFC. Nonetheless, the MMA format did not become popular again until nearly two thousand years after the Roman Pankration events.
It seems fair to say that any group that fought regularly in history, whether in large military battles or small tribal warfare, evolved a fighting style that went beyond sport. No tribesman in South America would resort to his sport of wrestling and forgo striking if faced with an enemy. But most sport fighting styles, including the varied wrestling arts of small villages throughout the world and the boxing matches in Europe, had rules, of sorts, that restricted that type of “anything goes” contact when it came to competition.
Mixed Discipline Fighting
In the late nineteenth century, several highly publicized fights occurred between boxers and wrestlers seeking to prove the superiority of their sport. American heavyweight world boxing champion John L. Sullivan fought his trainer, William Muldoon, a former Greco-Roman wrestling champion, in 1887. Muldoon reportedly threw Sullivan to the ground twice within the first two minutes, and the fight was over. A few years later, Japanese jiu-jitsu star Mitsuyo Maeda moved to Brazil and helped found the new sport of Brazilian jiu-jitsu. At the same time, no-holds-barred matches, known as vale tudo in Portuguese, were held at carnivals throughout Brazil, with fighters from multiple disciplines competing in a ring. The history of vale tudo is a bit murky, but suffice it to say that when the Gracie family, who learned under Mitsuyo Maeda, entered the fray, the sport changed forever.
In the United States, men who had learned the art of judo while abroad returned home and grew the sport in their own country. In 1963, famed judo player Gene LaBell fought Milo Savage, a light-heavyweight boxer, in what would be the first televised MMA fight in the United States.[27] Thirteen years later, LaBell refereed an exhibition match between boxing legend Muhammad Ali and Antonio Inoki, a skilled grappler who learned from the famous catch wrestler Karl Gotch.[28] Although the match did not include any wrestling, Inoki kicked Ali’s legs so savagely that the boxing champion never had another knockout win after this fight, although it is unclear if his decline was due to the debilitating leg strikes. Inoki spent most of his time on the ground, while Ali stood over him and called for him to stand up and fight. The fight was a spectacle, but when it was over, fans and journalists were disappointed rather than clamoring for more mixed discipline fighting events. In fact, some fans reportedly threw objects into the ring in disgust when the fight ended in a draw.[29]
These exhibition-style matches continued in the United States, but MMA did not become part of the zeitgeist until the 1990s, with the UFC in the United States and the Japanese PRIDE Fighting Championships. The first wave of “mixed martial arts” fights were not between two MMA fighters, but rather two different fighting styles; however, as the UFC gained popularity, MMA became a style in itself. Fighters now train in all facets of MMA, which allows punches, kicks, knees, elbow strikes, takedowns, throws, chokes, and submissions of all kinds. Chapter 5 outlines the cultural impact of MMA fighting and how women literally fought to be allowed to compete in the UFC, the largest MMA promotion in the world.
MMA is undoubtedly the fastest-growing sport in the world, both in its practice by individuals in gyms throughout the world and in viewership. MMA may not appear on SportsCenter as much as football or even men’s golf, but this is probably due to the proprietary viewing platform of pay-per-view. There have been recent concerns regarding diminishing pay-per-view numbers, undoubtedly due to increased illegal streaming or, on a more positive note, the communal aspect of watching the UFC in groups at home or in bars. Despite the decrease in pay-per-view customers, the cable-network televised events have greatly increased in number; the UFC 156 preliminary bouts, held on February 1, 2013, and televised on FX, drew a record-breaking 1.897 million viewers. This number pales in comparison to the big three sports; the NFL pulled in an average of 34.7 million viewers per game during the playoffs in January 2013, but it was a significant increase for the UFC.
The History of Female Fighters Is Ignored
The popularity of MMA and the growing number of women competing in the sport has undoubtedly been supported by women competing in other types of martial arts. When I began my research for this book, I was surprised to find that certain claims about female fighters have remained constant throughout the decades and centuries. During the past three hundred years, detractors have claimed that women do not belong in fighting sports because they are male-dominated activities. Some critics have asserted that the female body is not fit for fighting. Others argued that boxing and wrestling had always been male sports and that women should stay away from those arenas. And today, many fighting commentators and Internet pundits continue to suggest that there is something unnatural or deviant about women in fighting sports, yet the history simply does not bear out that assertion. Women have been competing in fighting sports for thousands of years, despite the perpetual claims by opponents of female fighters that they do not belong in the ring, on the mat, or in the c
age. The convenient forgetfulness or misremembering of the past is a way to erase the history of female fighters and substantiate the inaccurate belief that women have never, and will never, belong in certain male spaces.
The history, then, of female fighters has been conveniently forgotten by those who wish to deter women from participating in official fighting sports. The girl who will be told that she cannot box in 2015 because she is a girl will be receiving the same message that was conveyed to women during the last decade and last century. Articles published in the mid-1980s proclaim that women would demean the sport of boxing by participating because it had always been a manly endeavor, but the truth is that women have a rich history in fighting sports, one that can be substantiated by archival evidence. This book explores the history of women who fought as athletes in combat sports. Their participation in boxing, wrestling, kickboxing, and MMA reveals that women do, indeed, have a place within combat sports, and that place is a long and storied one.
1. Cesar A. Torres, Routledge Companion to Sports History, ed. John Nauright Pope (London: Routledge, 2010), 553.
2. Michael Mandelbaum, The Meaning of Sports (New York: PublicAffairs, 2004).
3. Mandelbaum, The Meaning of Sports, 7.
4. Cheryl Cooky, Michael Messner, and Robin Hextrum, “Women Play Sport, but Not on TV,” Communication and Sport 1, no. 3 (September 2013): 203–30.
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