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His fifth professional Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) fight takes place just moments away. Aaron Pico enters the Bellator Octagon with the chilling confidence of a trained badbadin. Several times champion boxing, wrestling and pankration – an ancestral discipline that translates to "all strength" – before the age of 18, Pico learned to dismantle a threat. That night, the unlucky target of 22 years is Leandro Higo, a Brazilian veteran whose professional career began before the tenth anniversary of Pico.
In a few seconds, a burst of Pico's overwhelming shots throws Higo off the mat, the Brazilian forced to go on defense. Then, Pico the wrestler appears. He takes the veteran's back before getting up for another round of high cuts and kidney shots. Three minutes and eighteen seconds after the start of the first round, it's over. Technical KO. And in the changing world of MMA, it's not a surprise.
Champions who were amateur specialists in a discipline, mainly wrestling or jiu jitsu, dominated the young history of modern MMA – the UFC, the first promotion of the sport, is only 26 years old. Now, a new generation of dynamic and versatile young fighters who grew up with MMA was already a lucrative career option that revolutionized the sport: coaching in a combination of multiple disciplines to challenge tradition and defeat opponents.
Justin Scoggins, a member of the Rizin Combat Federation, and Sage Northcutt of ONE, both UFC veterans, started with karate as boys before moving on to full interdisciplinary training. World welterweight champion Bellator (and former UFC candidate), 29-year-old Rory MacDonald, debuted as an MMA at age 16, with no training in traditional martial arts, and joined the UFC at 20 years old.
Casual fans want to see knockouts and crazy acrobatics in the octagon.
Brendan Schaub, MMA badyst.
Sean O'Malley, one of the brightest young UFC players, discovered MMA as a teenager with no combat training. He takes advantage of his lack of allegiance to a discipline by confusing his opponents with his funky strikes, jiu jitsu and his devastating athletic strikes. Even the world's best pound pound fighter, Jon Jones, is far from a prototype wrestler, despite his past as a junior national champion at the university level. Jones, the UFC record holder for victories, winning streak and consecutive title defenses in the light heavyweight division, used his wrestling experience as a stepping stone to mastering Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.
This new fighter prototype, with unpredictable movements and little discipline, is also more fun to watch for new fans, experts say, and could help MMA extend its reach.
"Casual fans want to see crazy knockouts and acrobatics in the octagon," says Brendan Schaub, Showtime host. Under the belt series and The fighter and the kid Podcast. "It's difficult [for casual fans] to introduce you to complex wrestling techniques or jiu-jitsu techniques … That's why you see the strikers and the athletes capable of doing everything, thus becoming the biggest draw.
It is certain that martial artists have tested unknown disciplines since the early 1900s. Yet the athletes who have reached the top of the MMA are mainly amateur wrestlers such as Daniel Cormier, Henry Cejudo and Randy Couture, or belts black jiu jitsu such as Georges St. Pierre, Anderson Silva and influential MMA practitioners ever, Royce Gracie. These athletes turned to the Bellator and the UFC to get money once they saw the finances of these young leagues: a comparable earning potential in their original sport simply does not exist.
But for young athletes interested in combat who grew up with MMA – as opposed to individual disciplines – in mind as a path to fame and fortune [UFC was purchased by WME-IMG for $4 billion in 2017], learning several early skills makes more sense. The arrival of versatile MMA fighters is reminiscent of similar transitions in other sports, although for different reasons: take the offensive revolution in football or the birth of basketball in the category of four for example .
It's this combination of skills that helped Pico beat Higo. "There is a new generation of young fighters coming and time is running out," Pico said after September. "He has never fought a fighter like me, a guy who can hit as hard as me." Pico echoed Scott Coker, president of Bellator MMA. "It's so impressive because of its firepower and its ability to get up, hit, drop, get up," Coker said of Pico.
The numbers corroborate the fact that a younger generation adopts MMA like never before. According to the 2018 MMA for Fitness report on sports participation organized by the SIFA (Sports and Industry Fitness Association), the number of children aged 6 to 12 participating in an MMA fitness workout increased by 32% between 2015 and 2018, from 133,000 to 175,000.
This number is expected to continue to grow, thanks to popularization broadcast through television events, social media and a growing increase in the focus on fitness and anti-bullying in schools. But the MMA still faces the competition of the most traditional physical combat sports. The fight remains much more popular among young people, thanks largely to the school leagues and the USA Wrestling sanctioning body. In 2017-18, 245,564 boys and 16,562 girls participated in the fight in high school. Meanwhile, children interested in mixed martial arts must register in a gym where competition is less established, or use another combat sport (such as wrestling) as a point of entry.
"I think it's a chicken or chicken egg," says Brantley Hooks, a former college wrestler turned high school coach in South Carolina. "More and more kids want to train to become MMA fighters today, but to do that, they will likely need wrestling or boxing as their main sport."
The influence of the struggle on MMA is undeniable. Understanding body control, constant movement and struggle is the key for any MMA fighter, and no martial art provides an intensive course comparable to wrestling. In addition, when all else fails in MMA, the best way to defeat an attacker is to put him on the ground. The current list of UFC champions – among them Cormier, Cejudo, TJ Dillashaw, Khabib Nurmagomedov and Tyrone Woodley – could pbad as a list of former wrestlers.
But as Pico showed in September, the influence of a discipline on the sport is slowly weakening. And that was not a problem, suggests Schaub. "More and more young people will want to be the next Pico, the next Sean O'Malley," he says. "And this next generation will be even better, even more creative."
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