Just A Front Kick

Many believe mixed-martial-arts is the ultimate evolution of unarmed combat. Throughout its meteoric rise, techniques and styles were proven to be impractical during contests-especially during the early events. The consensus was, what worked in mma is what is practical for "real life". It is the "proving ground" for martial arts. However, what it really reflects is its targeted viewers tastes.

In the beginning, Brazilian Ju-Jitsu dominated the scene. Taking out all sorts of other styles, athletes using bjj alone destroyed the competition. Initially, it was viewed as the ultimate form of self-defense(interestingly, the Gracies had a huge role in bringing MMA to the US).

After a short time, viewers grew tired of the long, action-less chess matches between bjj stylists. So guess what happened? The BJJ-only players started getting beat by true "mixed-martial-artists". This label was generally ascribed to someone with mediocre wrestling, Muy Thai, and BJJ skills. The matches became more exciting, and the "big three" styles were deemed the end-all of martial arts.

Then came along athletes like Anderson Silva and Lyoto Machida, Silva using elements of esoteric arts like Capoeira and Machida resurrecting Karate as a viable fighting-art. These fighters used techniques that were surprisingly novel to most mma fans who were familiar with the common bjj/wrestling/muy thai package. Could it be that the MMA machine wanted to freshen things up? Ponder this, both Machida and Silva used front kicks to knock out their opponents in recent matches, purportedly taught by the incomparable Steven Seagal. The front kick is the most basic kick in all martial arts, it is taught usually within the first few months of training. Did it really take top fighters 20 years to apply it in competition? More likely, this is just the mma flavor of the week.