Brawl (eBook)

Chapter 1 From the Arena to the Ring Over two thousand years ago, in the dusty arena of the Greek Olympics, a hero named Arrachion engaged a dangerous competitor in no-holds-barred, hand-tohand combat before a crowd of thousands. After a lengthy and brutal battle, Arrachion got caught in a crushing choke hold. His pride and valor would not let him submit, however, and even as he found himself fading to black he struggled to put his foe away. When nothing else presented itself, he seized his adversary's toe and wrenched it back. The pain made his opponent submit, but not soon enough. As the fighters were untangled, Arrachion was discovered to be dead, apparently of asphyxiation-but because his opponent had submitted first, the deceased Arrachion was declared the victor, and his memory has lived on through the ages. For thousands of years, soldiers have tested their hand-to-hand combat skills in war, transforming their bodies into effective and deadly weapons. Although there were those who survived to become heroes, the bloodstained battlefield was a harsh proving ground, and eventually the ways of war were turned into sport so combatants could test their skills and live to tell the tale. The participants in these man-to-man spectacles were limited to the brave, and a new kind of hero was born. Spectators clamored by the thousands to behold them in action. Images of broken arms, knees to the face, and powerful choke holds spawned daydreams of competition, victory, and glory. Even in our modern technological world, where battles are won with the touch of a button or the pull of a trigger, the need to experience the rush of hand-to-hand combat persists in both warriors and their fans. In Brazil, they call these competitions vale tudo. In Japan, it's called submission fighting. It sprang up in the United States as no-holds-barred and was later dubbed mixed martial arts. Whether combatants battle it out in cages, rings, back alleys, or warehouses, their reasons are usually the same: to discover what works and what doesn't, to test their personal limits, and to answer the age-old question, 'Who is the toughest?' This anything-goes style of hand-to-hand competition is documented as early as 648 BC with the introduction of pankration, a combination of boxing and wrestling, into the Greek Olympics. 'Pankration' means 'all-powers,' or 'all-in-combat,' and it originated when fighters in both boxing and wrestling began refining their skills, seeking a new level of competition. This is not to say that these individual sports weren't already vicious. Boxers, unlike today's pugilists, were allowed to punch their opponents unmercifully while they were on the ground. Wrestlers learned various joint manipulations to inflict as much pain upon their opponents as possible. In both boxing and wrestling, there were no time limits, no rounds, and no weight classes. The bouts were decided when a fighter either submitted or was rendered incapable of continuing the match.