MMA Gloves

photo taken from mmafighting.com

MMA or Mixed Martial Arts, as its name suggests, is a combat sport where competitors use a hodgepodge of fighting disciplines. Hence, a karate champ can fight with a boxer; a judo artist can engage a kick-boxer; and so on.

UFC or the Ultimate Fighting Championship was the organization that brought mixed martial arts into the mainstream in 1993. However, MMA has longer roots than that.

MMA essentially began when the ancient Greeks integrated a brutal sport called pankration into the Olympic Games. Its matches uphold no particular fighting technique; combatants would even fight to the death for that matter.

Pankration ebbed into the sidelines for centuries. Then in 1925, Carlos Gracie opened a jiu-jitsu school in Rio de Janeiro, where he began inciting the Gracie Challenge or the Vale Tudo. This pivotal act resurrected mixed martial arts as a sport for the first time in over a millennium.

Next to soccer, vale tudo combat rose to become the most favorite sport of Brazilians. Combatants flocked to Brazil from all over the globe to represent their chosen disciplines, from muay Thai to luta livre to taekwondo.

MMA only successfully penetrated the United States through the initiative of Rorion Gracie, Carlos’ nephew. In the 1980s, he bonded with Semaphore Entertainment President Bob Meyrowitz and local enthusiast Art Davie to popularize MMA on pay-per-view TV.

UFC was the fruit of the collective. For its first event, some 86,000 people tuned in to the pay-per-view broadcast. In 2001, Zuffa acquired the rights to UFC, effectively widening the reach of the sport. Spectators around the world now have a choice of 14 pay-per-view UFC events.

In hindsight, the Ultimate Fighting Champion could only be the best fighter in the world, seeing as the sport is open to all combat disciplines. Competitors can be trained in one or a combination of martial art styles, e.g. karate, tae kwon do, jiu-jitsu, judo, boxing, kung fu, kickboxing, sumo, wrestling, and grappling.

In any event, UFC commission insists on fighters wearing proper MMA gear, the most imperative of which are gloves.

Combatants may only use 6-ounce gloves MMA at most. Likewise, they cannot use gloves lighter than 4 ounces. Gloves should have an inch of padding around the knuckles, so that the digits can liberally grapple the enemy. At the same time, such gloves can fend off injuries.

As for training or sparring, the best gloves MMA have open-palm designs, hook-and-loop wrist straps, and split padding for the thumbs. There are also the mitt or bag gloves, distinguishable by their palm grip bars.

Furthermore, gloves MMA are also available in hybrid forms. In other words, these gloves MMA can serve the wearer well as much in training as the competition. It may provide additional support for the wrist by way of hook-and-loop straps. Nearly all gloves MMA are made of leather.

Fighters generally compete barefoot and shirtless, wearing nothing but their gloves and shorts. Kickboxing trunks are permissible but never long pants and gis.

Tags: Mix Martial Arts, mma gloves

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