I would like to see a catch-as-catch-can wrestling event in the olympics but we can’t get everything we want.
The problem with MMA becoming an Olympic level sport I see is the hundreds of Organizations all with slight variations on the rules, whereas boxing is more or less boxing with all pro organizations.
In regards to speedwalking, how far do they go? I googled it but couldn’t find anything along the lines of rules. Personally I’ve done backpacking trips of about 15 miles through the Appalachians with 50 odd pounds and while I’m not in great shape it was a harder workout than anything else I’ve ever done. Just saying if these guys are beasts at it don’t diss them.
That would be cool, though I like NAGA rules a bit better. But some type of subsmission grappling not affiliated with any particular discipline (BJJ, Sambo, etc.) would be good.
I saw curling for the first time Thursday morning on TV . I must agree with those who said it before .
I too can see why pankration wasn’t accepted . It would take away from the greatness of the established sports and athletes .
… fucking curling …
i would like to see MMA in the Olympics. i may not happen soon but it would be cool.
I thought I heard somebody say that they were putting in BJJ/Submission grappling into the Olympics and taking out Tae Kwon Do… [URL=“http://www.nj.com/news/gloucester/index.ssf?/base/news-2/1193470957295790.xml&coll=8”]
BJJ definitely belongs as an olympic sport. They allowed krotty in.
submission wrestling fits into the Olympics better than many of the currently accepted sports. Its got a long international history, its reasonably safe, and has a precedent in Judo and wrestling.
Actually, go try it out yourself. 50 kilometers (just over 31 miles) in 3h 35min (the world record). That’s doing 4.20/km or just under 7 minutes / mile with a foot touching the ground all the time. Just to make sure you aren’t running (ie. take steps so that you’re airborne for even a moment) there are judges watching you all the way and you’re disqualified if you get three warnings, from any stage of the competition. That includes the stadium port (typically just over 400m to go) from pole position.
I agree, it looks silly but it’s a pretty grueling sport. Most of the top guys could probably run a marathon in under 2h30min with no additional running technique training.
Back on track… I can see MMA happening in Olympics, but in an amateur boxing style watered down way. Headgear, possibly bigger gloves, no knees or elbows or foot stomps etc. But it’s still a relatively small sport and the committee wants to keep a reign on the number of different competitions (actually they currently want to get rid of a number of events) to keep the costs and time of the whole event down a bit. Some of the old sports have to go before there’s any chance of getting MMA in.
EDIT: Curling FTW! 
Can they actually manage to watch the people the whole time, is speedwalking a track type thing or a crosscountry type thing?.
Also I think going through FILA is probably MMA’s best bet, they’re usually willing to provide regulation for grappling sports they do it now for freestyle and greco, and they did it for sambo until sambo was able to establish its own orginization, and managed to get sambo a demonstration, though that didn’t go well. what we need as others have said is a unified rule set for amatuers and FILA has done that before. I mean it doesn’t need to be FILA but FILA can do it and has weight with the olympic committee, so it a good bet.
and I don’t know about headgear, there’s a chance it will be required but in the wrestling styles headgear is forbidden(which I actually like, I hate wrestling headgear and have the ears to prove it), also its possible there would be bigger gloves but that would suck, grappling with bigger gloves then MMA uses now would be really hard, its hard enough as it is.
and one of my freinds moms once injured herself curling, I stared at her and never talked to her again.
They can manage to watch them pretty much for the whole way. Typically these competitions are done in a 10km long route in the city starting from a stadium and coming back in the end, at least in bigger competitions, so they just post judges/observers over regular distances along the way. It’s not a constant monitoring thing, I think, but well, 20km or 50km is a long way to go if you need to resort to cheating just to keep up ;). I think the biggest problems for top guys come from pushing the pace, steep downhills and fatigue.
Don’t know much about FILA, but if an international federation of wrestling will support actively it then I’m pretty sure MMA would be in Olympics in less than two decades.
I’m pretty sure headgear would have to be in as Olympics can’t really promote kicking people in the head without any headgear as an “amateur” sport (… in it’s ideals and back in the day Olympics were an all-amateur event). The bad thing about headgear though is that it will change the balance of fights as KO’s will be a lot harder to do. I can see that leading to a stupid touchy-feely point based rating system that only gives points from submissions too. IE. guy A wins striking, late in the match guy B takes him down and scores a submission, but still ends up losing the match with points. Trust the federations to fuck up the sport 
I’m also curious how the ruleset would be if MMA made it into the Olympics. I’m guessing it would have to be a single-elmination tourney like boxing (http://boxing.about.com/od/amateurs/a/oly_rules.htm), but good-god, depending on how spaced out the fights are, that’d be f’ing grueling for the fighters who win. One little injury and you’re probably out of the medal race…
As for the ridiculous amount of Olympic sports these days, it’s getting harder and harder to define what an “Olympic-level athlete” is. Somebody who does reasonably well in their country in bowling, curling, handball, shooting, bobsledding, TKD, sailing, table tennis, horse riding, badminton, archery, and FFS, synchronized swimming, can all be considered, if only by semantics, Olympic-level athletes.
Modern Pentathlon. 'Nuff said.
I think I remember reading that in order for a sport to be accepted into the Olympics it has to be widely practiced in a large number of countries. While MMA’s popularity in the US, Brazil and Japan is unquestioned its not huge in that many other countries. For instance in the UK awareness is rising, but in my experience any real knowledge about what the sport involves is minimal: most people who have heard of MMA have simply seen clips of old UFC fights and bits of Cage Rage.
On this basis the acceptance of Tae Kwon Do as an Olympic sport makes sense (whatever your opinions on TKD are) as I think, along with Judo, it is the most widely practiced martial art in the world in terms of organised clubs and their membership.
I think its a great idea. Really it should be the ultimate Olympic combat spoert because it allows all diciplines.
i think the best bet to get MMA in the olympics is to call it pankration but use more of an MMA rule set like UFC’s don’t think PRIDE’s rules would fly with the safty types, compromise on head gear with the less restrictive TKD style and on glove size with shooto style gloves you can still grab but have more ounces to calm committes
Unlikely. The olympics is an amateur event and anyone who’s decent at MMA will probably go pro well before waiting 4 years for the next olympics to roll around. In addition to that, the ruleset that they would impose would take away from what MMA is supposed to be.
Well said… MMA at the Olympics will not happen for a LONG time. Personally, I don’t think it ever will.
Firstly, there are already a number of martial arts/combat sports. Judo, TKD, Boxing, Wrestling etc. For MMA to be accepted, the IOC will need to remove a current sport. This would almost certainly be one of the combat sports. If this happened, I’d have thought that a “more established” art with a longer history such as karate would be included. The list of Olympic sports in the queue for acceptance is a long one, and MMA doesn’t even figure on that list.
As mentioned by Anna, the Olympics are amateur only (with excetion of track and field and a few other sports where there isn’t really a divide as such). Olympic gold should be the top prize in any Olympic sport. If it is not, then I don’t feel it should be included. Most MMA fighters would rather hold a UFC belt that an Olympic gold medal. Whilst lympic gold is not the ultimate prize in a few Olympic sports, it is in most.
Olympic MMA would almost certainly require a headguard. I’m pretty sure shin/instep pads would be mandatory. Look at the amateur boxing - they spent ages looking at new technology to reduce knockouts/knock downs. They would be looking for an alternative to the current MMA gloves too, I would have thought.
To be recognised by the IOC, sports will need an official international governing body as recognised by GAISF. MMA does not have recognition yet, and the divide betwen amateur and pro is still dodgy at best. The closest we have at present is kickboxing (with the governing body WAKO).
In short, there’s zero possibility of MMA becoming an Olympic sport any time soon. It needs to be structured differently, have a distinct amateur/pro divide, and get some protection for amateurs. Something needs to be done to reduce the levels of blood-spillage (sory guys, but the Olympic people aren’t gonna accept a bloodbath). The media hate MMA as it is!!
If any combat sport is accepted any time soon, it will be kickboxing as sanctioned by WAKO. They are pushing big time, but I doubt they will get recognition for a very long time, if at all. MMA is way down the list!!
“This Sunday at 7:00… ULTIMATE PENTATHLON! Runnin,’ rasslin,’ boxin,’ high jumpin,’ and tractor pullin’! Only on ESPN-2!”
It’s also worth noting that there’s been a serious push to remove mens boxing from the olympics for being “against the spirit of the games”. That and other factors actually prevented womens boxing from making the olympics in 2008.