The oldest record of boxing are pyramid hieroglyphs and mural paintings in Egypt that date back 4000 B.C. From these early origins, fighting sports were born like pankration in ancient Crete to today’s prizefighting. (The first recorded bare-knuckle champion was Englishman James Figg in 1719.)
Western martial arts continued to evolve around the world. For example, 17 years after Chinese dignitaries visited, Persians created varesh-e-pahlavan in 98 B.C., which is a fighting art that uses kicks. Another example is how Russian’s Mongolian occupiers influenced the Russian martial art of systema. During the Viking Age, the Finnish created the fighting art kas-pin. When African slaves were shipped from Angola to Brazil during the late 1400s, they eventually created the Brazilian martial art known as capoiera. French savate (foot fighting) arose during the French Revolution (1789-1799). After studying jujutsu in Japan, Edward William Barton-Wright returned to England and, in 1898, created bartitsu, which combined jujutsu, boxing and savate.
Today, new Western martial arts are generally created by someone who has a background in several other arts. Evolution is nonstop.
– May 16, 2013 (1 week ago)
Five more of the most important events in the life of East Coast karateka/tournament promoter Aaron Banks (1928-2013) are detailed in this story. Learn how one man’s determination changed the martial arts in America and around the world.
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– May 14, 2013 (2 weeks ago)
Tournament promoter extraordinaire Aaron Banks passed away in May 2013. In an effort to pay tribute to his lifelong devotion to the arts, Black Belt is posting this article, which originally appeared in our March 2002 issue.
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– November 14, 2011
Some 400 years ago in Angola, on the west coast of Africa, a form of combat practiced by the natives was beginning to take shape in what we would today call a martial art. Four centuries later, capoeira is practiced in that South American nation known as Brazil. It no
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– September 23, 2011
On the eve of Tao of Jeet Kune Do’s release, public awareness will be awakened again to the legendary man who wrote this book: Bruce Lee. As a child, I used to call him “Uncle Bruce.” But there was another special human being who I regard just as warmly. And when
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– July 27, 2011
This special martial arts video presentation was designed to celebrate the induction of MIchael Dillard into the 2011 Black Belt Hall of Fame as Man of the Year. This mini-documentary was shown at the 2011 MAIA SuperShow in Las Vegas, Nevada, on July 23, 2011, to an audience of hundreds
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– July 10, 2011
For much of the world, MMA was born on November 12, 1993, when the Ultimate Fighting Championship debuted in Denver. Most martial artists know otherwise, however. They know the date was actually December 2, 1963, the day “Judo” Gene LeBell stepped into the ring to face boxer Milo Savage. Black
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– July 7, 2011
There’s no denying that Jim Arvanitis is a skilled martial artist. He moves like a 30-year-old both on his feet and on the ground, where he flows from technique to technique with an ease you seldom see outside a high-end grappling school. And there’s no denying that he’s a martial
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– June 30, 2011
I had never seen anyone quite like Ken Shamrock, who at 6 feet 1 inch tall and 217 pounds handily dropped opponent after opponent in World Wrestling Entertainment (then World Wrestling Federation) matches. An Ultimate Fighting Championship veteran, Ken Shamrock brought a unique style to the pro-wrestling milieu in 1997,
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– June 29, 2011
The Asian martial arts have received a tremendous amount of exposure in the past century and are now almost universally known. Meanwhile, we in the West have neglected many of our own martial arts traditions, which in some cases have fallen into obscurity—much as the Asian systems had at the
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– June 28, 2011
November 2003 marked the end of an era for the Ultimate Fighting Championship—and by extension, the mixed martial arts in the United States. Over the course of those 10 years, the sport saw more evolution than Darwin’s notepad. And through it all, despite rumors of banishment, mortality rates, political machinations
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