Quite a few, huh?
I stated, universally accepted. Of course there will be exceptions to any rule in competition that is held worldwide by different organizations. For example, foot stomps to the face are allowed in PRIDE FC, another MMA organization, but not in UFC. There are some organizations with fewer rules, and some with more. The bottom most 10 are ethical rules anyway, not restricting the fighters' tools.
Actually, the arguement is:
Almost all known blade cultures that fought in close combat to the death had a style of sport wrestling in which the winner won by either throwing his opponent to the ground, or you lost by allowing any part of your body except your feet to touch the ground. Why?
Probably because they had no clue about the gaurd, open gaurd, and sweep techniques, lol! It is because grappling like that had dire consequences on an ancient battlefield where people were inbetween eachother hacking and slashing. However, in today's modern world, such battles don't exist for practical reasons. Thus, combat has evolved to meet the change, and most esspecially civilian self-defense. There are no martial arts, other than shooting a gun well if it can be considered a martial art, which can claim battlefield effeciency. Current militaries are usually taught a mixture of stand up grappling, throws, and quick pins, borrowing from Judo, BJJ, and wrestling. Take Krav Maga for example. In any case, a well-versed RBSD trainee (reality based self defense) were to come upon a skilled MMA fighter in a one versus one, I would put my money on the MMA fighter! RBSD and modern military hand to hand (from WW2 up) are used to quickly teach soldiers and combatants effective techniques, with no time for polishing. Compare this to someone with a blackbelt in BJJ and several years experience in Muay Thai and wrestling, with ring tested effectiveness. All the dirty tricks in the world wouldn't work, considering that the MMA fighter could easily employ them as well!
Also, no known battlefield combat art, eastern or western, has integrated and prominent ground fighting. Why?
Because they focused on weapons, obviously. Also, the Samurai of Japan were skilled in a technique which involved standup/ground grappling with a dagger.
Also, when the guys that were putting together the H2H training for the soldiers in WWII, even though they were well skilled in judo, wrestling, and one of them was one of the first western BBJ masters, no ground fighting or grappling was used . Whyy
You tell me. In all actuality, this was because of the fact that they were supposed to shoot, use their knife, or a bayonette, rifle butt, or other such weapons in close range combat. I'm sure if they expected unarmed combat without either party having a weapon, they'd have more grappling and submissions involved. As I stated before, modern battlefields are not like this.
Sorry, but due to the nature of armoured combat, a lot of the techniques are to close and use joint destruction techniques on the enemy. H2H would have been much more common that most people are aware of.
Yes, but this would've been with weapons such as daggers, longswords, spears, poleaxes, and what not in considering. Such weapons have disappeared from practical use. While a switchblade negates most martial training, most people are too "good samaritan" oriented to carry around a concealed blade or firearm. Thus, the skills taught in MMA suddenly become useful. In any case, would've any weapon period give someone an advantage over someone doesn't have one? But if both sides have some sort of weapon, say a knife, such things as knife fighting skills and grappling would play a large role in survival.
