For Those Who Don't Know About MMA

Mixed martial arts is the ultimate combat sport, with martial artists and athletes from all corners of the world and with styles that ranging from Muay Thai kickboxing to Brazillian Jiu-jitsu to wrestling.

Since the nineties mixed martial arts has spread like wildfire, with organizations developing in the United States (most notably the UFC), Canada (TKO, among others), Russia (RINGS), East Asia (PRIDE) as well as competitions across the world established to showcase different parts of the mixed martial arts fighters' styles, like K-1 Kickboxing and the Abu Dhabi Combat Club.

Over the last something-teen years the sport has made a place for NCAA wrestling champions like former UFC champion and collegiate wrestling legend Kevin Randleman and current UFC heavyweight champ Randy "The Natural" Couture and Olympic gold medalists like Hidehiko Yoshida (Judo) and Rulon Gardner (wrestling), as well as giving the world an opportunity to figure out who the greatest martial artist in the world really is.

The leader in the sport, the Ultimate Fighting Championship, is regularly the highest grossing pay per view show in the nation with their semi-monthly events and extremely successful cable television show The Ultimate fighter. If you haven't seen or heard about the UFC, I don't know what to tell you, only that you must not Sports Illustrated at the rock that you live under, because the UFC was on the cover of a recent issue.

At this particular moment, for those new to the sport, the man who holds that title is Fedor Emelianenko, probably best known just by his first name. Other elite heavyweight fighters include Mirko "CroCop" Filipovic, Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira, "The Baby-Faced Assassin" Josh Barnett, Randy Couture (or as I like to call him, Rocky 2.0), Andrei "The Pitbull" Arlovski and Gabriel Gonzaga.

I'm not surprised if you haven't heard of Fedor, because he lacks the backing from the marketing machine that is the Ultimate Fighting Championship, but the UFC has made stars out of many fighters from it's lightheavyweight division including Chuck Liddell and Tito Ortiz, who have appeared on a handful of prime-time television shows.

The overall success of the sport is why I'm here, as well as to keep everybody informed about what is going on in the sport today.