One for the MMA historians

I was thinking what guys should get credit for Making MMA the sport it is today. Im talking about really early examples of Crosstraining in Martial arts, early mixed rules bouts etc..

I was reading about Edward William Barton-Wright introducing England to Bartitsu in 1898, he had studdied Boxing, Jujitsu, Judo, Savate (french kickboxing style) even Knife and stick fighting. He was having Mixed rules fights in his clubs in the early 1900's against all sorts of fighters.

Any one top that for someone who twigged on to being well rounded so early?

I would love to see a propper timeline from say 648BC when Pankration was an event in the Greek Olympic games. Id love to see a timeline of when each big martial art started and where followed by guys like Barton-Wright studying differnet styles to Vale Tudo in the 20's in Brazil.

I remember there was a good series on MMAjunkie or somewhere. Anyone the one I mean?

Hi Ben,

I watched this recently - history of fighting in britain

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01p2pm6

Not great TBH but interesting and worth a watch, covers Edward Barton-Wright and how there was a great interest in the far east and there culture (in particular Samurai) in Vitorian England.

The basis of his fighting style was used by Conan Doyle at the time for Sherlock Holmes.

It also went on to cover the suffragettes who had a teams of bodyguards who all learnt ju-jitsu (which was popular at the time) so that they could hold off the police whilst there leader escaped on several occasions.

Ju-jitsu was replaced in Britain in popularity not long after that by Judo as that was seen as more civilised and better for competition (with a points structure)