Pankration: the Greek Olympic sport that led to MMA and UFC
On Saturday night in Houston, two men will enter a metal cage and proceed to punch, kick, elbow, knee, wrestle and choke each other. There will be blood, sweat and concussions.
Welcome to the Ultimate Fighting Championship, the premier league for mixed martial arts (MMA). In Saturday’s world middleweight championship, Israel Adesanya defends his title against former champion Robert Whittaker as around 1 million people look on.
MMA is the fastest-growing sport on the planet in viewership and participation. Estimates put the UFC’s worth at $9 billion or more. The sport’s popularity is remarkable, considering that the UFC was founded only in 1993, and MMA was banned in most U.S. states until the turn of the 21st century.
But MMA actually stretches back millennia. It has its origins in the ancient Greek sport of pankration, which was added to the Olympics in 648 B.C.
Pankration can be translated as “complete victory.” The basic rules were similar to those of MMA. Pankration combined boxing, kicking and wrestling. But it was so barbarous that MMA looks like golf by comparison.
Pankration had no weight classes, meaning lighter fighters faced vastly more powerful opponents. Matches were contested outdoors in a sandy pit, under the scorching sun. And since there were no rounds, pankratiasts could not take water breaks.
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Only biting and eye-gouging were expressly prohibited. If a pankratiast committed either infraction, the referee battered him with a rod.
Pankration matches had no set duration and ended by knockout or submission. A pankratiast could forfeit by raising a finger. (MMA fighters tap out.)
Death was an occupational hazard. But only Arrhichion of Phigalia managed simultaneously to lose his life and win a fight. His opponent had gotten him in a tight stranglehold. Arrhichion kicked him so hard the man forfeited. Alas, it was too late; Arrhichion suffocated to death.
Little is known about how pankration first emerged. The Greeks believed it had been invented by the demigod Theseus to vanquish the Minotaur, the mythological monster with the body of a man and the head of a bull. In some sculptures, Theseus is even depicted with the cauliflower ears characteristic of combat athletes.
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In the Olympics, pankratiasts competed naked, their bodies covered in oil. No women were allowed in the audience. Part of the sport’s appeal was homoerotic.
But don’t believe the statues — not all pankratiasts looked like they belonged on the cover of the ancient edition of Men’s Health. Some fighters had potbellies. Ironically, the sophist Philostratus thought this was an advantage: A bulging gut made it easier to keep an opponent at a safe distance.
The greatest pankratiast of all time was Theogenes of Thasos. In the 5th century B.C., he won 1,400 matches. Compare that to the GOAT of MMA, Khabib Nurmagomedov, who retired last year with a perfect record of “only” 29-0.
Pankratiasts were superstars. The philosopher Xenophanes related that “if someone should gain victory … in the terrible contest they call the pankration,” then “the citizens would look upon him with greater admiration” and “he would receive meals from the public stores of the city.”
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But pankratiasts did not fight solely for freebies and the adulation of fans. They took pride in representing their “polis” (city-state) and sought to embody ideals of virility and valor.
Pankration was part of the Greek education curriculum, for it was thought to forge character. In one of Lucian’s satirical dialogues, Solon, the father of Athenian democracy, explains the benefits of teaching it to the youths: “It makes them courageous in the face of danger, heedless of their bodies, and at the same time strong and enduring.”
Knowing pankration also came in handy in the thick of battle. At Thermopylae in 480 B.C., after their swords broke, a regiment of 300 Spartans used pankration against the invading Persian forces. They were slaughtered, but their sacrifice helped save Greece, as depicted in the 2007 action film “300.”
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Three centuries later, Rome emerged as a superpower and soon conquered Greece. The Romans embraced Hellenic culture and referred to pankration as pancratium.
Marcus Aurelius, who ruled the Roman Empire in the second century A.D., was a fan. To him, pankration served as a metaphor for living with integrity. “In the application of one’s principles,” he declared, “one should resemble a pancratiast. … The pancratiast always has his fist and simply needs to clench it.”
The advent of Christianity, which became the Roman state religion in 380 A.D., spelled doom for pankration. The church spread new values: piety and contrition over defiance and fearlessness. Pankration wasn’t suited to the changing mores. Plus, it was a holdover of “paganism.” The sport fell into disrepute and, finally, oblivion.
Fast forward centuries to Nov. 12, 1993, when the UFC held its first event and MMA was born. Inspired by the Brazilian circus sport Vale Tudo (“anything goes”), it was as wild as pankration in its Hellenic heyday. Almost anything went: Just as with pankration, only biting and eye-gouging were off-limits. (The referees, however, did not wield rods.)
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MMA soon drew headlines and intense criticism. In 1996, things got political. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) launched a crusade against the sport, which he blasted as “human cockfighting.” He urged all 50 governors to ban it; 36 obliged.
Under pressure, the UFC cleaned up its act and adopted the Unified Rules of Mixed Martial Arts in 2000. These new rules, which outlawed head-butting and groin strikes, professionalized the sport and laid the foundations for a golden age.
In the last two decades, MMA has become a global phenomenon. The UFC has been so successful that it is now synonymous with the sport itself. (There are other MMA leagues, including Bellator and ONE Championship, but they haven't crossed into the mainstream.)
Why is MMA so popular? According to UFC President Dana White, it’s because fighting is universal: “As human beings, we’re fascinated by who the toughest guy in the world is.”
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This is as true in 2022 as it was in 648 B.C. The world has clearly changed since then, but the thrill of seeing two individuals willingly put everything on the line hasn't abated.
Fighting is more than a physical display of dominance. It’s an act of self-transcendence that requires ανδρεία—or “andreia,” the ancient Greek word for courage.
These days, MMA isn’t an Olympic event — although Khabib Nurmagomedov is determined to make it one. But when Israel Adesanya and Robert Whittaker take the octagon, they’ll be extending a lineage that’s been traced all the way back to Theseus, the OG MMA champion.
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