Welcome to The Fight Nation
Centuries of tradition have helped establish Asia as the fastest-growing mixed martial arts in the world.
In November 2012 me and a few buddies jumped on a ferry and headed to Macau to watch Cung Le knockout Rich Franklin in the first round of their headline fight at the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s first-ever show in China.
Two years later and Rich Franklin has landed (is entertaining) a position with Asia’s biggest promotion One Fighting Championship as vice president, Cung Le has become a huge part of the UFC story in China and the industry of mixed martial arts in Asia has gone from strength to bloody strength.
Asia is now home to a widening pool of world class talent, with home-grown promoters from Asia’s biggest One Fighting Championship to RUFF in China, Korea’s ROAD FC, PCX and URCC in the Philippines hosting mega events every month. Right across Asia there’s literally thousands of smaller promoters, gyms, dojos, muay thai camps, boxing, wrestling and jiu-jitsu clubs developing the next generation of home-grown fighters.
As mixed martial arts around the globe finds millions of new supporters, Asia is developing its own unique brand of fighting and its own unique place in the evolving narrative of MMA. And Asia, with its deep fighting roots, is ripe for massive growth. Centuries of tradition have helped establish Asia as the fastest-growing MMA market in the world.
The region is the birthplace to many of the classical elements which form the core of mixed martial arts today: Jeet Kune Do, Karate, Taekwondo, Judo, Sanda, Wushu and Kung Fu.
But while mixed martial arts is now widely considered the world’s fastest growing sport, it is arguably the most misunderstood.
Just 11 years ago the UFC was an organisation heading towards bankruptcy alongside a sport that to many was simply underground and violent.
In the early 1990s Senator John McCain famously described mixed martial arts as “human cockfighting” and petitioned governors of all 50 U.S. States to ban UFC events, including New York - where the ban still exists to this day.
But don’t be fooled by all the tattoos and shaved heads: mixed martial arts is a world of tacticians, innovators and traditionalists - men and women who willingly lock themselves away from the world to master the art of fighting the way others master the piano or quantum theory. These are some of the nicest people you will meet - but don’t piss them off.
It’s hard to imagine any other sport in history which has attracted so much attention, gained so much notoriety and pushed so quickly towards mainstream acceptance.
TFN tells the story of mixed martial arts as it is today: an ever-expanding and evolving culture where athletes sacrifice their bodies in a shared search for something great.