MMA or mixed martial arts is a combat sport that a fighter can use different types of disciplines or fighting styles.  This discipline can be boxing, BJJ, Muay Thai and etc. Most fighters don’t settle to just learn one discipline. As a matter of fact, some of them even know 4 or more fighting styles. This is because the more skills they have, the more chances of them on winning the match. As long as the fighter follows the MMA rules, he is free to use any style or styles he wants to use.

The common disciplines of MMA are listed below:

• Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu

BJJ or Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is the most common skill every MMA fighter has. The reason for its popularity is because BJJ is very useful on taking submissions from the opponent. This fighting style is more on ground fighting and submissions like arm locks, foot locks and chokes. BJJ can be use also by the fighters on the bottom to do a reverse and gain a dominant position to the opponent.

• Muay Thai

Muay Thai originated in Thailand and has a similar style to kickboxing. This style includes striking using eight points of contact and clinching when fighting with the opponent. Normally, the strikes in Muay Thai are punching, kicking, knees and elbows. Strikes in Muay Thai are so strong that it can knockout the opponent sometimes when being executed properly and hit a vital body part of the opponent.

• Boxing

Most of us already know what boxing is because is one of the most popular combat sports in the world today. This sport involves fighting that only allows the use of fists on striking/hitting in an attempt to knock out the opponent. Boxing is commonly used by many MMA fighters as their primary way of attacking the opponent. This also serves as a basic skill of every MMA fighter.

• Wrestling

Wrestling is considered as one of the oldest combat sports in the world dating from the old ancient Greece civilization. Those times it was used by ancient gladiators in fighting as a way of entertainment. There are two types of wrestling, freestyle wrestling that originated in Great Britain and Greco-roman wrestling that comes from France. But the most commonly used is the freestyle wrestling. Wrestling is a combat sport that involves grappling in fighting. The only goal is to pin/takedown the opponent to win the bout and this technique is very useful in an MMA fight as this scores the highest points.

• Judo

Judo is a fighting style that originated in Japan in 1882. It has 3 main skills that are very useful in MMA fighting. These are the throws, takedowns, and grappling. If being mastered, Judo can be very helpful on winning the fight in an instant.

• Kyokushin Karate

You can normally see in an MMA fight that a fighter sometimes kick his opponent directly to the head or on the other part of the body. The kicking techniques by an MMA fighter are mostly learned through Kyokushin Karate. A very helpful technique to gain distance advantage to the opponent.