The State of Martial Arts in Pakistan Today – 6 years later
It’s crazy. I made a post like this about 6 years ago. I was thinking about how much things have changed since then and now and I decided I had to make another post, more than 5 years later.
Here is what I can say now. MMA is going to continue its juggernaut march forward. Despite being less than 10 years old, I firmly believe that MMA is now the premiere combat sport in the country. You may not agree. But we’d have to debate about it. It’s not a fantasy anymore. It’s not a matter of MMA being this hidden thing. We have personalities in the sport that get covered by the media and have real fans, guys like me, Uloomi and Mujtaba. We are the first to become personalities and we will not be the last. That’s the craziest part. As Ethisham from Fight Fortress said in an interview – this is just the tip of the ice berg.
Clubs, many of which quite frankly gave my friends and I a lot of resistance when first approached with the idea that they begin training in MMA are now transforming from traditional martial arts gyms to MMA gyms in greater and greater numbers.
We have had over a dozen significantly large shows (PFC, VCL, FA) from when I last blogged about the state of MMA in Pakistan, and each show has outdone the other in terms of production value and quality of fights, not to mention media coverage.
The inertia and energy required for MMA to tip into a profitable, main stream fixture in Pakistani society has begun and in about 3 years or even less MMA is going to become a fitness and sporting fad in the same way Crossfit was a couple years ago when it began its transformation of the gym industry and people’s idea of what it meant to be fit.
For those of you who took the time out to click on the link and actually read this, you’re made of the same stuff of those who read my last blog post on this subject over 5 year ago. You are the backbone of this MMA community, you really are.
Let’s share this to your friends and family on social media and let them know. We were on the right side of history.
[…] Years ago I wrote this blog post about the state of MMA in Pakistan. And…NINE YEARS ago, I had this blog post, wow…how […]