Re: MA campaigns and your experience
 

Thanks, that's helpful. I wasn't aware of how widely that inaccuracy had been propagated.

Well, I like to point out that there was a mixed-martial arts fight in a major motion picture in the 1970s - Enter the Dragon. Bruce submits Sammo Hung, while wearing minimal protection and what we'd now call MMA gloves, to open the movie. It's dramatic and over the top, but I've tapped someone with that same neck crank, albeit up against the cage and looking much less awesome in the process.

It didn't hit the mainstream until the nineties, but it was around for a long, long time, and of course it existed in ancient times before going into a lull. It's a mistake to think there was no no-holds barred fighting to be found prior to UFC 1.



Going back to the original post, I'd just say go cinematic, and aim for more Bloodsport or The Best of the Best than realistic fighting. Jack the points up a bit, and let the strikers buy Rapid Retraction, and go crazy.

Re: MA campaigns and your experience
 

I don't know about the place of judo in American culture in the 1930s. Was it a widespread activity, with schools all over every major city, or was it a niche activity for aficionados of exotic cultures? In the early Cold War era, as I personally experienced it, it had begun to be assimilated into American mainstream culture.

Bill Stoddard

Re: MA campaigns and your experience
 

Robert E. Howard wrote a story in 1930, "Hard-Fisted Sentiment" in which Steve Costigan fights an English Boxer, a French Savateur, and a Japanese Jujutsu expert--one after another in a single night.

Unfortunately it was never published in his life-time.

But it does show that a Texan in 1930 who had never traveled further than Mexico had heard of Savate and Jujutsu and could come up with the idea mixed martial arts.

Of course Howard was very well read.