Curious about some of the original Mixed Martial Arts? Hopefully this will help. Martial arts have been "mixed" since the beginning of time. Even when family styles were protected with peoples lives, styles were stolen. One of the most popular -Gracie Jujitsu- was borrowed from Japan. The roots of Japanese jujitsu can be traced partly to China and China's legendary Shaolin martial arts was historically brought to China by the Indian buddhist patriarch Ta Mo. His martial practices were developed in India and China so let the mixing begin. This is undoubtedly not the beginnings of the mix and anyone that would presume to know where and when it exactly started are truly naive. I most certainly do not know. What I do know is that the mixing has been going on for centuries and will continue to do so. I will generally be writing about the mixing that I have experienced and what I continue to do now. My teacher, David Chin, has a saying, "sometimes I am Hop Gar David Chin and sometimes I am Tai Chi David Chin." Basically what this means is that the individual makes the kung fu, the kung fu does not make the individual. Many people have the idea that they will rely on the kung fu to bail them out of a situation, when in reality that individual must save themselves using kung fu as a tool.
more later
