If Christians are called peacemakers, then is it okay for them to watch people punch each other in the head or choke another person into a submission?

That's the issue that's raised when people say Christians should not support mixed martial arts or MMA. But other people

say there's nothing wrong with it and in fact Christians should be more involved

in athletic combat sports. In today's episode I'm going to give my thoughts on the

matter but I will talk about one circumstance

where Christians definitely should not watch MMA.

There's a particular circumstance where that would be wrong, but there's other circumstances

where it would be right.

Before I get to that, though, we'll need a little bit of background.

So what is mixed martial arts or MMA?

The term mixed martial arts comes from a review of the first ultimate fighting championship hosted in 1993.

It pioneered matches where fighters could use different styles to engage one another

and in the early years he had some pretty wild match-ups.

Like what happens if a sumo wrestler fights a

kickboxer? The answer is the sumo wrestler goes down pretty fast. Or what happens

when a little guy named Royce, Gracey, fights the same kickboxer using a style we call Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.

The answer is that Gracie closes the distance so that the kickboxer's kicks can't hurt him

and focuses on grappling to use a chokehold to force him into a submission.

Now 30 years later, MMA has evolved so that most fighters learn a mixture of kickboxing,

Jiu-Jitsu, and wrestling in order to maximize their effectiveness in the ring or the octagon.

I've trained in Moitai kickboxing until I tore my ACL a year ago

and I hope to get back into it but I've been doing Jiu-Jitsu on and off during that time while I'm healing.

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