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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief
The sad and unexpected passing of Jeff Blatnick on Wednesday has definitely affected the MMA community. Though he hasn't been a part of the official story of the UFC's history under Zuffa, Blatnick's role in bringing the sport to where it is today cannot be overlooked.
The former Olympic Gold medalist and UFC commentator was instrumental in putting together the rule set for the sport that is essentially still in place to this day, and he even coined the term "mixed martial arts" for the sport. Bleacher Report's Jonathan Snowden spoke with Blatnick about his contributions to the sport back in 2009 for his book The MMA Encyclopedia, and Blatnick explained how "mixed martial arts" came about, as well as what went into the first set of rules and regulations they put together.
Blatnick on the term "mixed martial arts":When I first started with the UFC, at UFC 4, we didn't really have a good name for all of this. Some people called it NHB, for no holds barred, but I just called it fighting. But then (UFC Vice President) Joe Silva reminded me of something I had said when I was broadcasting the UWF-I events from Japan. They were like the UFC, but a work. My broadcast partner was Al Rosen and he asked me what we would be seeing in the ring. I said all they were doing was mixing the martial arts.
They were doing nothing illegal, everything was allowed under the rules of a martial arts discipline. That was even more true of the UFC. No one had ever combined the martial arts like this. I coined the phrase mixed martial arts and it stuck. I grabbed it, used it, and that was how we sold it. It wasn't NHB, which had a stigma. It was MMA.
Blatnick on creating the first rule set for MMA:The UFC created a manual. We covered everything from conflict of interest for the judges and referees to the basics of how to regulate the sport. The job was given to me, but I had a lot of help from John McCarthy, Joe Silva, and many of the fighters themselves. I wanted to get a handle on what people thought the right way to do things was.
What is the right length of a round? How could we balance the rules to be fair to both grapplers and strikers? It all came together cleanly and we formed the Mixed Martial Arts Council. From there we had to change things as fighters pushed the envelope. When Tank Abbott tried to throw Cal Worsham over the fence. When a Japanese fighter grabbed his opponent's glove and almost turned it inside out. When Mikey Burnette grabbed Pat Miletich's shorts for almost an entire 15 minutes.
Anything that popped up, we had to address. Things you never thought of, like Phil Baroni licking Matt Lindland's face. Finger in an orifice. As fighters pushed the envelope we had to respond.
The only real change the [Unified Rules] made was to eliminate wrestling shoes. They wanted standards and uniformity for all the fighters so they didn't want some people in shoes and some without them. The rest was almost verbatim from the scoring system to the fight rules. It was essentially the MMAC manual. People in the know, they know where it came from.
They were our rules, but they didn't belong to me. People were promoting MMA shows before I ever came around. I didn't create them from scratch. We just wanted to create a fair balance between grappling and striking and we wanted to protect the fighters. And I think we did a good job. We must have because they are still using our rules today
Penick's Analysis: Blatnick may not get the credit he's due from the UFC, because they've stuck to the story that they were the ones that came in and gave the sport rules and got it regulated. That process had already begun at the tail end of the SEG-era with Blatnick, and the rules and regulations he and others put together were the reason the sport was able to gain sanctioning with athletic commissions. Zuffa continued that push once they took over, and have done a lot of work in bringing it worldwide, but the foundation was laid by Blatnick and company, and it's unfortunate he hasn't gotten that recognition on a widespread basis. Hopefully his passing can change that.
Jamie Penick, editor-in-chief
(mmatorcheditor@gmail.com)
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