Extreme Fighting Vol. 1 To 4 DVD > Reviews > Extreme Fighting

Author's product rating:   

Did you enjoy it?
How does it compare to similar films?

Advantages:	cheap, plenty of action, it's MMA
Disadvantages:	poor sound and picture, no extras, quality of fights

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

***What is it?***

The sport of mixed martial arts is one of the most misunderstood sports of all time. People get the impression of street brawls and bar fights when they think of no holds barred fighting. Boxing promoters say that people who compete in this sport are unskilled and don't have the dedication to do well in something like boxing. I'd like to say that most of the martial artists in these events devote their lives to martial arts and are highly skilled. There are always referees close to the action and the fighters know when to give up and submit. There have actually been less serious injuries than sports like basketball, hockey and skiing.

The amount of respect and sportsmanship showed in this sport is of a higher regard than any other. Fighters will rage war on one another for anything up to half an hour then hug and congratulate each other afterwards. But enough about that as I have devoted a whole opinion to the cause in another write up.

***About the DVD***

These DVD's are hard to get hold of. Most videos will set you back around £16-£20 each as they are not readily available in this country and are imported by companies from Japan and America. Or you can buy directly but incur shipping costs.

The beauty of this DVD is you get 4 events on one disk at a very discounted price. The fights are in a fight card type rather than tournament meaning fighters only fight once against the opponent they are scheduled to fight. Tournaments are normally held in one night and the winners advance to the next round until an overall winner is found. All the fights take place in a small circular cage, this may sound barbaric but it stops the fighters falling out of the arena as they might in a ring. Each fight will consist of three 5 minute rounds and the rules are slightly different from the first event to the three subsequent ones. This is because more rules were employed like wearing gloves, no kicking a downed opponent and no headbutting.

Other than that there isn't a lot of restriction on what you can do the obvious things you can't are biting, hair pulling, eye gouging and groin striking. Fighters can win a number of ways most commonly ref stoppage, knockout or submission. Sometimes a doctor can stop the fight or the corner will throw in the towell. Breaking rules can result in a disqualification, all this stuff is explained in detail on the DVD.

***What you will see***

In this DVD you will see some world-class fighters such as Conan Silveira and Igor Zinoviev. The Brazilian jiu-jitsu legend Mario Sperry and Ralph Gracie who is part of the world famous Gracie family from Brazil. The Gracie's were pioneers in this sport in its early days and used their own style of Gracie jiu-jitsu, which is still highly regarded as one the best forms of martial art. You will also see former world kickboxing champion and ultimate fighting champion Maurice Smith display his striking skills. Plus UFC and Pride veteran Carlos Newton in his first pro fight at the age of 19.

Most of these fights will end up on the ground where fighters will use grappling and submission coupled with effective striking techniques. Most of you will have never seen this type of fighting before and will be amazed by the skills used to win. Things like chokes, armbars and ankle locks are used often to win fights. You will also notice how skilled these fighters are and that the image given by people that don't understand the sport is totally unfair and unjustified.

In real life something like 90% of fights will end up on the ground so you will appreciate the importance of knowing ground techniques like in martial arts such as sambo and jiu-jitsu. Positions such as the guard, mount and clinch will be unfamiliar to someone that hasn't seen the sport before, so I will explain a little further on down. Keep reading :)

Just to clarify there has never really been any real test or survey about the 90% of fights going to the ground but it's a figure that has been banded around the sport since the beginning. But if you think of people brawling then clinching they often pull or throw each other to the ground at some point. Even skilled boxers clinch continously and if they weren't split apart I'm sure they would swing each other around and the likely result would be loss of balance and falling.

Now I will attempt to explain some of the moves, positions and terms I have mentioned.

***The guard and mount***

The most common position used while on the ground is known as the guard. Quite often a fighter with wrestling skills will attempt to takedown an opponent to get on top of them, this is known as the mount, and throw strikes to win. Fighters who have ground skills will often move straight to the guard as it's an effective way of protecting yourself from strikes and submissions are easier to get. A fighter on his back will wrap his legs round his opponent and lock them together and hold their heads close. This will stop movement and leverage that would allow someone to throw punches from the top position. The person on the bottom will be using the guard. Small punches and heel strikes will be used to distract the fighter on top to allow the fighter on the bottom to work a submission or reverse the position to end up in the mount.

There are also different types of guard but I wont go into all of them, as I want to focus on the DVD, plus explaining everything I know about this would fill a whole book.

***Side mount and clinch***

Now you know what the guard and mount are I will explain the side mount and half guard. Quite often the fighter in the top position will work to pass the guard and get to the side to work for the more dominant mount position. This will look like a similar shape to the letter T.

Clinching will be familiar to fans of the sport of boxing or kickboxing amongst other styles. Basically this can be described as hugging an opponent whilst standing. Of course there are different types of clinch and many things you can do from there.

***Submissions and tapouts***

Above you will have seen the word submission used a lot. This refers to when an opponent taps with their hand indicating to the referee they give up. Many different things can accomplish this such as fatigue or when the opponent takes a lot of punishment and can't take anymore or sometimes fighters give up when they can't do anything and are frustrated but the most common is a submission. Submissions occur by applying pressure against joints and bones and putting stress on them. An armbar is a common form of submission and involves using the weight of your body to bend someone's arm against the joint, this will results in a tapout as they would like to save their arm.

Another type of submission is a choke or strangle hold. Chokes are when you apply pressure around the neck and cut the blood flow to the brain, if you do not tapout you will fall unconscious. Strangles just cut the oxygen getting to lungs and will do the same thing. Many holds need a lot of skill to use and even more to avoid and escape. One of the most effective chokes is the triangle choke; this involves locking your legs around the opponent's neck with one of their arms through. It's very effective and used to devastating effect in one fight in particular.

***Conclusion***

I will warn you that these fights are quite violent and there will be some blood spilt. This is not WWF it is the real deal.

I would recommend this DVD to anyone remotely interested in getting to know more about this type of combat or just wanting to see what it's like purely because of the price. Picture quality isn't great as it's transferred over straight from video. There are no extras just menus allowing you to jump straight to certain fights. Something that does annoy me about this DVD release is that some fights from the Video series that were sold separate are missing. Plus the commentary isn't great and neither is the sound. There are some legendary fights on this DVD but many miss-matches between opponents. Overall there are far better events with higher quality fights and fighters than this now defunct organisation but for the price you really cant go wrong.

Something else that makes this DVD more appealing is that it's readily available in the UK. I picked mine up from HMV at my surprise and you can find it on Amazon also.