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In the nineties, the advent of no holds barred fighting brought a renewal of eclectic martial arts to many dojos throughout the world. These eclectic martial arts argue that when training for hand-to-hand combat, the need for simplicity and a diverse range of fighting skills is required instead of the limited range of skills that a stand-alone traditional martial arts style could bring. This concept is not at all new. The Pankration fighters of ancient Greece were skilled in both wrestling and boxing which created a multi-skilled fighter.
Jeet Kune Do
When it comes to eclectic martial arts, martial artists of today are most familiar with the philosophy of Jeet Kune Do which was the brainchild of Bruce Lee. Lee, who himself had come up through the martial arts ranks as a Wing Chun practitioner rejected the "classical mess" that, he felt, was traditional martial arts. He found the "style" concept too limiting and preached a more liberal but "formless" style of fighting..."the style of no style". Lee studied numerous forms of combat and hacked away the "useless" components and kept what he felt was useful for a fighter. He recognized, however, that what was useful for he was not necessarily useful for you or I. Hence the formless approach to his philosophy. His philosophy of Jeet Kune Do (the way of the intercepting fist) made use of the evasiveness of boxing, the trapping and intercepting of Wing Chun, the sophistication and weaponry of Kali, Kickboxing, and grappling arts such as Wrestling. Today, Jeet Kune Do (JKD) has split into many groups, each claiming a piece of the legacy that Bruce left behind. One thing is clear, no two JKD organizations (or fighters) are alike...and that is probably how Bruce would have wanted it.
No Holds Barred Fighting
The nineties saw a surge in popularity of No Holds Barred competitions, which were led the way by The Ultimate Fighting Championships (UFC). Not since the days of Bruce Lee had so many martial artists begin to ask questions about their own training and the pieces of the puzzle required to make a well-rounded martial artist. These competitions, originally, emphasized one-on-one fights between martial artists from different styles. The nature of the competition (and even though it was called "no rules"...there always were rules) resulted in the competitions being dominated by grapplers. As time went on, the events were dominated exclusively by fighters who had good grappling skills and powerful strikes. Although this type of competition cannot be equated to the realities of street self-defense and also have lost much of their popularity, it did serve a purpose and opened the eyes of some who relied exclusively on their striking abilities.