The pankration, which in the Roman Empire came to fame in the match even gladiatura was and is still one of the most famous forms of combat full hands-free in the history of humanity.
Celebrated each year throughout the world in hundreds of exhibitions and conferences on sport Greek, however, it was an obscure and ambiguous, characterized in his statement from a sports incomprehensible delays, a comparison of the fight and boxing.
The phenomenon is esplicabile with a series of assumptions, including the main one used for its regulations: the pankration was known to a full discipline, which allowed is being erected at ground combat techniques and percussion. These attributes led the classical authors to trace the origin of this discipline of assembling pygmachia (boxing) and the blade (fighting), which form extensive complementary and the two.
This figure would be consistent documentation in the oldest, who see in Egypt and Mesopotamia certificates only fight boxing or just starting from the third millennium BC The Minoan civilization and the subsequent epic works not deviate from this state of affairs in the same Olympics and the pankration sixty comes after two disciplines, and four centuries later in the youth categories.
However, a number of these elements is contrary evidence. First analysis of the development of athletic gesture by an anthropological point of view, which shows in the disciplines of boxing and fight regulations and schemes too specialized to become a discipline primieve. According to this perspective is indeed a form of combat total mixed shots and took, which was to give the original form of a duel hands free. Even the possibility of a military origin of these disciplines should not have practical sense in creating a product exclusively pugilistico and only one based on struggle.
And in fact, if fighting and boxing are the first documentary certificates of duels of sports, the most ancient representations of combat hands free, which date back to Mesopotamia of the fourth millennium BC, referring instead to duels background ritual between men and humanoids (ie men dressed as demons), where in fact both coexist equally percussive techniques and socket.
We are therefore faced with a situation which is becoming stronger among scholars, that the institutionalization of these duels because of cyclicity of religious celebrations led to the creation of colleges youth specially prepared for these meetings (see young boxers Minoan), and that the systematic nature of the same training as physiological requirement led to the subdivision of stage percussion specialist in the struggle. Still recently (first century AD), Filostrato recalls that the train the trainers with pancraziasti stages of the fight and boxing separately, and today this is still the only way to exercise proper discipline.
But if this kind of proto-pancrazio was the first form of combat institutionalized because pancrazio genuine appeared with considerable delay in the documentation sports than fight in boxing? Presumably for the same reason, namely the exclusive area where the religious pancrazio remained confined for a long time, while the other two disciplines spreading by virtue of their training, originally preliminary.
The very fact that competitions pancrazio children occur more than four centuries away from competitions and boxing fight, indicates a cultural resistance and non-technical, which is not in any way due, for example, the danger of discipline, since then like today boxing was absolute discipline more risky.
Another important element contributes to support this version, the name. The term pankration, variously greek in general "all the power" is an adjective to technical, that terminology is not technically competent. And 'the only among all disciplines Greek, both combat exercises that usually, to be named with that formula. All the others are represented by terms that identify the technical feature, as orthepale (erected fight) or pygmachia (battle of fists). Even to indicate the total combat "the ancients used a technical term, pammachia (fighting total), in which category were covered different types of styles more or less free, as the orthopaìia (percussion erected), and of course the same pankration.
The pankration-pankrates word in its literal sense of omnipotence, the power, or power of victory, binds to a wider and typical mythological terminology, which governs itself is often the subject, as in the case of the battle between Theseus and the Minotaur.
The conclusion that the pankration, or at least its form and primordial ritual has been the source of struggle and the ancient boxing, and not vice versa, located in large experimental confirmation in empirical testing.
The pygmachia, for example, which is very different from modern boxing, has solutions that seem to derive from an original setting of struggle, while assurgendo every technical solution to the needs of pure percussion.
Likewise the fight, both in stage erected in the ground, has patterns that while fully adapted to the specific needs stylistic allow curiously assemble dynamisms pugilistici that unexpectedly not pollute in any way its specialist operation scheme. Why the ancient blade is extremely different from modern forms of struggle, even where these may have similar regulations.
Technique
The pankration provides almost all offensive techniques such as punches, gomitate, tested, kicked, ginocchiate, strangolamenti, soffocamenti, levers, twisting, etc. The only prohibitions are the bites and technical scavamento (shares sank in soft).
Despite a regulation free, research has shown that this discipline enjoyed a well-defined stylistic approach from systematic solutions. The pankration can not in any way be comparable to modern disciplines generically referred to as fight-free, or disciplines composite expressed in the tournament regulations similar to those of pancrazio (Ufc, tudo, etc.). For the same reason, the use of the term pancrazio odiernamente used to mean some disciplines-free fight is improper, given the above seen on the terms pammachia and pankration.
The technical training in the discipline of pankration is not possible without prior training in the disciplines of pygmachia (boxing) and the blade (fighting), which are assembled and adapted to the characteristics of integral combat. The pugilatus it has characteristics that fit perfectly attitudes of struggle, while for example the modern boxing (and similar disciplines, such as kickboxing, Thai boxing, etc.) expression opposite to the fight.
Similarly the blades, under the arms of the peculiar (akrocheirismòs) and particular pressure with his head, offering boxing, in the middle stage of struggle, a wide expressive.
On land the pankration assume the attitudes of the blade, because it comes directly from the first, but with some different solutions, such as the semi-supine position, which allows defenses and offenses typical of the latter, but also considerable offensive schemes pugilistico type.
If you wanted to give a definition of pankration, you might qualify as gender belonging to fight whose technical and tactical solutions are not adapted to boxing but conversely, namely boxing baskets is framed in the fight. "
Extremely rare kick, which prevail between the front legs and ascending to the genitals. More swept the spread (iposkelizein). Despite being documented in terms of training, high kicks and even those flying (eis laktizo aera tons), the position of guard pankration, striving forward and tilted as that of the struggle, seriously inhibits the execution thereof, and also allows a easy intercettamento both pugilistico that kind of struggle.
On land are widespread attacks on the lower limbs (levers and twisting), and articular levers are being made solely on one's back (klimachismos).
In ancient as currently competitions pankration occur without weight categories and with that regulation: the goal is subversion opponent (or yield ko).
The practice
The pankration, from the third century BC Until the fourth century AD, was practised by all, men and children. It was taught in the gymnasium of gyms and spas throughout the Roman Empire, in accordance with procedures defined by the classical authors "accurate and rigorous." There were even in this sense manuals, part of which has come down to us as the famous Papiri of Oxirinchos.

(This article was translated by a machine translation software and not by one person)