Pankration

• 1. Introduction

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  Pankration entered the Greek Olympic Games in 648 BC as something the ancient world had never seen before: a fighting contest with almost no rules. Competitors could punch, kick, choke, twist joints, and drag their opponent to the ground. Only biting and eye gouging were forbidden. The name itself comes from the Ancient Greek for "all of power". What drove the Greeks to create a sport this extreme? Who were the men who competed in it? And how did a single combat art from antiquity manage to shape the way the world fights today?

• 2. Gods, Heroes, and Origins

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  Greek legend traced pankration back to two of the most celebrated heroes in myth. Heracles, according to the stories, used pankration to subdue the Nemean lion, and ancient artworks regularly depicted that struggle as a wrestling and choking match rather than a simple kill. Theseus, meanwhile, was said to have used the same techniques to defeat Cercyon of Eleusis, defeating him in one of his labours on the sea route to Athens, and later against the minotaur in the labyrinth.

  The sport carried an older name before pankration became standard. Pammachon, or pammachion, meaning "total combat", was the earlier term, built from the Greek words for "all" and "matter". Scholars have traditionally placed pankration's formal development in the seventh century BC, as archaic Greek society sought a sporting outlet that boxing and wrestling separately could not provide. Some evidence, however, suggests that forms of the practice existed in Greece from as far back as the second millennium BC.

  Physical evidence fills in what legend leaves vague. Depictions on ancient pottery and sculpture show pankratiasts in stances and holds that would be familiar to any modern grappling coach. The sport clearly drew from boxing, known in Greek as pygmachia, and wrestling, known as pale, then expanded beyond both. Kicks to the body, chokes applied on the ground, joint locks on the arm and leg: these techniques appear in the visual record alongside the mythological stories. The sport's roots were thus both legendary and deeply practical.

• 3. Warriors and Soldiers

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  Pankration was not confined to athletic festivals. Greek soldiers trained in it and used it in battle. Herodotus recorded that at the battle of Mycale against the Persians in 479 BC, the Athenians fought best among the Greeks, and the best individual fighter among the Athenians was a distinguished pankratiast named Hermolycus, son of Euthynus.

  The Spartans at the Battle of Thermopylae, according to the sources, fought with bare hands and teeth once their swords and spears broke. The historian Polyaemus described King Philip II, father of Alexander the Great, practicing pankration alongside another pankratiast while his soldiers watched. Pankration was part of the training of Alexander's Macedonian phalanx as well as the Spartan hoplites.

  The connection to Alexander's campaigns produced one of the sport's most remarkable recorded episodes. Dioxippus was an Athenian who had won the Olympic Games in 336 BC and was serving in Alexander's army during its expedition into Asia. A soldier named Coragus challenged him to armed combat in front of Alexander and the troops. Coragus fought with weapons and full armour; Dioxippus arrived carrying only a club and defeated him without killing him. The pankration training made the difference. Later, Dioxippus was framed for theft and died by suicide.

• 4. Legends of the Arena

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  Among the champions whose names survived into later centuries, Arrhichion of Phigalia achieved a form of immortality that no other athlete in recorded history can claim. Competing at the Olympic Games, he found himself caught in a chokehold with no apparent escape. He chose to break his opponent's toe, in some records his ankle, causing the opponent such pain that he submitted. As the referee raised Arrhichion's hand, it became clear that he had died from the chokehold. His body was crowned with the olive wreath and returned to Phigaleia as a hero.

  Polydamas of Skotoussa and Theogenes, often referred to as Theagenes of Thasos after the first century AD, were among the other names that became legendary. The ancient traveller and writer Pausanias retold the stories of these champions as he described his journeys around Greece, treating them as touchstones of athletic inspiration to the Hellenic world across centuries.

  Sostratus the Sicyonian had a technique unusual enough that Pausanias recorded it in comparison: Leontiscus of Messene won by bending his opponents' fingers rather than throwing them, a style Pausanias described as resembling Sostratus' pankration approach. The diversity of styles within the sport was documented even in antiquity.

• 5. Rules and Tournament Structure

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  Pankration competitions had no weight divisions and no time limits. Two age groups competed at the Ancient Olympic Games: men, called andres, and boys, called paides. The boys' event was added at the Olympic Games in 200 BC.

  Referees carried stout rods or switches to enforce the two rules that applied everywhere except Sparta: no eye gouging, no biting. Sparta alone permitted both. A contest ended when one fighter submitted, typically by raising his index finger, though judges could also stop a bout or declare a draw.

  The Greco-Roman satirist Lucian described the tournament draw in detail. A sacred silver urn held bean-size lots inscribed with letters, two for each letter. Athletes drew lots at random while whip bearers stood beside them to prevent anyone from reading their draw. An official then matched the holders of identical letters to fight each other. This process repeated each round until the final.

  If a round contained an odd number of competitors, one athlete received a bye, called an ephedros, meaning reserve. That athlete sat out the round and entered fresh in the next. Winning an entire tournament without ever receiving a bye was considered a mark of special distinction: the term for it was anephedros. Evidence from Plato suggests that Panhellenic Games could draw competitors numbering in the thousands, with regional preliminary contests narrowing the field before the major games.

• 6. Technique and Training

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  Standing pankration was called Ano Pankration; ground fighting was Kato Pankration. Fighters adopted a stance that blended the more frontal position of a wrestler with the sideways guard of a boxer. The weight sat almost entirely on the back foot. The hands were held high, fingers relaxed, with the front arm nearly fully extended.

  Kicking was not a secondary element. An inscription praising the pankratiast Glykon from Pergamo described him as "wide foot" before noting his "unbeatable hands", placing kicking ability at least on equal footing with punching. The physician Galen wrote a sarcastic passage awarding the pankration prize to a donkey for excellence in kicking. The straight kick with the bottom of the foot to the stomach had its own Greek name, gastrizein, and appeared frequently enough on pottery that it was clearly a standard technique.

  Locking techniques covered the full range of what modern grapplers would recognize. The sources reference athletes who "wrestle with the heel" and those who "wrestle with the ankle", indicating early knowledge of the straight ankle lock and the heel hook. Arm bars, shoulder locks, and chokes applied from behind all appear in ancient descriptions and artwork.

  The physicians and writers who described training methods listed approaches that parallel modern athletic preparation: periodization, strength development, endurance work, and specialized drilling for both the standing and ground phases. Punching bags called korykos, meaning leather sack, were used for striking practice and body conditioning. Trainers called paedotribae oversaw boys' instruction; elite athletes worked with specialized coaches called gymnastae, some of them former competitors. Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics notes that the goal of a combat sports teacher was to help each athlete develop a personal style suited to his own strengths and weaknesses.

• 7. End of an Era, Start of Another

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  In 393 AD, the Christian Byzantine Emperor Theodosius I abolished pankration by edict, ending it alongside gladiatorial combat and all other pagan festivals. The sport disappeared from the Games it had entered more than a thousand years earlier.

  When the modern Olympics were revived in 1896, Pierre de Coubertin made efforts to reinstate pankration. Those efforts failed. The International Olympic Committee still does not list pankration among Olympic sports.

  Greek-American combat athlete Jim Arvanitis introduced what he called Neo-Pankration to the martial arts community in 1969. In 1973 he appeared on the cover of Black Belt magazine, bringing the reconstructed art to a worldwide audience. Arvanitis continued to refine his reconstruction by referencing original ancient sources, and his work is considered pioneering in what became modern mixed martial arts.

  In 2010, the sport was accepted by FILA, now known as United World Wrestling, as an associated discipline and a recognized form of modern mixed martial arts. That same year, pankration was first contested at the World Combat Games. The modern version runs under two rulesets: Elite, which permits punches and kicks to both head and body, and Traditional, which restricts head strikes while still allowing controlled round house kicks to the head. Both rulesets ban soccer kicks, elbow strikes to the head, spine locks, and striking while on the ground. Fighters compete on a standard wrestling mat wearing MMA gloves, shin pads, and headgear. The sport that Herodotus linked to the hero Hermolycus at the battle of Mycale now operates under the governance of the same international body that oversees Olympic wrestling.