Bone-smashing action, brutal finishes and fighters that leave it all in the cage. Mixed Martial Arts has exploded onto the scene to become one of the fastest growing sports in the world. MMA was born with one single, bloody question: Which fighting style is the toughest? To reach the top, a fighter must master various fighting techniques--kickboxing, wrestling, jiu-jitsu and more--and blend them together: * Georges St-Pierre steamrolls through his opponents in the UFC, but in school he was mercilessly targeted by bullies, that is, until he learned karate * Most fighters respect their opponents, but they don’t have to like them; some of the greatest rivalries of all time feature bad blood (and lots of real blood on the mat, too)--Chuck Lidell vs. Tito Ortiz, Matt Hughes vs. Georges St-Pierre and Ken Shamrock vs. Royce Gracie * Before going on to have one of the greatest careers in MMA history, Randy Couture won a gold medal at the 1991 Pan American Games in wrestling * In the early days of the UFC there were no weight classes; in one match, a karate master was 400 pounds lighter and nine inches shorter than his sumo wrestler opponent, but the karate master still won.

Arpon Basu had said since the age of eight that he would one day make the National Hockey League. Any chance of that happening, came to a crashing halt when, at 15 when he realized he was completely devoid of any talent. He earned a graduate journalism degree from Concordia University and went straight to a sports-writing job with the Canadian Press. The first time he walked into the Montréal Canadiens dressing room as a giddy cub reporter, Basu nearly fell over as it dawned on him that, despite his ineptitude on the ice, he had in fact been telling the truth as a dreamy-eyed eight-year-old.Basu covers sports for the Canadian Press in Montréal and writes a weekly sports column for the Montréal Gazette. He is also editor of Montréal’s South Shore, The St-Lambert Journal.

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