(Video via Vice)
With how far MMA has come in terms of being accepted in North America, South and Central America and Europe, it is easy to forget that there are huge swaths of the globe where the sport has yet to catch on and is still perceived as a brutal spectacle. Vice Magazine’s Fightland recently visited one such place – Pakistan.
Pakistan is one of the world’s most populated nations with a long history of combat sports but it only got its first MMA gym just a few years ago. Fightland visits with the founder of that gym, American expatriate and MMA fighter Bashir Ahmad, as he balances his own fight career with his gym business and local fight promotion.
It’s the wild east out there in Pakistan when it comes to MMA, it seems, with lots of untapped potential in the mountain regions, according to Ahmad. The ONE-FC featherweight seems completely driven to establish MMA in Pakistan, even his he has to do it on his own. Taking a look at this short documentary makes you both appreciate what we have here in North America and the unique moment some are experiencing in Pakistan where MMA is still a completely fringe thing and where men sweat and bleed as virtual unknowns, simply for love and pride.
– Elias Cepeda
(Video via Vice)
With how far MMA has come in terms of being accepted in North America, South and Central America and Europe, it is easy to forget that there are huge swaths of the globe where the sport has yet to catch on and is still perceived as a brutal spectacle. Vice Magazine’s Fightland recently visited one such place – Pakistan.
Pakistan is one of the world’s most populated nations with a long history of combat sports but it only got its first MMA gym just a few years ago. Fightland visits with the founder of that gym, American expatriate and MMA fighter Bashir Ahmad, as he balances his own fight career with his gym business and local fight promotion.
It’s the wild east out there in Pakistan when it comes to MMA, it seems, with lots of untapped potential in the mountain regions, according to Ahmad. The ONE-FC featherweight seems completely driven to establish MMA in Pakistan, even his he has to do it on his own. Taking a look at this short documentary makes you both appreciate what we have here in North America and the unique moment some are experiencing in Pakistan where MMA is still a completely fringe thing and where men sweat and bleed as virtual unknowns, simply for love and pride.
– Elias Cepeda