“The best style is no style, the best form is no form” Bruce lee. He said that you must take what works from different martial arts and discard the rest. This is exactly what MMA is based on; two competitors attempt to defeat each other by potentially utilizing a wide variety of fighting techniques, including manipulating areas of striking and grappling.
Today fighters are attempting to follow these steps, taking the best of what they have studied and bringing it into the ring. The best MMA fighters are the ones who continually cross-train in several realms of striking styles such as: Karate, Kickboxing, Boxing, and Taekwondo; and grappling styles such as: Judo, Aikido, Jiu-jitsu and Wrestling. Otherwise you’ll end up getting beat either on the ground or on your feet.

Mixed martial arts (MMA), popularly known as ultimate fighting is a full contact combat sport that allows a wide variety of fighting techniques and skills, from a mixture of martial arts and non-martial arts traditions, to be used in competitions. The rules allow the use of both striking as well as grappling techniques, both while standing and on the ground. Such competitions allow martial artists of different backgrounds to compete.
The roots of modern mixed martial arts can be traced back to various mixed style contests that took place throughout Europe, Japan and the Pacific Rim during the early 1900s. The combat sport of Vale Tudo that had developed in Brazil from the 1920s was brought to the United states by the Gracie family in 1993 with the founding of the Ultimate Fighting Championship. Professional MMA events had also been held in Japan by Shooto starting back in 1989. In due course the more dangerous Vale Tudo style bouts of the early UFCs were made safer with the implementation of additional rules, leading to the popular regulated form of MMA seen today.

The name mixed martial arts was coined by Rick Blume, president and CEO of Battlecade, in 1995. Following these changes, the sport has seen increased popularity with pay per view reach rivaling boxing and professional wrestling.

Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) competitions were introduced in the United States with the first Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) in 1993. The sport gained international exposure and widespread publicity in United States in 1993, when Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu fighter Royce Gracie handily won the first Ultimate Fighting Championship tournament, subduing three challengers in a total of just five minutes, sparking a revolution in the martial arts.

In November 2005 recognition of its effectiveness as a test came as the United States Army began to sanction mixed martial arts with the first annual Army Combative Championships held by the US Army Combative School. 

The sport reached a new peak of popularity in North America in the December 2006 rematch between then UFC light heavyweight champion Chuck Liddell and former champion Tito Ortiz, rivaling the PPV sales of some of the biggest boxing events of all time, and helping the UFC's 2006 PPV gross surpass that of any promotion in PPV history. In 2007, Zuffa LLC, the owners of the UFC MMA promotion, bought Japanese rival MMA brand Pride FC, merging the contracted fighters under one promotion and drawing comparisons to the consolidation that occurred in other sports, such as the AFL-NFL Merger in American football.

Though the UFC is now the worlds largest Mixed Martial Arts organization, but it was not the first. Both Vale Tudo in Brazil and Shooto in Japan preceded it. Both of these styles focused largely on grappling and submissions though strikes were allowed to some degree.

In the early 1990s, practitioners of grappling based styles such as Brazilian Jiyu-Jitsu and Wrestling dominated competition in the United States. Practitioners of striking based arts such as boxing, kickboxing, and Karate who were unfamiliar with submission grappling proved to be unprepared to deal with its submission techniques. Shoot wrestling practitioners offered a balance of amateur wrestling ability and catch wrestling-based submissions, resulting in a well-rounded skill set. The shoot wrestlers were especially successful in Japan. As competitions became more and more common, those with a base in striking arts became more competitive as they cross trained in arts based around takedowns and submission holds, leading to notable upsets against the then dominant grapplers. Likewise, those from the varying grappling styles added striking techniques to their arsenal. This increase of cross-training resulted in fighters becoming increasingly multi-dimensional and well-rounded in their skills.

Since the late 90's both strikers and grapplers have been successful at MMA though it is rare to see any fighter who is not schooled in both striking and grappling arts to reach the highest levels of competition.