The Origins of MMA in Toronto

This weekend UFC 129 event comes to Toronto. As I walked along University Avenue this week I saw the promotional banners for Lyoto Machita, Gille St. Pierre, Randy Couture etc. Toronto, has the highest viewer count of all cities for MMA events. Who would have realized that Toronto martial artists were the first to bring MMA to Canada, and now UFC is here. The system was actually taught by an Israeli jiu jitsu instructor in the late 1980's.

In the early 1990's as a realtor, I was walking the streets looking to lease an unusual vacant two level shopping plaza in Richmond Hill. I knocked on the door of a martial arts school, left a flier and got a call from and Israeli Martial Artist by the name of Moni Aizik. He was interested in taking a look. I had been brought up in the martial arts and was a first degree black belt in karate from BC. I had met many true "artists" this industry, without much business acumen. However, I had never seen a more astutue business martial artist than this person. We negotiated at length and in the end created the largest martial arts school in Canada at the time, approximately 10,000 square feet. However, in those days schools were sport specific. You either taught karate or judo or tae kwan do etc. Moni envisioned a centre with all the disciplines all under one roof, with olympic quality facilities, large washrooms and excellent air quality control.

In this facility different teachers taught their respective disciplines. Moni taught judo, jiu jitsu and no holds barred fighting. From this club emerged some of the current top MMA fighters, such as Carlos Newton, Mark Bocek, and MMA entreprenuer Joel Gerson. We had seminars with Ken Shamrock and Rickson Gracie, before UFC was even invented. Joel travelled to Japan and beat the reigning champion Shoot Fighter of the time Rumino Sato, in the first round by submission.

Moni has gone on the promote his own creation of martial arts called Commando Krav Maga. He travels the world, teaching seminars and has a portfolio of instructional DVD's. However, I think that it was Moni's Israeli military experience that saw the values of the different disciplines as complimentary as opposed to competitve products. In the Isreali army you choose between artillary, air force, navy etc. In their totality they create a weapon of defence. All arms of the IDF work together. In the old days each martial discipline was competing with one another. Even dsiciplines competed within eachother with their different styles, boasting one was more authentic than the other. This created a fragmented martial arts industry, until one unintimidated instructor, put it all to bed, and said, we are all friends, train your hardest. The Gracie's went one step further and said, let's fight and see which style is superior. However now all UFC athletes train a hybrid of arts. So that is how the Samurai Club was born, and how the Samurai children went on to be a majour contibution to the MMA and UFC world.

Wishing all the fighters, good  luck and safety in UFC 129.


Let's GET It On!


The Adventure Guy