Jim Arvanitis

Jim Arvanitis is a Greek-American martial artist and professional trainer of Mixed Martial Arts/Hybrid Reality Combat based on the pankration model, and author of several books and videos relating to pankration. He is world recognized as the Founder of Neo-Pankration, a blend of the remnants of the ancient fighting legacy along with elements found in modern sources such as Western boxing, savate, Greco-Roman wrestling, Muay-thai, and combat judo.

His reconstruction of the defunct sport stands as one of the first hybrid fighting systems of its kind. It was first unveiled to mainstream martial arts in 1973 when he was featured on the cover of Black Belt magazine. Arvanitis has appeared on multiple covers and in hundreds of articles over the past forty years. He was among the scant few who was cross-training in various striking and grappling systems during a time when purely standup styles such as classical karate and kung-fu dominated the scene and were thought to be invincible. His way of thinking was not accepted at the time and many felt he was nothing more than a passing oddity. This criticism only tended to fuel his efforts. Arvanitis was considered to be ahead of his time with his innovations preceding MMA by more than two decades. Today he is the recipient of countless recognition awards for his efforts and contributions.

Jim Arvanitis was born in the Greater Boston area, the son of a Greek-immigrant father who instilled ethnic pride in him from an early age. He attended Greek school to learn the language and became enchanted with the myths and legends of the culture. Athletics played an important role in the family. Arvanitis was a decorated high school athlete in track and basketball for which he set a city league record for points scored in a single game and in a season. He also set school records for pushups and pullups.

His passion, however, was combat sports and learning to defend himself mainly due to an incident where he was bullied by three older boys. He began learning Western wrestling at age seven and boxing some years later, becoming a champion in his weight division in both while competing throughout the Northeast. Arvanitis' interest in grappling brought him in contact with many former professional wrestlers from the old NWA and World Wrestling Federation (now WWE) including the likes of Lou Thesz, Bruno Sammartino, and Walter "Killer" Kowalski. They would come into his father's restaurant for dinner whenever they were in town to perform, and Jim would eagerly discuss wrestling moves with them at length. They took a liking in him and invited him to work out with them. Although he realized that the matches were "worked" he found that many were proficient in catch wrestling which is what they focused on in their training sessions. Arvanitis later took an interest in martial arts but rather than studying the more popular Asian styles he opted for Thai boxing (muay-Thai), savate, and combat judo. He found these more to his liking and much more pragmatic than the rigid horse stances and prearranged forms of karate and kung-fu. Jim also immersed himself into extensively reading about many other fighting systems of different cultures.

...
Wikipedia