The American Pankration team is doing its own Throwback Thursday to an ancient Greek form of martial arts.
Pankration, which means “all powers fighting,” is a form of fighting originally used in the Ancient Greek Olympics. Jeff Funicello started American Pankration in 1990, when he was a wrestler at ASU. He said he wanted to combine different forms of martial arts and combat, such as wrestling, boxing and submission.
“There was nothing like that at the time. So, on our flyer, we were trying to describe what we were doing,” Funicello said. “It was like a mixed martial art. From there, the phrase (Mixed Martial Arts) was coined, believe it or not, in our program.”
Funicello went to the Olympics himself while he was competing for Greco-Roman wrestling. He said he wanted to pay homage to those who originally created it.
“I was trying to come up with the name for what we were doing and I thought … ‘Well, why give it another name?'” Funicello said. "I'm going to call it what it is, (and) pay homage to those who actually created it."
He said that at the ancient Olympics, they would fight to the death during competitions.
“Imagine that today. It’d be amazing,” he said. “Knowing it’s your life on the line — so they were phenomenally skilled at their craft.”
While Funicello said he was proud to have coached Olympic athletes and world competitors, his personal Pankration business, which he manages in addition to the club, thrives from regular college students, who are tired of the weight room or miss competition.
“Ninety percent of my clientele are the average Joe — college students that want to do something different," he said. "They are the guys that pay the bills and keep us going."
The students from the group come from all different levels of experience.
Exploratory sophomore Ally Statler recently joined the group. She said she joined because she realized that she needed to know how to defend herself.
“We really want to learn self-defense, especially … being a girl, or just living alone in general," Statler said. "I had my own apartment by myself and living alone was really scary.”
Biomedical engineering alumnus Julio Morera has been going to the club’s practices on and off for a few years now. He said, as with any sport, you have to practice and get the moves ingrained in you so that when it comes time to apply them, it’s second nature.
“It’s a thinking man’s sport, it is a lot like chess when you really get into it,” Morera said. “If you want to get good, you have to dedicate yourself to studying it, as much as doing it physically.”
Civil engineering sophomore Jordan Seawright joined last semester. He said he was looking to get into a martial arts program and that this one was versatile and gave the potential to compete, something he is interested in doing at the college level.
He also said he improved a lot faster than he initially expected after joining the team.
“You always get a chance at the end of the practice to try to put everything into practice and you see what works and you get adjusted to what suits you,” Seawright said.
Related Links:
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Reach the reporter at avcabral@asu.edu or follow @angeligagaa on Twitter.
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