How young is too young for MMA?

I’m in favour of kids training in mixed martial arts. Get them wrestling and rolling around when they’re little, around kindergarten age, when it still feels like play to them, and then add in striking and submissions as they get a little older and can understand the techniques and how to practice them safely without injuring themselves or their training partners. If I was a parent I’d be putting my kid in an MMA-based class before I’d send them to karate or tae kwon do just for the self-defense aspects alone.

But at what age should kids compete in MMA? It’s a question I hadn’t thought much about until I came across these videos. The one above, produced by ESPN, is eye-opening. It shows kids as young as eight or nine competing in MMA-style events, a former Special Forces soldier-turned-instructor (think the Cobra Kai sensei in The Karate Kid) who encourages kids to start sparring in their second class (something I wouldn’t even recommend an adult do), and a 14-year-old Tiger Woods of MMA who has won over 400 wrestling, boxing, jiu-jitsu and MMA matches. The video below is of an amateur event featuring 12- and 13-year-olds, no pads, no head gear. Randy Couture and Bas Rutten are in attendance.

Something about it all strikes me as very wrong, especially when I see some of the body slams and joint locks and ground-and-pound that these kids are trying on each other. It’s even referred to as “child abuse” by one of the talking-head experts who also happens to be a martial arts instructor. I’m not sure I’d go quite that far but it is a scary thought. And if some kid gets hurt – which seems inevitable the way punches are being thrown without being defended, the way limbs are being bent, necks are being twisted and spines contorted with what appears like very little in the way of supervision or safety precautions – then all of MMA is going to pay the price.