Abu Dhabi Combat Club
The Club and the competition ADCC World Submission Fighting Championships were the idea and creation of a UAE national Sheik Tahnoon Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the son of then U.A.E. leader Sheik Zayed. who at the time was completing his advanced studies in USA. In 1993 after watching the first U.F.C. Sheik Tahnoon the became a fan of MMA.
Shortly after that he started studying Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu in San Diego, California. Upon completing his studies, Sheik Tahnoon returned to the U.A.E. but his passion for Martial arts did not stop. Sheik Tahnoon set out to create and build his vision of implementing Martial Arts not only in his native U.A.E. but also creating a standard for which all ground fighting martial arts would be measured.
To put his vision to reality Sheik Tahnoon developed and propelled a two fold plan; to implement the growth of Martial Arts in the U.A.E. Sheik Tahnoon created the ADCC (Abu Dhabi Combat Club). Sheik Tahnoon converted an idle facility in Abu Dhabi into a Martial Arts Club. He began by hiring top instructors in various martial Arts, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Judo, Wrestling, Sambo, Muay Thai etc. and giving them a World class facility to minister their classes and to train top professional fighters. Soon the ADCC became the top facility for learning and training MMA in the Arab World.
At the ADCC facilities World class instructors teach Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Sambo, Boxing, Kickboxing, Judo, Wrestling and various other arts beneficial to MMA and No Rules Fighting.
The goals of Abu Dhabi Combat Club are to generally promote a healthy lifestyle by educating members in nutrition and to train people in all aspects of self defense, which in turn builds self-confidence.
The first edition of ADCC took place on March 20, 21 & 22, 1998 in Abu Dhabi, U.A.E. Despite its novelty and lack of publicity (because of lack specialized media at the time), the first ADCC tournament still attracted some of the best "grapplers" in the World a the time, while others, afraid of perhaps bias in the rules of worried about exposing themselves in a different format remained home and awaited the end of the event to make their judgment and passed on the chance to compete in March 1998.
After the completion of the first event, with competitors returning home raving about the quality of the event and the equality of the rules, what followed was an explosion of interest for the next years. With each edition, more and more top fighters from the four corners of the World actively began training and preparing for ADCC. With the increased interest a problem started to occur there were too many entrants for the available 16 spots, thus forcing ADCC to create regional qualifying trials. Soon Submission Grappling spread throughout the four corners of the World and a new and exciting sport was created.
ADCC Champions and top competitors became highly sought commodities for MMA Events and soon became stars in shows like U.F.C. in America and Pride andK1 in Japan. Names like Royler Gracie, Mark Kerr, Matt Hughes, Ricardo Arona, Tito Ortiz, Rodrigo "Minotauro", Dean Lister, Ricco Rodrigues, Ricardo Arona, Matt Lindland, Tom Erickson, Ronaldo "Jacare" Souza & Vitor "Shaolin" Ribeiro just to name a few, had or currently have successful careers in MMA.
The ever expansion of Submission Fighting led by the huge success of ADCC spawned amateur leagues around the World, and with each year, the number of competitors in these and other like events grew tremendously, and ADCC Championships is and has been always considered the pinnacle of the modality. The creation of one visionary, ADCC, now in its 9th edition to be held in 2009 has become the beacon of a new generation and a new sport.
Website: http://www.adcombat.com
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