If you thought MMA was already nasty, you may want to reconsider. Why not go add a few more participants and a basketball hoops to the wild mayhem that already takes place inside the Octagon?
Batyr Ball is a hybrid of MMA and basketball. It’s unclear who came up with the concept to combine the two sports, but it does look nasty.
It should be acknowledged that this was likely inspired by rugby ball – a widely popular form of wrestling warm ups utilized in Russia and some parts of Eastern Europe.
One video of the new sport seemed to show two teams of three combatants duking it out for possession of a ball. Basketball hoops dangle on each side of the cage as the teams compete to score while attempting to defend against striking.
The fact that one of the guys completely crushes the glass backboard with one amazing slam throughout the footage makes it even more ridiculous. The players continue playing until the glass fully breaks when he does this, falling all over the mat.
The Naiza Championship is an MMA organization located in Kazakhstan. They seem to have created this new sport. Since 2015, they have been staging MMA competitions which were more traditional.
The video clip only partially reveals the regulations, but it seems to be absolute anarchy.
One user wrote: “khabib would be pound for pound number #1 in this sport” citing Nurgmagomedov’s experience with rugby basketball.
Another user tweeted: “Imagine getting dunked on while homie is simultaneously hitting you with a flying knee smh.”
Another wrote: “Huge for the ‘football players playing basketball’ community.”
Another user added: “All the promotion’s money is going into backboards.”
A prominent member of the MMA community on twitter, Grabaka hitman, compared the new modality to an attempt to integrate football into mma from a while back with a similar clip: