Pankration

The story of Damoxenos of Syracuse on this Quora answer to the question "What is the most unsportsmanlike conduct you have seen in any sport?" is also pretty interesting: http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-most-unsportsmanlike-conduc...

They're in a ring.

Earlier mainstream MMA events like the first few UFC tournaments actually allowed groin strikes. I know for at least several bouts the athletes would have a gentleman's agreement not to employ them despite the legality.

Beyond that, the problem with attacking another man's genital's is...he can attack yours too. So the athletes employ defensive measures that usually nullify each other.

There are some positions like full guard where groin strikes are much easier to pull off for one person. And what can I say - that's hard to watch. Usually at the least they're wearing cups but it can still be painful.

my guess is that you can't really effectively harden yourself against biting and eye gouging and neither takes it any skill to perform those moves. and they're comparably dangerous: eye going blinds you and biting can lead to potentially lethal infections days after the fight. the undefeated champion would be at risk of being blinded or infected by a desperate amateur without matching skills.

it would take away from the spectacle and ruin an otherwise perfectly healthy athlete easily.

breaking the neck, on the other hand, is NOT an easy task, especially if your opponent is also a trained wrestler. you need skill and strength and at least it's something for the audience. i'm pretty sure though that deaths happened rarely and were mostly the result of accidents. the fighters were athletes after all, not cold blooded murderers. they were in for the money and the fame. same with the soldiers; mutilating your fellow soldiers wouldn't be a good thing.

MMA, now and back then, is a business. Techniques like eye-gouging, small joint manipulation, etc. would put athletes out of subsequent fights for long periods of time or even permanently...not a good business model for anyone. With other types of submissions there is usually plenty of time to tap out to avoid permanent injury. So AFAIK there's no moral imperative at play here. I've also never witnessed a broken neck in my ten plus years of watching MMA. I'm sure it's happened, but most likely as an unfortunate accident and not intentionally.

Rules must be such that enough people enjoy watching the fights, and enough people agree to fight. Presumably, few will agree to fight if nothing is off limits, and even if that is false, few will have the chance to gain the skills making the fights enjoyable before their eyes are gouged out.

(Personally, I'm not into this sort of entertainment to say the least, but that is beside the point...)

I think you have some mistaken beliefs about the linked ancient sport, and modern MMA. The goal is a submission, that is, to put the other person into a position in which they have to submit, or they risk injury. So I find your "successfully broken another mans neck" question to be a non-sequitur. Breaking someone's neck is not a desired outcome, nor is it particularly likely.

I practice Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, and have sparred a decent amount of MMA.

From the WP article, they mention fights end with submission or when the judge stopped it. You seem to be implying that the competition is a fight to the death ("breaking someone's neck"), but that's not what the article says. It doesn't mean that death could or did not occur either, but just that it's not the main goal.

Yes, they did. Then the Brazilians invented it again and it became modern day MMA.