By Eric Hill
From my earliest years, I was engaged in the tenets of Hellenism, with Hellenic philosophy, mythology and geography from the school system, personal research and, most importantly, my parents. At the age of 19, I was fortunate to be immersed in a Hellenic warrior arts legacy, and later submerged in extant Hellenic martial traditions, which enabled an eventual feedback loop of service to the community. These legacies, in my view, must be available in a tangible consumable form to the youth of the Hellenic community.
Back in 1992 I was accepted to study Jim Arvanitis’” Hellenic Combatives” system of “Mu Tau”, that had a “pankration” (combat sport) component, at his private “Spartan Academy“ facility in Manchester, New Hampshire. In truth, I had applied three times and was only accepted on the third attempt. The regular class of twelve trainees was composed of SOF (Special Operations Forces) operators, Infantry, SWAT and me (the computer engineering student). The training , was all full contact and included weapons analogs, one-on-many, one-on-one, unarmed vs armed scenarios. It lived up to all documented and implied expectations in martial arts media from the 1970’s to that point.
My training would go on for many years and aside from certification, I would appear in many magazines, books and videos featuring Jim Arvanitis and his system. I would also take on my own clientele in the USA and even seminar appearances in both the USA and Europe. I also competed in professional MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) in the USA and abroad, including appearing on international TV, radio, and other media.
As I was experiencing a life transition, I met my wife Ευχάρις at a Hellenic dance exhibition in Orlando, Florida in the year 2000. A wedding followed two years later, then three beautiful children. While I continued my own training daily and classes for a small list of clientele, I integrated extant Hellenic martial tradition into my methodology (footwork from Hellenic weapons dances, etc).
Over all these years, I began to realize the US Hellenic community was largely absent from the American martial arts & combat sports scene. This became more ironic to me as MMA began to be recognized widely as the modern iteration of the Pankration (Παγκράτιον) combat sport legacy of the Hellenic people, with Jim Arvanitis continuing to receive non-Greek accolades worldwide as “Pankration’s Renaissance Man”.
Nonetheless, I had younger children and realized my Hellenic brand of combatives, my lineage, and professional MMA was not for children. Thus, I slowly began to conceive a youth Hellenic martial arts program for the Diaspora children in 2012. This was no easy task as my training was of a full-contact Hellenic combatives flavor and still in line with the framework of Jim’s system. Nonetheless, the US (Florida) Diaspora program was implemented through my donation of time, patience of my wife, and participation of youth of the Diaspora.
I even created what I dubbed “Hellenic Combatives kits” to overcome limitations in full contact “rubber knife” sparring over earlier decades when training “high risk professionals.” The kits allowed me around 2018 -2020 to offer several safe, full-contact seminars to the Sons of Pericles, by their request, in the environs of Tarpon Springs, Florida. I was thus able to expose them to their ethnic martial culture in a full contact manner. By the second seminar, these events had become Hellenic community affairs with mothers and fathers coming to watch and video tape their sons strike and draw knives from traditional sashes, in full contact action with each other.
During this period around 2013, I contacted General Konstantinos Konstantaras (Hellenic Army ret) and Nicholas Trigkas representing an athletic organization in operation around the beautiful, and ancient, city of Veria in northern Greece. Although I had been to the Hellenic Republic several times, and including their generous invitations, it wasn’t until 2019 I would be able to meet both, together with my oldest son Demetrios in Veroia.
We sipped traditional coffee and spoke, in Greek, about the typical topicstongue, topics of family, and the future, and more specifically about the global Hellenic community. A bit after our meeting, we were fortunate to be taken on a tour of what is now dubbed “The Parthenon of Macedonia” above the “Tombs of Vergina”–literally geographically across the valley from Veroia. Then it hit me, what about a Diaspora–Greece full-contact Pankration (MMA) tournament in the shadow of the “Parthenon of Macedonia”? For it was here millennia earlier, where Alexander the Great had marshalled his warriors before marching East.
I would again return several times to Greece but I would not meet my friend Nicholas Trigkas again until 2023. This time I had my daughter with me. He was extremely gracious and gave myself, my daughter and my wife’s cousin a walking tour of ancient Veria. One might even say that we walked in the footsteps of the Apostle Paul. We stopped by a taverna and at my urging immersed ourselves into a creative discussion on a Diaspora-Greece full-contact Παγκράτιον championship in the “shadow of the Parthenon of Macedonia”.
Returning home, I restarted a full-contact effort I had begun at the behest of Diaspora youth 2022; having discontinued efforts at the start of Covid. We had called it “Team Άκρίται” in homage to Hellenic warriorship and the Eastern Roman (aka Byzantine) period that all extant Hellenic traditions we know today passed through; from language, dance, combat sport, blade play (knives, swords & sickles) to religion. However, realism had begun to set in that perhaps it was easier to operationalize a Diaspora-Greece championship in Tarpon Springs than in Veroia; after all MMA is legal in Florida and the state a hotbed of Hellenic tradition.
Yet, as I began to follow the nuances of today’s MMA, which is an inheritor of a Παγκράτιον Legacy, the truth set in. While many ethnic communities in the USA have broad participation in MMA, even instructions in the cage during matches delivered in “ethnic” languages (Portuguese, Spanish, Russian, etc), the US Hellenic community is broadly lacking or simply absent from carrying the torch—in spite of its rooted martial heritage.
These words today are not a call to work together for a Diaspora-Greece Championship, neither in the shadow of the “Parthenon of Macedonia” or Tarpon Springs, Florida. This is, however, a message to the Hellenic Diaspora communities. Whatever your combat sports background or lack thereof, the Call-to-Action is to simply do your part to help Hellenic community youth participate in amateur full contact MMA, in whatever state/province they are in; as coach, sponsor, etc. While I attend amateur MMA in-the-cage events and hear coaches giving guidance in Portuguese, Spanish, or Russian, it is a shame the language of Ηρακλής (the mythological founder of Pankration) and Διογένης (Eastern Roman Akritai warrior) is not represented nor their ethnic cultural lineage in teams of competitors.
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