Why Learn MMA?
Fitness
Most martial arts have the benefit of providing a fun way to get exercise. Studies have found wrestling and kickboxing (not air boxing like Tae Bo) to be among the highest calorie burning activities. Fortunately, we do both. We also add plenty of conditioning exercises, calisthenics, and stretching.
You do not need to be in wicked good shape to join. You do not need to be a fitness guru just to make it through a practice session, either. How hard you push yourself, how often you come to class, and how well you take care of yourself the other 22 hours of the day will largely determine your success, and supplementing your routine with a few hours of jiujitsu and wrestling will definitely help you achieve your fitness goals.

Self-Defense
Everyone has a right to be safe in their person and belongings, and everyone is allowed the right of self-defense. As you have already read, MMA is the superior martial arts system. It only follows that the techniques that make for great fighters also make for safe people. MMA has been proven to be more effective than other martial arts, so imagine what a Mixed Martial Artist could do for someone in a situation that calls for self-defense. MMA, and especially BJJ, have always emphasized the REALITY of combat.

Fighting and self-defense are ugly things that typically lack the finesse of a Jackie Chan flick. There is no difference between fighting and self-defense, only the intentions of the people involved differ. This does not mean that things like biomechanics change all of a sudden in order to give the 'defender' a greater chance of success. Don't be fooled by claims of 'pressure points' or advice to 'kick him in the balls, gouge his eyes out and run.' Not only is it literally impossible to execute these techniques, but the human body is far more resilient than most martial arts theories give the body credit for.

The reality is, unless you actually practice on a live and fully resisting partner, you will not gain the proficiency you need to defend yourself against a live and resisting attacker. The problem is, how many live and resisting partners eyes can you gouge out before running out of training partners, and, is it even possible to consistently do such a thing? Will striking an attacker in the groin subdue him? These are problems addressed in MMA.
With MMA techniques you will gain confidence and maturity that will carry over into other facets of your life. Confidence and maturity are the first steps to avoiding conflicts or situations that would otherwise require the use of force, and that is the best weapon you can use to defend yourself.

Safety

In spite of this being a Combat Sport, the training is very safe. Members are never required to spar, and those that do are under supervision and must wear the appropriate safety equipment. THE SAFETY OF ALL CLUB MEMBERS IS THE FIRST PRIORITY!

The Revolution of Martial Arts

When Copernicus formed his theory of a heliocentric universe, he upset scientific tradition and challenged religious dogma. When Royce Gracie cleaned house at the first UFC's, he upset Martial Arts tradition and challenged combat sports dogma. By learning MMA, you will be on the front lines of the Martial Arts Revolution. Everyday boxing falls further in to the category of "our fathers' sport" while MMA fighters climb up the pay charts. Legends about small, old men taking out 10 ninjas at once no longer hold up. "Hollywood" techniques will probably still show up in the movies, but flashy kicks will rarely ever win fights.

The methods of training continue to change and improve. Perhaps the best training methods and techniques have always been available, or perhaps methods have improved because better technology and understanding of the human body have made it so. Either way, martial artists who continue to cling to the old traditional ways will see their arts be replaced by forms and styles that emphasize the reality of combat rather than the normative view of how combat should be.
MMA has put the "Martial" back in the martial arts.

Mixed Martial Arts

Intro:
Mixed Martial Arts is both a style and not a style simultaneously. It is both a new and old way of thinking about martial arts. It bases the decisions about which techniques to use on their demonstrated effectiveness by different practitioners in open, non-style-specific sparring and/or competition that is designed to have as few rules as possible while still ensuring safety against death or severe permanent injury.

There are two main styles of MMA:
Sport MMA- Mixed Martial Arts designed for sporting competition, such as the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), Pride Fighting Championship, or Vale Tudo style fighting matches. These matches usually have two unarmed persons duking it out with the core rules being: no biting, no eye-gouging (with fingers or chin) and no fish-hooking (inserting body parts such as the fingers into bodily crevices such as the mouth or nose). Groin attacks (striking or squeezing the groin) are also often illegal.

The promoters may add more rules, or simply use what are considered to be the core rules. More restrictive promotions of MMA include Old Pancrase, Shootfighting, or RINGS rules. These rulesets often ban striking on the ground, closed-fist striking, or both.
In general, boxing (kickboxing/muay thai included), wrestling (Freestyle, Greco-Roman, and to a lesser extent Judo), and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ) are the three styles that comprise the core of nearly all modern MMA training.
Street MMA- The principles of Mixed Martial Arts as applied for non-sport situations. There seem to be fewer mixed martial artists interested in this as compared to sport MMA, though the number of practitioners is growing. In practice, many, though not all, of the persons doing this come from a Jeet Kune Do background, and sometimes call what they do Jeet Kune Do (ex. Matt Thornton, Erik Paulson)
Their work is somewhat different from the JKD mainstream in calling for large amounts of few-rules sparring, and they encourage their students to do sport MMA sparring/competition. One can argue endlessly whether what they do is or is not MMA or JKD- suffice it to say there are similarities to both, and that JKD can be MMA and MMA JKD.

Most Street MMAers believe that sport MMA merely needs some changes in strategy (less emphasis on staying on the ground, more weapons awareness) and the addition of some techniques to become highly effective for the street. By far the most common addition to street-oriented MMA is Filipino martial art (FMA) training, due to its emphasis on, and practical use of weaponry, primarily the stick and knife.

Origin:

The sport developed worldwide in the current form circa 1997, with the main centers of development being Brazil, the US, and Japan. During the time of its development, there were many exchanges of knowledge between the nations that developed MMA. Techniques were taken from the martial arts and sports of Brazil, Japan, England, America, Thailand, Holland, France, and Russia, along with smaller amounts from other nations. Early MMA was internationally popularized by the broadcast of the Ultimate Fighting Championship I in November of 1993.

History:

The first documented Mixed Martial Arts style competitions, and certainly the conceptual ancestor of todays MMA, were the Pankration events of Classical Greece. Different styles of Greek wrestling and boxing were utilized. However, unlike the early UFCs, there was little emphasis on proving which style(s) worked best. Instead, there was much more concentration on representing the city the athletes came from, and each city's native styles were considered to be equally good. Other forms of MMA have existed throughout history, such as French Brancaille.
The first Ultimate Fighting Championship was the brainchild of Art Davie and Rorian Gracie. Originally to be called War of the Worlds, it ended up featuring a sumo wrestler, a boxer, a savateur, two kickboxers, a kenpo man, a shootfighter, and a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu fighter named Royce Gracie. Gracie swept by the other contestants to win the tournament, and swept two of the next three tournaments (Gracie could not continue due to heat stroke in UFC III) By the time of UFC III, the referee was allowed to stop fights. After UFC IV, Rorian Gracie pulled out of the UFC, and after UFC 6, similar but smaller MMA events began popping up all over the country.

In the first few UFC tournaments, when the rules were limited to the core three, a large variety of stylists competed. However, few fared well. Boxers tended to dominate the striking, wrestlers (Freestyle, Greco-Roman, and to a lesser extent Judo) dominated the takedowns, and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ) dominated on the ground. As a result, people began focusing on these three.

Description:

Most Sport MMA fighters fall into one of three general categories- the groundfighter, the wrestler, or the striker.

The groundfighter is the closest to a "pure" grappler one finds in MMA nowadays. The groundfighter's strength is the ability to force a fight to the ground, where they then seek a fight-ending submission (joint locks or choke). While the ability to perform takedowns is integral to groundfighting strategy, a clean, powerful takedown is not as important to the groundfighter as it is to the wrestler.

The wrestler is a stand-up and striking on the ground oriented grappler, whose strength is usually the takedown. A common strategy of the wrestler is known as "ground and pound." This refers to the method of taking an opponent down, achieving a dominant ground position, and finishing the fight with strikes.
The striker is also commonly known as the standup fighter, due to their preference to stay on their feet and win with a knockout. The strategy of the striker is called "sprawl and brawl". This refers to their focus on nullifying takedowns (the sprawl is the highest percentage defense to one of the more common entries to a takedown in wrestling, the shoot) in order to stay upright and exchange blows.

These categories should not be taken as exclusionary of other categories - groundfighters learn at least the basics of wrestling to be able to take down people and the basics of striking to keep from getting KOed. Strikers learn enough wrestling to neutralize takedown and throw attempts and enough groundfighting to get back to their feet if they are taken down. Wrestlers learn enough groundfighting or striking to protect themselves in one of those areas and to be able to easily finish opponents with another.
On rare occasions, you will see fighters highly skilled (by MMA standards) in all three areas. These types of fighters are becoming increasingly common as the sport becomes more professional.

Training:

Training resembles boxing, wrestling, and BJJ training, but with a much smaller selection of technique (for instance, the BJJ spider guard is strongly de-emphasized in MMA, as are wrestling pins). There is also a focus on 'putting it together,' using boxing to set up a takedown, how to take someone down while maintaining position for a submission, boxing on the ground, etc.

Street MMA may add weapon drills, awareness training, and changes in strategy.