is there a differense between those too?

for those that dont know

pankratio has an olympic game in the ancient time combo of kickboxing and wrestling with ground fight and stand fight aswell

so does it practically have a diffferense?

practically i would say yes.

In Pankration, competitors fought in the nude, and i believe there were few rules. Also with a focus on wrestling i assume that your back would be a very bad place to end up.

However, I would say that pankration is the forefather to modern MMA.

Modern pankration rules seem to look like a combination of knockdown fighting and Judo (from my extremely limited experience), with no striking on the ground.

It's also worth mentioning that pankration rules were the basis for shootfighting during it's short lived stint in the minds of American ma-ist. That meant open hand strikes to the head at full contact. Closed fist to the body and no strikes once on the ground.

And let's not forget that the similarly named Japanese MMA organization Pancrase started out as basically professional wrestling "rules" but with actual contact and no predetermination. It was one step beyond the "worked shoot". As of 2000 or so, they use a rule set closer to that of modern MMA.

pankration (at least modern) does have ground strikes (at least from the tournouament videos i saw)

and on grappling style is more like freestyle wrestling than judo i mean the stances and the holds

Pankration, in the ancient Olympic sense, could be looked at as the first form of MMA competition. Hellenic Boxing and Wrestling were games before Pankration; it was basically a hybrid of the two.

As for similarities and differences go, I'd say they would be limited more to the times they are/were done in. Probably some rules differences, to be certain. I think MMA today is more refined, just from the evolution of the style over the last 20 plus years.

I think MMA today is more refined, just from the evolution of the style over the last 20 plus years.

Pankration developed for a long time in ancient times, we've had 20 years. i'll bet they were more refined then than you imagine.

I watched some "modern pankration" in a tournament this year. Dunno whether it was just the fighters themselves but I can't say I was overly impressed as it just looked like a poorer version of what most mma schools do.

That tends you to happen. You'll have a similar impression of shootfighting if you actually manage to find a sample in the states these days. Both suffer (at least 10 years ago at least) from a lack of codified rules that MMA was finally able to establish. Usually, there is little oversight as well and quality control is a major issue.

There were so few ISFA (shootfighting's largest organization in the states during my involvement) schools operating that most tournaments would cater to outside arts, meaning anyone wanting to try their hand at it could enter.

Thus, schools that might not actually have any ground chops would be in there flopping around and bringing the level down. Granted, this started to change as more people started cross training and the levels of skill started to rise. However, by that time MMA had already figured itself out and most of that talent started gravitating towards that arena.

Both are great ideas, heck I competed in the ISFA's banner before doing some MMA, but they really never seized the small window that was open for a short time during the outset of MMA.