cf. already pi 10, and see generally OCD(3) s.v. pankration. Note also pi 121.
The pankration, literally "all-power" or "all-victory," united the striking of boxing and the locks, throws, take downs, and escapes of wrestling with its own particular features, kicking and falling to the ground. Pankration is, as Plutarch says, "a mixture of boxing and wrestling" (Moralia 638D), and as Philostratos says, "a concoction from imperfect wrestling and imperfect boxing" (Gymnastic 11), and then some. Strangling was allowed in pankration as it was in wrestling. Excluded specifically at Olympia were biting and gouging of eyes, mouth, and other tender spots (Philostratos, Pictures in a Gallery 2.6; Aristophanes, Birds 438-443). Among the Lacedaemonians who were always in training for war, both tactics were permitted (Pictures in a Gallery 2.6) and likely occurred at Olympia and elsewhere.
According to Bacchylides (Ode 13.44-66), the pankration was founded to commemorate Herakles's struggle against the lion of Nemea, whose hide, impenetrable by weapons, forced Herakles to strangle it to death (Apollodorus, Library 2.5.1). Others claim that Theseus invented the pankration "when he was in the labyrinth matching strength with the Minotaur, since he did not have a knife" (Scholiast on Pindar, Nemean Ode 5.89). Aristotle attributed its discovery to Leukaros of Akarnania (Scholiast on Pindar, Nemean Ode 3.27). Quintus Smyrnaeus portrays Ajax as a pankratiast in having him desire to contend "with hands and feet" (Posthomerica 4.479-480) -- but anachronistically, since Homer does not include pankration among the competitions held during Patroklos' funeral. It is a relatively late event, added to the Olympic program in the thirty-third Olympiad (648 BCE) where it was won by Lydamis of Syracuse, a big man, reputedly the size of Herakles (Pausanias 5.8.8). The Eleans did not sanction boys' pankration until the 145th Olympiad (200 BCE) (Philostratos, Gymnastic 13).