Mixed Martial Arts and the Quest for Legitimacy: The Sport vs. Spectacle Divide

202 Pages·2018·1.579 MB·English

by  Mark S. Williams

Mixed Martial Arts
and the Quest
for Legitimacy
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Mixed Martial Arts
and the Quest
for Legitimacy
The Sport vs. Spectacle Divide
Mark S. Williams
McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Jefferson, North Carolina
LIBRARYOFCONGRESSCATALOGUING-IN-PUBLICATIONDATA
Names: Williams, Mark S., 1981– author.
Title: Mixed martial arts and the quest for legitimacy : the sport vs.
spectacle divide / Mark S. Williams.
Description: Jefferson : McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers,
2018 | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018009176 | ISBN 9781476671291 (softcover :
acid free paper)
♾
Subjects: LCSH: Mixed martial arts—History. | Mixed martial arts—
Social aspects.
Classification: LCC GV1102.7.M59 W583 2018 | DDC 796.815—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018009176
BRITISHLIBRARYCATALOGUINGDATAAREAVAILABLE
ISBN (print) 978-1-4766-7129-1
ISBN (ebook) 978-1-4766-3055-7
© 2018 Mark S. Williams. All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying
or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publisher.
Front cover images © 2018 iStock
Printed in the United States of America
McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640
www.mcfarlandpub.com
Table of Contents
Preface 1
1. The Aspirations of MMA: Sport and Spectacle 11
2. National Pride and Prejudice 33
3. The Rise and Fall of TRT 55
4. The Spectacle of Violence 73
5. Feminization, Fighting for Recognition
and Octagon “Girls”: Spectacle and Patriarchy 93
6. The Needle and the Locker Room Bonus 114
7. “There is no other guy” 133
8. The Epitome of MMA: The Sport
and the Spectacle of Conor McGregor 149
Conclusion 182
Chapter Notes 187
Bibliography 190
Index 193
v
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Preface
When U.S. Senator John McCain labeled mixed martial arts (MMA)
as “human cockfighting” in the mid–1990s, he attached a label that has
since haunted the aspirations of MMA to achieve mainstream acceptance
as a legitimate sport. This idea of MMA as human cockfighting has per-
sisted in the imaginations of many, many people, and was even indirectly
invoked at the 2017 Academy Awards show.
The cockfighting label is a remnant from a different era in the history
of a spectacle that had branded itself alternatively as “no-holds-barred”
fighting and “ultimate fighting.” Groin shots, hair pulling, kicking the head
of a downed opponent, head butts—all these tactics were once legal. The
only two attacks that were banned from the contests of the early years
were eye gouging and biting. Calling it “human cockfighting” was semi-
rhetorical when John McCain said it two decades ago, but the character-
ization was not entirely facetious.
Today, bouts are contested between consenting adults who receive
financial compensation, potentially quite lucrative for a select handful.
Contestants are certainly not abused cocks with hot pepper jammed into
their anuses to make them feisty. Another difference pertains to the lethal-
ity of cockfighting, which is accentuated by the attachment of spurs to the
legs of cocks. MMA only allows for unarmed conflict, though the intro-
duction of hand- wraps with 4-ounce gloves was originally mandated to
protect fists, not faces and brains, and opened competition up for much
more forceful blows. Most importantly, MMA today, unlike cockfighting,
dreads the prospect of in- competition death. The UFC has not yet expe-
rienced a death in the octagon, or in the direct aftermath of a contest, but
other smaller organizations certainly have, or come very close, such as in
Bellator in 2016 at the end of a bout contested by two YouTube brawlers
well past their athletic primes. While the possibility of an in- cage fatality
1
Preface
likely kept Zuffa management awake at night during their ownership of
the UFC between 2001 and 2016, the early days of the UFC were much
different. Long before Zuffa purchased the brand and vaulted it into the
mainstream, the UFC marketed itself as a place where “anything” could
happen, not so subtly promoting the possibility of an in- cage death.
MMA is not cockfighting. It has evolved beyond its gruesome freak-
show early years into a modern and sophisticated sport, dominated by
highly trained technicians of grappling and striking. Yet there persists a
powerful resonance between cage- fighting and cockfighting in the minds
of many in society, one that serves to limit its appeal to the public and
restricts its acceptance.
Meryl Streep’s Oscar speech from early 2017 is only the most recent
public condemnation of MMA. After surveying the theatre to give a selec-
tively multinational composite portrayal of Hollywood, Streep breathlessly
warned that if America were to “kick” out the “outsiders and foreigners …
you will have nothing left to watch but football and mixed- martial arts.”
To dig the knife in a bit further, Streep admonished the choir she was
preaching to that mixed- martial arts is “not the arts.”
Meryl Streep was practicing her right to political expression as an
American, and furthermore I sympathize with her political views. America
is once again caught in a polarizing era, and I share her concerns regarding
the threat to openness and inclusivity the republic is facing. I cringe when
I hear my own Canadian politicians, such as Kellie Leitch, play the dem-
agogue in Donald Trump- inspired orations of racially based populism.
While Streep’s speech elicited rancorous applause from the million-
aire plutocrats of the film industry, half of the MMA community rolled
its collective eyes. Once again, MMA is derided on spurious grounds. If
Streep ever bothers to descend from her gated community to watch an
MMA event with the “common people,” possibly even to eat some nachos
with friends who double- dip into the salsa, and to wash down the taste of
other people’s fingers with the best of the worst of American swill, she
would likely be struck by how many “outsiders and foreigners” are to be
found on your average UFC card, which must be at least as diverse as
“#OscarsSoWhite.”
Even the promotion of fighters and cards calls attention to the sim-
ilarities that exist between MMA and the arts. I challenge Meryl Streep
to watch a Conor McGregor press conference and deny the artistry
involved.
2
Preface
Though one- half of the MMA community rolled its eyes, the other
half of the MMA community exuberantly widened its eyes to Streep’s
comments. Rather than perceiving a denunciation of their sport, Streep
had elevated MMA to the lofty status of American football! For a moment,
and wholly unintentionally, Streep made MMA fans feel as if they had
made it. Not only does Meryl Streep of all people know that MMA exists,
but she associated it with football!
MMA is not cockfighting, but there are perhaps parallels between
the two. There might even be parallels between cockfighting and Streep’s
beloved arts, if you look closely enough. The most thoughtful commentary
on the cockfight, “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight,” from the
anthropologist Clifford Geertz’s The Interpretation of Cultures, a canonical
work on ethnography, provides a startling point of departure for reflecting
on cage- fighting. It is startling because of how closely the themes explored
by Geertz are reflected in MMA today.
Based on his 1950s field notes from visiting Bali, a small island in the
Republic of Indonesia only 3.5 kilometers east of Java but strikingly dif-
ferent culturally and politically, Geertz attempted not to interpret the
salience of cockfighting to the Balinese, but to understand how the Bali-
nese themselves interpret the social significance of the cockfight. His com-
mentary on gender, inter- village conflict, status, and money evoked many
of the contemporary themes that we find in cage- fighting. MMA, like
cockfighting, is a sport of masculine virtues, of nationalistic antagonisms,
a narrative on evil and the nature of man, and of course, cockfighting and
MMA are both intimately connected to gambling. MMA exists in a state
of tension between spectacle and sport, and like the cockfight, it is violence
as entertainment, but it represents a violence that is not only entertaining,
but for many in society, like John McCain and Meryl Streep, quite horri-
fying.
Geertz was both captivated and horrified by the barbarism of the
cockfight, on what makes it so, in his words, “disquietful.”1
The reason it is disquietful is not that it has material effects (it has some, but they
are minor); the reason that it is disquietful is that, joining pride to selfhood, self-
hood to cocks, and cocks to destruction, it brings to imaginative realization a
dimension of Balinese experience well- obscured from view. The transfer of a sense
of gravity into what is in itself a rather blank and unvarious spectacle, a commotion
of beating wings and throbbing legs, is effected by interpreting it as expressive of
something unsettling in the way its authors and audience live, or, even more omi-
nously, what they are.
3