New American Gladiators: The Rise of Mixed Martial Arts

I always found it wierd how after many of the fights the two competitors hug afterward.  There tends to be so much bad blood and ill will in boxing that to see a genuine display of respect for you opponen in defeat is rare. I just dont understand how you can let someone beat you bloody or choke you until you summit, then still be mature enough to hug and congratulate them.  Interesting stuff.

Comment by Pete — November 29, 2007 @ 11:31 am

“I just dont understand how you can let someone beat you bloody or choke you until you summit, then still be mature enough to hug and congratulate them.  Interesting stuff.”

Simple--it’s the essence of competition. Two competitors want to be the best at what they love.  In order to do so, you need another to push you. After Jens Pulver was choked out by BJ Penn this past summer, Jens THANKED BJ after for pushing him to be the best that he could be. For pushing Jens to train harder than ever and get his life back in order. That’s how it works. All other sports are full of metaphor and transference: nobody ever really “beats” anyone in other sports. They defeat them. Nobody ever “destroys” anyone in other sports. They can in MMA. All the hostility (and if you’ve ever competed at a high level, you know it does)that builds up in other kinds of competition can only be transferred to a score, or a time or something. However, MMA is the closest we can get to pure competition. No metaphor, no transference. That’s why I love it. And if you think it’s not as technical or strategic as “the sweet science” then you need to study more. Transitioning from an americana to an arm bar successfully is just as sweet as any punch combo in boxing, or even getting to an opponent’s back in order to choke ‘em out. Seems easy to us, but so does anything that we only see performed by experts.

Comment by sonzai — November 29, 2007 @ 12:47 pm

Actually, the most popular non-chariot/horse-racing event at the ancient Greek olympics was the “Pankration”, which was basically no-holds-barred fighting to submission/knockout.  The only rules were no shots to the groin and no eye-gouging.  Pankration was *way* more popular than boxing or wrestling, so it doesn’t surprise me that the sport is taking off in modern times.  They actually tried to introduce MMA to the modern olympics as an exhibition sport under the name “Pankration” a few years back.

While I don’t compete in MMA, I’ve trained and sparred with some people who do.  Honestly, after you’ve done MMA-style fighting, going back to something as limited and rules-bound as boxing, even kickboxing, feels awkward.  When it comes to “fighting"*, MMA is pretty much the ultimate.

*Note that I say “fighting”, I mean that in the sporting sense.  When it comes to actually trying to maim and kill people, military-style martial arts are a whole ‘nother world.

Comment by Emil from chicago — November 29, 2007 @ 2:51 pm

Of course, the knockers’ main argument against Emil would be that shouldn’t we have moved on/become more civilized than those slave-owning, warring Greeks? The fact is, no we haven’t and nor do I think can we. The West especially likes to think we are all so much “above” fighting sports, but the current culture certainly tells a far different story. There is as much violence on every down in the NFL that any MMA match. When the trash talk gets out of hand in the NBA, punches are thrown. Tiger Woods sure seems like he wants to do more than just win a golf game! Maybe that’s what makes him the best? His competitive drive is not in the least bit tempered…

Comment by sonzai — November 29, 2007 @ 3:06 pm

Sensational garbage like this is hilarious. “Half-naked men?” would you like to see them fight in jean-jackets and khakis, chief? They’re dressed appropriately for what they’re doing. “mask of blood” hahaha dude, the guy his bleeding, you compare it to a less classy boxing but there is way more cutting in boxing matches than there is in MMA fights.

Another helpful piece of information for you: MMA can’t have big gloves like boxing because it would interfere with grappling, not because it makes the violence more sensational, sorry. I hate to break it to you but this is a sport and there are practical reasons to explain most of the stuff you’re confused about.

Saying MMA isn’t as strategic as boxing is a laugh, too. Have you ever seen a Brazilian jiu jitsu tournament or a no-gi grappling tournament? That takes some serious nuance, as much as the “sweet science” (which can be reduce to two guys punching each other and the guy who hits the other one more wins as easily as you reduce MMA strategy to “ground and pound").

Is it just not possible for a casual observer to write an ignorant column about mixed martial arts?

Comment by trevor — November 29, 2007 @ 4:19 pm

This article has a number of problems. I will attempt to address some of them below:

Safety of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) Relative to Boxing
As Peterson notes, the rounds in the UFC are 5-minute rounds, as opposed to boxing’s 3-minute rounds. However, there are only 3 rounds per bout, or at most 5 for a championship bout, while boxing has 10, 12, or as many as 15 rounds. The longest UFC match that goes the distance is shorter than the shortest boxing match that goes the distance.

Although it may seem paradoxical, the small, fingerless gloves used in MMA are actually safer to the “punchee” than boxing gloves. Boxing gloves primarily protect the puncher’s hands, and each boxing glove adds weight to a boxer’s hand, thus imparting greater impact to a punch while allowing continued striking without breaking the fingers.

Boxing gloves do make cuts less likely, but the amount of blood from a cut in fighting of any kind is typically no more than 5 cc, which appears dramatic, but is about the amount drawn for a typical blood test, and is harmless.

Skill of MMA Relative to Boxing
As other respondents to the article note, UFC competitors are highly skilled, equally or arguably more skilled than boxers. Many of them are former NCAA and Olympic wrestlers (who have no other avenue to continue competition after the very brief window of college and/or Olympic competition closes); many others are championship-level martial artists in disciplines such as karate, judo, jiu jitsu, and others. Some of them are also professional-quality boxers.

The combat in MMA is highly “technical” (as the fighters often say), meaning there is a large and diverse reservoir of technique to rely on, and part of the interest of the fights tends to center on how fighters with either similar or different styles will maximize their particular forte (grappling, striking, holds, throws, etc). In addition, MMA fighters typically train in multiple disciplines, and have often reached the highest levels of more than one.

The Popularity of MMA
The popularity of MMA is of course indisputably tied to the eternal fascination with violent competition (and one could argue, with violent, skilled competition). However, MMA has a number of obvious advantages over boxing that are not connected to its apparently (but fictitiously) greater brutality: MMA is perceived as less corrupt than boxing, and there is no perception (as yet) that the fights are fixed; MMA less monolithic, less one-dimensional than boxing, due to the variety of disciplines involved; MMA is a good fit for a society increasingly obsessed with cross-training and multi-disciplinary skills of all kinds; and MMA takes advantage of the long-standing public fascination with martial arts of various kinds.

In addition, MMA involves a great variety of characters and personalities. MMA certainly attract extreme personalities, but also a range of interesting and very different characters, ranging from overtly macho to humbly disciplined and almost monastic. One well-known fighter, Jeff Monson, is a self-professed anarchist with anarchist symbols tattooed in various places, and is a member of the International Workers of the World. Another, Rich Franklin, is a former high-school mathematics teacher with a Masters Degree in Education.

MMA participants are often remarkably humble and intelligent, and able to articulately provide post-mortem analysis of their own performance. They are more likely to note that “my strategy of consistent shoots worked well, but my opponent countered by controlling the ground game from the bottom” than to shout (with due respect to Ali), “I shocked the world!” In fact, the sport seems to attract a number of “thinking athletes,” as do other martial arts.

The grace of the competitors in hugging after the competition, as in boxing, football, or other sports, is an illustration that there is respect between competitors, and that the competition is understood a formalized ritual, in MMA as in other sports, following a codified set of rules.  In MMA, even more than in other sports, the respect for the opponent seems engrained, perhaps because many competitors come from a background in martial arts that strongly emphasizes humility and respect for opponent, teacher, and the art itself. It is common to see MMA fighters follow the typical “dojo” practice of bowing when entering the ring.

While MMA may appear, superficially, to be a retrogression to a more violent, primitive form of combat, it is both safer and more subtle, varied, and complex than boxing. MMA does appeal on a visceral level, as does boxing, and the more common spectacle of visible blood in MMA certainly plays a role, but MMA has components of skill and even art that reward the knowledgeable viewer. MMA may not have its Norman Mailers and George Plimptons, yet, but it is no less worthy of them than boxing.

I will leave aside the questions of whether MMA is somehow representative of imperialism or America’s “Let’s Roll” attitude. These might be better taken up in some fuller analysis, and in any case Peterson’s article does nothing to demonstrate the linkage.

In closing, I offer these quotes from Barthes’ Mythologies, with the observation that both aspects described are encompassed by mixed martial arts:

“Boxing is a Jansenist sport, based on a demonstration of excellence … A boxing-match is a story which is constructed before the eyes of the spectator.”

“In judo, a man who is down is hardly down at all, he rolls over, he draws back, he eludes defeat, or, if the latter is obvious, he immediately disappears.”

Comment by gabos from san francisco — November 29, 2007 @ 5:26 pm

I think the author fails to understand that part of MMAs appeal is due to its sincerity and the attention span of its viewer. Combat sports are the only sports where the final outcome isnt always dictated by time. A fight can last for 10 seconds or 25 minutes. This unpredictability is appealing. What seperates MMA from other combat sports is that you can watch 4 or 5 fights in one night as opposed to 2 or 3. Also the competition in MMA is sincere. We compete to see who is the strongest, the smartest, the fastest. MMA allows us to find out who is the best fighter. Boxing is a limited agreement. IF you lose in the ring, you could always argue that you could beat your opponent outside the ring. I dont think the same can be said for MMA.

Comment by Admiral A — November 30, 2007 @ 11:31 am

I cannot express to this author how wrong he is. To take the side of Boxing (another sport I love) is to take the side of the most brutal sanctioned sport in America.
Boxing deaths in the pros can average over 2 per year. Often the displays, to anyone who actually understands combat, are far more brutal.
The super padded (12 oz for 145-160 pounders)gloves actually can hurt the opponent far worse than the (4-5 oz for 205 pounders.)
Why is this true? A person wearing 12 oz gloves in a standup only contest can continually fire away without causing clean punishment.
Why is this important? Knuckles and knockouts don’t hurt someone nearly as much as the padded shock of hundreds of shots. Force is more dangerous than knuckle.
These men are professionals in a professional sport. You can’t blame a sport for it’s viewers.
The person who wrote this article should never write another article. He states the brutal appearence of the sport while he is very uninformed.
Here’s an idea to you sir, actually research something you write about, I know it sucks to actually have to READ statistics among other things from a LEGIT SOURCE other than your head and first take.
How about actually sparring with someone in 12ozers and then sparring with someone in 5ozers? How about discovering the depth of Brazilian JiuJitzu tactics and Wrestling. How about learning to spell Muay Thai and researching it before adding it into what was supposed to be an informative and intelligent article. You’ve surely missed the mark in this.
If you want to post a gripe than don’t bash things without proper investigation. Next time you want to write about the downfall of America don’t just put down a sport you’ve never probably(because sir, I dan’t know that for sure and I won’t pentend to) paricipated in. Don’t put down the education system (which is one of the finest in the world) or videogames in general (because the vast majority of those who do have never played a videogame in the past decade.
How about looking to actuall problems like the Teen pregnancy rate or AIDS or if discussing the donfall of America why not discuss the child pornography rings and pedophiles. Why not spend your time making an impact. A sport where people bleed on eachother is less dangerous than the ignorance that would produce an article this far oppiniated and inaccurate.

Comment by Sean from Fort Wayne IN — December 2, 2007 @ 1:57 pm

and by the way sir, I forgot to mention this, over the almost 15 years of the spor therehas been only one death, and it happened just within the last month or so. The death was caused by a preexisting condition. He had a bloodclot. 15 years and one death (by a preexisting condition) in all of sanctioned MMA.

Comment by Sean from fort wayne indiana — December 2, 2007 @ 2:02 pm