AN ANTI-CAPITALISM CRITIQUE

Mixed Martial Arts and the UFC

by Jay Gannon

On April 30, the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) was held in Toronto for the first time, as welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre defeated challenger Jake Shields in a long anticipated title match.

The UFC, as it is known, is the largest mixed martial arts (MMA) promotion in the world, and its recent rise to prominence is inescapable. Some have declared MMA to be the fastest growing sport in the world: but where did it come from?

Although its origins can be traced to the pankration competitions of ancient Greece, its modern era began in 1993, as the UFC broadcast its first tournament. It billed itself as a search for the answer to an oft-repeated question: What is the most effective style of martial arts?

It featured a kickboxer, a sumo wrestler, a boxer and others—and very few rules. Popular wisdom, fueled by fascination with martial arts movies, suggested that the fastest, strongest competitor who could knock his opponents into unconsciousness would win.

Nothing could be further from what happened.

A lanky, 170-lb Brazilian named Royce Gracie, outweighed and outmuscled by virtually every opponent, repeatedly emerged victorious above all others. Using a form of jiu-jitsu developed by his family, Gracie’s style was based on taking his opponents to the floor, followed by the efficient application of leverage in the form of a chokehold or joint lock, forcing his opponents to submit.

His father Helio described the purpose of the art: “The primary objective of jiu-jitsu is to empower the weak who, for not having the physical attributes, are often intimidated.”

The Gracie clan’s Brazilian jiu-jitsu style was so successful that the results created complete shock in the martial arts community, sparking renewed interest in the grappling arts, and infuriating those who feared that the public would begin to turn away from the traditional approach they were selling.

Self-defence

By creating a communal laboratory to test unarmed combat techniques, the UFC and its imitators ensured that self-defence effectiveness was the most important criteria in determining a martial art’s value, not tradition. Whatever worked was kept; that which didn’t was discarded.

In short, it was nothing short of a revolution in martial arts. And like many revolutions, counterrevolutionary forces emerged, as did contradictions.

In its early days, MMA was relentlessly hounded by politicians, in particular by Arizona Senator and Republican presidential candidate John McCain, who launched a campaign of moral panic against what he and others alleged to be a form of human cockfighting.

Because of the controversy, no advertiser would touch it—and yet today, Zuffa, the company behind the UFC, employs a marketing strategy involving numerous corporate sponsors, prime-time television and even a heavy dose of militarism, due to a prominent role for the US Marines.

The controversy around the sport grew until it was banned in most jurisdictions in the US and Canada. But now, legislators can be seen scrambling to attract its high profile events to their local arenas.

Its detractors claim it is nothing but barbaric bloodsport. But MMA is likely safer than its closest rival, boxing (and undoubtedly much safer than its “fake” competitor for pay-per-view dollars, pro wrestling).
In terms of serious long-term injury, MMA may actually be less risky than competition in established contact sports like hockey and gridiron football.

This is not to say that the sport is without risk. Action packed and physically demanding, MMA is full-contact fighting. It incorporates techniques from a variety of styles, including boxing, wrestling, jiu-jitsu and judo.

The ways to win include knocking the opponent out or making them submit, referee stoppage, and judge’s decision if the time limit expires. Any sport that includes the opportunity to strike the opponent’s head also includes the dangers involved with cumulative brain injury. Unlike boxing, however, fighters have multiple paths to victory: some have even been won without a single blow being thrown.

Ironically, the battle to get MMA regulated, while undoubtedly a progressive step for fighter safety in many ways, including standardized medical screening, may have increased the dangers in other ways. MMA has since inherited some traditions from boxing, a sport more familiar to most athletic commissions.

Regulation

The division of each fight into rounds, unheard of in the early days of the sport, gives fighters more opportunity to rest, ensuring that more strikes can be thrown. Giving the referee the ability to restart the contest on the feet when it turns into a stalemate has had similar results. Finally, the introduction of mandatory gloves, while creating the illusion of safety, actually allows more punches to be thrown without the risk of the broken knuckles that were so ubiquitous in the early, bare-knuckle days of the sport, further increasing the potential amount of head trauma.

But in terms of fighter safety, just like workplace safety, it isn’t just the rules on the books that matter. What also matters is the economics behind the workplace, and the ability of workers to organize for better conditions.

Large promotions like UFC, by the standards of the industry, have employed numerous safety measures, but the drive for profit in a lucrative market inevitably forces competitors to cut corners. It also forces promoters, large and small, to ensure that the pay scale for fighters is a race to the bottom.

While there are a handful of fighters who earn massive paycheques, they’re the exceptions: for every fighter like Georges St-Pierre, there are many more earning significantly less, many of whom don’t even earn enough to cover the medical costs incurred while fighting in a country with private health care.

Exploitation

Even at the top levels, there is no insurance, no retirement plan—and no union. The independent contractor status of fighters helps to ensure that competition between fighters doesn’t just stay in the cage—instead it becomes the standard relationship between the talent and thus undermines attempts at solidarity in the face of exploitation by promoters.

For those who speak up or try to get out of their contracts, like Randy “The Natural” Couture, who retired at the Rogers Centre event and once had a high-profile legal dispute with UFC management, there is little but collective silence from other fighters.

Martial arts can be found in virtually every culture on earth. They are our games, our sports, our fitness routines, our way of protecting ourselves—and our training for war. Their story is as complex as our own.

The nature of sports in general under capitalism serves many functions, many of them contradictory as well. Sports serve to entertain, inspire and provide many of us with an escape from the grind of alienating work, while often creating more drudgery for the athletes and workers most closely involved. They promote health and physical fitness while reducing vast numbers to inactive, passive spectators.

They instill a valuable sense of cooperation and camaraderie and yet frequently stoke the fires of ruthless competition and encourage a spirit of winning at any cost.

Sports are useful to the ruling class in that they provide a sense of local and national identification that is conveniently distinct from our own class interests, and yet any appreciation of the feats they involve constantly reminds us that we are merely a part of a larger humanity.

The sport of mixed martial arts is no different. Whatever one’s personal feelings about combat sport, neither an uncritical view of its business practices nor blanket condemnation of its fans and participants gets us anywhere. A wider view, taking into account all of these contradictions, contributions and limitations, shows us that it is really just one more human activity that must be liberated from the inhumanity of capitalism.

ADDENDUM:

Zuffa, the promoters of UFC and Strikeforce promotions, announced a comprehensive insurance coverage plan for its contracted fighters on May 9th, after this article was written. This does little to mitigate the treatment of the athletes throughout the sport, as only a small percentage of fighters manage to fight at the highest levels of MMA, and does nothing to change the independent contractor status of the competitors at any level of the sport.