Abstract
Globally, mixed martial arts has seen a staggering level of growth in participation and fandom over the past 20 years. This paper presents the results from an immersive participant ethnography of an urban mixed martial arts gym in England’s North West and the experience of some of its members. Emergent is that the practices of mixed martial arts can be viewed as acts of resistance against neoliberal norms and expectations that permeate the diverse yet everyday lives of participants outside the gym’s walls. This paper applies the sociological imagination of and through the body and draws from the Foucauldian notion of biopower to discuss how, in the search for athletic solidarity, an authentic community is built and maintained around this transgressive pursuit. It is evident that a diverse range of individuals are making and remaking a space in which neoliberal norms, labels and expectations are rejected in favour of a renewed connection with the body and each other.
Highlights
Over the last decade and beyond the growth of mixed martial arts (MMA) has been stark, in both mainstream sporting culture, through the success of the talismanic promotional organisation The Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), and in terms of participation
A lifetime in mainly football and rugby subcultures, along with exposure to only mainstream MMA media discourses meant that I was used to relying on teammates and had a warped impression of the individuals I would find on the mats
What emerged was a sense of realness, an ‘authentic community’ built and maintained through a freedom in the expression of and through the body
Summary
Over the last decade and beyond the growth of mixed martial arts (MMA) has been stark, in both mainstream sporting culture, through the success of the talismanic promotional organisation The Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), and in terms of participation. In the USA, participation in MMA grew by around 42% between 2011 and 2019 (Statista, 2020) while in Brazil the popularity of MMA has grown to the nation’s second most popular sport below football (Downie, 2012). In 2009 there were around 10 MMA gyms in the UK, while today there are closer to 325 (tapology.com, 2020). Despite this surge in popularity, the advent and growth of the sport has been controversial. From a distance, on the ‘intrinsic immorality of MMA’ (Dixon, 2015: 367), and the desensitising of, and adherence to, violent behaviour among its youth participants (Mutz, 2012; Sofia and Cruz, 2017)
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