Fight Clubbed
Fight Club , a movie about a fictional
organization of men who strip down and beat each other to pulp, has provoked
more than its share of media hand-wringing, particularly diatribes about
Hollywood's infatuation with violence and Faludi-esque ruminations about the
emasculated American male. Fight Club , however, has not sparked an
iota of interest in a real organization of men who strip down and beat each
other to pulp: the Ultimate Fighting Championship. UFC's flameout from national
sensation to total irrelevance is a tragedy of American sports, a cautionary
tale of prudishness, heavy-handed politics, and cultural myopia.
UFC began in 1993 as a
locker-room fantasy. What would happen if a kickboxer fought a wrestler? A
karate champion fought a sumo champion? Promoters built an octagonal chain-link
cage, invited eight top martial artists, and set them loose in no-holds-barred,
bare-knuckles fights. "There are no rules!" bragged an early press release.
Contestants would fight till "knockout, submission, doctor's intervention, or
death." UFC allowed, even promoted, all notions of bad sportsmanship: kicking a
man when he's down, hitting him in the groin, choking. Four-hundred-pound men
were sent into the Octagon to maul guys half their size. Only biting and
eye-gouging were forbidden.
The gimmick entranced thousands of people (well, men). What
happens when a 620-pound sumo champion fights a 200-pound kickboxer? Answer:
The kickboxer knocks him silly in 35 seconds. They tuned in for bloodshed--"the
damage," as fans like to call it. UFC fights could be horrifying. Tank Abbott,
an ill-tempered, 270-pound street fighter, knocks out hapless opponent John
Matua in 15 seconds. Then, before the ref can intervene, Abbott belts the
unconscious Matua in the head, sending him into a fit, limbs quivering
uncontrollably, blood spurting from his mouth. Abbott, naturally, became a cult
hero and won a guest spot on Friends . (Matua walked out of the ring.)
Soon, UFC was selling out huge arenas and drawing 300,000 pay-per-view
subscribers for its quarterly competitions.
But a subtle sport was
emerging from the gimmicks and carnage. My passion for ultimate fighting (which
is also called "extreme" or "no-holds-barred" fighting) began when I saw the
finals of UFC IV. Royce Gracie, a 180-pound Brazilian jujitsu specialist, was
matched against a 275-pound beast named Dan Severn, one of the top heavyweight
wrestlers in the world and a national champion many times over. In 30 seconds,
Severn had grabbed Gracie, flung him to the canvas, and mounted him. For the
next 15 minutes, Severn pummeled and elbowed and head-butted the smaller man.
Gracie's face grew drawn, and he squirmed wildly to avoid Severn's bombardment.
Then, all of sudden, Gracie, still lying on his back, saw an opening, wrapped
his arms and legs around Severn like a python and choked the giant into
submission.
UFC's caged matches revolutionized the idea of fighting.
Nursed on boxing and Hollywood, Americans imagine fights as choreography, a
dance of elegant combinations, roundhouse kicks, clean knockouts. The UFC
punctured this. Boxers floundered. Experts in striking martial arts such as
karate and tae kwon do, who fancied themselves the world's greatest fighters,
found themselves pretzeled by jujitsu masters, who pulled them to the ground
and slowly choked or leg-locked them. "UFC immediately debunked a lot of myths
of fighting, of boxing, karate, kung fu. It showed the reality of what works in
an actual fight," says Dave Meltzer, editor of Wrestling Observer .
Instead of being
carnivals of gore, UFC fights looked strangely like ... sex. Almost all fights
ended on the ground, one man mounting the other in missionary position, the
pair of them wiggling mysteriously along the canvas for five, 10, even 30
minutes. There were few spectacular knockouts. The referee--yes, there was
always a referee--stopped many bouts, and in most others, fighters
"tapped out," surrendering to mild-looking but agonizing chokes and joint
locks. It was not barbarism. It was science.
The UFC spawned a new breed of "mixed martial artists."
World-class wrestlers learned to kickbox. Champion kickboxers learned to
grapple. (The karate experts learned to stay home.) They became, without doubt,
the best fighters in the world. (Click for more about the fighters.) Mike Tyson
wouldn't last 30 seconds in an ultimate fighting match. When Olympic gold medal
wrestler Kevin Jackson came to the UFC, a fighter named Frank Shamrock KO'd him
with a submission hold in 16 seconds. Ultimate fighting schools began sprouting
up all over the country, replacing the stylized gestures of the Eastern martial
arts with techniques that actually work.
UFC's promoters predicted
that it would supplant boxing as America's martial art. Instead, it fell apart.
The collapse began in 1996, when Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., saw a UFC tape.
McCain, a lifelong boxing fan, was horrified at the ground fighting, kicks, and
head butts. It was "barbaric," he said. It was "not a sport." He sent letters
to all 50 governors asking them to ban ultimate fighting. The outcry against
"human cockfighting" became a crusade, and like many crusades, it was founded
on misunderstanding.
UFC fell victim to cultural determinism about what a fight
is. In countries such as Brazil and Japan, where no-holds-barred fighting has a
long history, it is popular and uncontroversial. But Americans adhere to the
Marquis of Queensbury rules. A fight consists of an exchange of upper-body
blows that halts when one fighter falls.
Any blood sport can be barbaric, whether it's
boxing or wrestling or ultimate fighting. It is impossible to draw a bright
line between ultimate fighting and boxing. If anything, ultimate fighting is
safer and less cruel than America's blood sport. For example, critics pilloried
ultimate fighting because competitors fought with bare knuckles: To a nation
accustomed to boxing gloves, this seemed revolting, an invitation to brain
damage. But it's just the reverse: The purpose of boxing gloves is not to
cushion the head but to shield the knuckles. Without gloves, a boxer would
break his hands after a couple of punches to the skull. That's why ultimate
fighters won't throw multiple skull punches. As a result, they avoid the
concussive head wounds that kill boxers--and the long-term neurological damage
that cripples them.
Similarly, the
chain-link fence surrounding the octagon looks grotesque. Critics have demanded
that UFC install ropes instead. But ropes are a major cause of death and injury
in boxing: Fighters hyperextend their necks when they are punched against the
ropes, because nothing stops their heads from snapping back. The chain-link
fence prevents hyperextension.
When I tell people I'm an ultimate fighting fan, they
invariably respond: "Don't people get killed all the time doing that?" But no
one has ever been killed at the UFC--though boxers are killed every year. No
one has even been seriously injured at the UFC. On the rare occasions when a
bout has ended with a bloody knockout, the loser has always walked out of the
ring.
But this does not impress
boxing fans, who are the most vigorous opponents of extreme fighting. McCain
sat ringside at a boxing match where a fighter was killed. When I asked him to
explain the moral distinction between boxing and ultimate fighting, he exploded
at me, "If you can't see the moral distinction, then we have nothing to talk
about!" Then he cut our interview short and stormed out of his office.
But logic has not served the UFC well. Where McCain led, a
prudish nation followed. George Will opined against UFC. The American Medical
Association recommended a ban. New York state outlawed ultimate fighting, as
did other states. The Nevada Athletic Commission refused to sanction UFC bouts,
barring the UFC from the lucrative casino market. (One public TV station
refused a UFC sponsorship ad. The only other organization the station ever
rejected was the Ku Klux Klan.) Lawsuits blocked or delayed UFC events all over
the country, forcing the promoters to spend millions in legal fees. The UFC was
exiled from mega-arenas to ever-smaller venues in ever more out-of-the-way
states: Louisiana, Iowa, and Alabama. The match I attended in October 1997 was
held in the parking lot of a small Mississippi casino.
The cable TV industry struck the fatal blow. In
early 1997, McCain became chairman of the commerce committee, which oversees
the cable industry. In April 1997, the president of the National Cable
Television Association warned that UFC broadcasts could jeopardize the cable
industry's influence in Washington. Time Warner, TCI, Request, Cablevision
Systems, Viewer's Choice, and other major operators stopped airing UFC events,
saying they were too violent for children. Never mind that 1) UFC only aired on
pay-per-view, so children could not see it unless their parents paid for it;
and 2) the same cable outfits carried boxing matches, R and NC-17 movies, and
professional wrestling shows far more violent than UFC. The UFC's "addressable
audience"--the potential number of PPV subscribers--shrank from 35 million at
its peak to 7.5 million today.
"It was a very cheap way
for the cable companies to portray themselves as anti-violence. It did not cost
them much and it made them look good in Washington," says Carol Klenfner,
spokeswoman for UFC's parent company, SEG.
The ultimate fighting industry did little to help its own
cause. The UFC promoted itself less as a serious sport than as a circus of
carnage. Its early ads emphasized extreme fighting's potential for death. UFC
folks accused McCain, without any evidence, of opposing the sport as a favor to
campaign contributors. Extreme fighting was tarnished when fighters from the
other ultimate fighting operation, the now-defunct Battlecade, were arrested
for violating Canadian prizefighting laws when they fought on an Indian
reservation outside Montreal.
In the past two years, an
increasingly desperate UFC has been trying to assuage its critics. The
competition, which had been gradually adding safety rules since the first
fight, imposed even more. It institued rounds and a "10-point must" scoring
system. It banned head butts and groin strikes. You can no longer kick a downed
man or elbow someone in the back of the head. Fighters are required to wear
thin martial arts gloves (a purely cosmetic change). The UFC imposed weight
classes, ending the David-and-Goliath mismatches that made early fights so
compelling.
None of this soothed the cable operators, who have kept UFC
off the air. The pay-per-view audience has plunged from 300,000 per show to
15,000. UFC can no longer afford its best fighters: Some are fighting overseas.
Others, notably Ken Shamrock (Frank's brother), have become pro wrestlers.
Fights have deteriorated. UFC is limping along, but it has been reduced to
scheduling events in Japan and Brazil.
"Sports fans want to grow with the sport," says
former UFC fighter David Beneteau. "They want to recognize the athletes. They
want to see the same fighters come back. When you compare UFC now to what it
was, the fighters are not the same, the rules are not the same. The fans have
no story to follow."
Even as it disappears from public view, ultimate
fighting is returning to its roots. Away from the scrutiny of the major media,
state legislators, and McCain, kids are still learning mixed martial-arts
techniques, and small-time promoters are quietly staging events. You can see
Kage Kombat competitions at Dancing Waters nightclub in San Pedro, Calif. You
can watch the Warrior's Challenge at a small Indian casino outside Sacramento.
Texans compete in Houston's Dungal All Styles Fighting Championship. Tribal
casinos in Northern Idaho are hosting small Pankration tournaments. The Extreme
Fighting Challenge is popular in Iowa. The money is low; the crowds are small;
and there's not a TV camera in sight. Ultimate fighting should have become
boxing. Instead it has gone underground. It has become Fight Club.
