Abstract
Based upon five years of observant participation, I examine how participants justify their engagement with the controversial but increasing popular practice of mixed martial arts. Several themes emerge: necessity (“it is a violent world”), sociobiological discourse, emulating the exotic, spiritual teachings, alienation from consumer society, and the body as a project. These themes suggest that this pain-filled-practice is more than simply a site of exercise or sport, and in fact reveals complicated, gendered narratives about the broader social lives and struggles of the men who participate in the practice. I argue that the ambiguously defined field and the feeling of being out-of-place encourage identity exploration. This becomes an important part of the allure as the participants craft stories that provide meaning for the physical training. I conclude with reflections on how meaning is constructed in embodied cultural forms and on the value of these often-ignored forms for making sense of social life.
In less than two decades, mixed martial arts (MMA) has grown from a violent niche competition perceived to have little to no regulation to a global sport televised on major networks. Athletes have gone from working second jobs to support their “profession” to gracing the cover of ESPN Magazine and receiving sponsorship from Nike and Gatorade. While it was once difficult to find a place to learn, much less compete in MMA, training schools are now located in most American metropolitan areas. The sport’s growth, however, has not come without controversy. Popular media has demonized MMA as dangerous “play” for the maladjusted, and state hearings on sanctioned professional events have seen it described as barely a step above “legalized assault and battery” and containing “extreme violence and brutality” (O’Kasick 2007; McNeill 2013).
Yet, within the generally suburban locales in which the training schools are located, this is not the whole story—nor, I will argue, the primary story. Rather, from the moment I entered an MMA gym as both researcher and participant, I found reflective men from an array of social backgrounds weaving together complex, often masculine, and sometimes contradictory narratives. In making sense of their position, the participants orient the narratives both outward to explain society and inward to connect with their shared experience in the MMA gym. 1 In each case, the corporeal serves as evidence for the validity of their claims. Here I draw on more than five years of ethnographic fieldwork, training alongside men who devote their time to learning MMA, whether for hobby, local and regional competitions, or dreams of “making it big,” to further understanding of a site where a painful brand of carnal knowledge is exchanged daily. I provide insight into the symbiotic relationship between the sensory experience of training and narrative exploration by taking seriously the stories told on the mats and the manner that physical practice can allow meaning-making. This fieldwork has not only reshaped my own understanding of MMA but also forced a reconsideration of the relationship between discourse, physical practice, and masculinity.
Whether in times of collapse or rapid growth, little attention has been given to the local practitioners of MMA. Critics and proponents alike have instead focused on questions of morality at the national level and economics at the regional level (e.g., Shapiro 2008). Stories have often taken the form of either celebrations of top competitors or moral outrage that conflate all forms of “no holds barred fighting,” discussing brutal fights staged between recently released convicts and unregulated high school fight clubs (Urie 2008) in the same context as the Ultimate Fighting Championship (the most successful MMA promotion). However, for every Pay-Per-View event or backyard fight club, large numbers of affluent men fill MMA gyms to exchange blows and risk injury after work and during lunch breaks. This indicates that MMA is not simply a means to an economic end, nor can it be adequately understood as the actions of out-of-control youth and the maladjusted.
MMA has attracted recent academic interest. The majority of which, as Spencer (2014) critiques, has occurred from a predominantly Archimedian perspective, giving little attention to the lived experience of the MMA fighters (e.g., Hirose and Pih 2010; Van Bottenburg and Heilbron 2006; Buse 2006). Notable exceptions to this trend include Downey (2007) who explores the transmission of bodily knowledge and Spencer training alongside fighters to understand the “body callusing” undergone to produce the proper habitus (2009) and masterfully reveal the rhythmic and sensory experiences of the gym (2014). Abramson and Modzelewski (2011) and Green (2011) stand out in their efforts to understand the allure of the sport for the rest of the people who fill the gym, in particular white, middle-class practitioners. While Abramson and Modzelewski (2011) conclude that the underlying morality of the MMA subculture appeals by allowing middle-class participants to realize many of the ideals celebrated in the United States, including meritocratic success and “voluntary communities,” Green (2011) focuses on how the exchange of pain both makes the practice seem “real” and provides the basis for intimacy and community.
Others have oriented their research on the gendered qualities of MMA. The aforementioned Hirose and Pih (2010) argue that MMA is a site of hegemonic masculinity, where a standup, brawling style is seen as the way “real” men fight while the loser suffers the risk of emasculation. 2 And Vaccaro, Schrock, and McCabe (2011) reveal the “backstage” emotion work necessary to maintain a confidant exterior and cope with the fear of entering a cage fight. Most recently, Weaving (2014) has explored the fine line that women must tread through in an examination of the UFC’s marketing of Ronda Rousey, the most popular female fighter, and Mierzwinski, Velija, and Malcolm (2014) use interviews to understand women’s experience in the MMA gym. Both offer important steps toward answering the call for greater engagement with the experience of women in MMA (Paradis 2014).
The focus on serious competitors and fans ignores the hobbyist, who falls somewhere between the two—a trend that follows the professional focus of previous research on combat sports (e.g., Sugden 1987; Wacquant 2004). It is the hobbyist, however, who provides revenue to the gym, serves as training partner for those who dream of reaching higher levels, and shapes the meaning of the practice. And it is the hobbyist that exemplifies Clifford Geertz’s “deep play” (1972)—investing time, energy, pain, sweat, and blood with little hope of utilitarian reward. Studying both the hobbyist and the fighter demands an appreciation of the loosely defined nature of the site, the resulting meaning making through narration that occurs, and how both are key elements of the allure.
In this piece of my ethnographic foray into the MMA gym, I focus on the narratives that emerge as participants of different social backgrounds, motivations, and expertise, use their time on the mat to reflect on participation in the controversial sport. I present six themes: (1) “it is a violent world”; (2) masculine urges; (3) emulating the exotic; (4) an embodied spirituality; (5) redefining success; and (6) the body as a project. All themes were present in every site with active engagement from participants on a regular basis. It is important to note that none exist as static, mutually exclusive entities; the narratives are always bleeding together, sometimes fitting and other times antagonizing. I offer insight into the process through which the men actively engage with larger cultural discourses—combining elements of evolutionary biology, spirituality, exoticism, popular culture, and pop-philosophy—to explain the world at large through validation of their participation. I explore how the relative youth of the practice and not-yet-defined field facilitates stories that never quite work together maintain an element of disjunction that encourages continued reflexivity. I argue that this ambiguity and not-quite-right feel, or moment of hysteresis (Bourdieu 1977, 1990), becomes part of the attraction.
Theoretical Orientation: Physical Practice, Reflexivity, and Storytelling
To understand the construction of meaning that occurs in the MMA gym, it is necessary to take seriously both the physical practice and the narration, areas that are too often treated as separate spheres.
Pierre Bourdieu’s (1977) concept of habitus has provided the framework and inspiration for countless examinations of practice and sport. Situated between the objectivism of structural analysis and the subjectivism of the phenomenological approach, Bourdieu’s concepts of field and habitus connect the specific logic and power structures of the larger social context to the body and its practices. In the most basic sense, habitus refers to our way of being in the world. This includes our ways of thinking, acting, and moving, as well as our ability to act within various social fields (Bourdieu 1984). Our habitus guides us toward certain fields through our tastes and skills, and we, in turn, reify the rules of the field as we participate in the accumulation of recognized knowledge and skills, or cultural capital. Through this lens, sport appears as yet another site for the reproduction of social position. For Bourdieu himself, sport operates as a class-establishing practice, with the more physical, rough bodily practices—wrestling and boxing for instance—regarded as “lower class,” while the more time intensive, formal practices—golf and tennis for example—are the pastimes of the affluent (Bourdieu 1984).
The role of sport in reproducing gender norms has also been widely studied. Sport is said to be a bastion for traditional masculinity: a site where the “vestigial” elements of masculinity that lack a place off the field (Wenner and Jackson 2009) and fit poorly within a rule-bound, “civilizing” society (Elias and Dunning 1986) are celebrated and instilled through repeated affirmation. In this sense, sport has served as a site for men to pass on knowledge of what it means to “be men” (see Burstyn 1999; Connell 2000; Messner 1992) and to form a gendered habitus (Paradis 2014). Importantly, even with celebration of sport as an inclusive space (Green and Hartmann 2013), sport participation in the United States remains classed, gendered, and raced (Sabo and Veliz 2008; Carrington 2010). This is particularly true of alternative sport (Thorpe 2011) and violent sport (Heiskanen 2012). It is worth nothing that this equation of violence with a lower-class brand of masculinity, with fighting providing a path to establish a “masculine reputation,” fits the trend of the larger discipline (Jackson-Jacobs 2013).
Considering this context, the largely middle-class group of men who have come together to exchange violent, pain-filled techniques seem out of place—something that my participants themselves made clear. This draws attention to the potential for reflexivity, for, if one’s habitus guides taste at a pre-reflexive level, people should not seek to act in unexpected manners (Alexander 2003; Sewell 1999). If there are moments of reflexivity, they occur “in situations of crisis which disrupt the immediate adjustment of habitus to field” (Bourdieu 1990, 108). In other words, when things simply do not seem right, the hesitation necessary for creative action occurs (McNay 1999). I extend this concept through exploring the possibility of the MMA gym facilitating an extended out-of-place reflexivity.
The abundance of storytelling is also unexpected, especially considering previous ethnographies of combat-sport gyms, wherein lengthy dialogues about life are rare (Wacquant 2004; Paradis 2010). In contrast, the larger sociological discipline, such storytelling has been recognized as a powerful tool that imbues events with greater meaning. As Alexander (1993, 156), explains, “People, groups, and nations understand their progress through time in terms of stories, plots which have beginnings, middles, and ends, heroes and anti-heroes, epiphanies and denouements, dramatic, comic, and tragic forms.” Stories, then, simultaneously increase coherency and staying power (Ewick and Silbey 2003) and allow people to grapple with complexity and ambiguity (Polletta et al. 2011).
Unfortunately, analysis of narrative often remains at the level of the tales told, while how stories shape experience is ignored. This effectively reduces culture to a collection of textual messages (Schudson 1989). Somers (1994) argues that this is a result of social scientists’ hesitation to move from the epistemological to the ontological, which she considers a necessary step to understanding the manner in which “people construct identities . . . by locating themselves or being located within a repertoire of emplotted stories” such “that ‘experience’ is constituted through narratives” (614).
The separation between the narrative and carnal, or epistemological and ontological, has been enforced on both sides of the divide. Wacquant’s study of boxing in inner-city Chicago, Body & Soul, serves as example: by emphatically underscoring the fact that the social agent is a being of flesh, nerves, and senses, he is able to explore habitus even as it “operates beneath the level of consciousness and discourse” (2004, 5). In doing so, boxing is presented as seemingly void of discourse. By examining storytelling in the context of the MMA gym, I highlight the mutually constitutive elements of narratives and physical practice. Or, in other words, I illustrate what makes stories stick (Loseke 2007) through exploring how the epistemological explanation is built through the ontological experience.
I also find methodological inspiration in both bodies of literature. In turning to my body as a tool for research, I follow Bourdieu, who contends that “we learn through the body” ([1997] 2000, 141), Wacquant, who employs Bourdieu’s habitus as both object of inquiry and methodological approach (2011), and an increasing number of researchers of combat-related sport, including Downey (2007), Bar-On Cohen (2009), Spencer (2009), Green (2011), and Channon (2012), and contributers to Sánchez García and Spencer’s edited volume (2013). However, I also employ the carnal approach to understand the stories told in the site. In doing so, I focus on “natural” as opposed to “artificial” data and emphasize the interactional production of stories (Wilson and Stapleton 2010) and the messy process through which (masculine) discourse coalesces and takes root in the experiential.
Methods: Sparring, Resting, Talking
During the summer of 2007, I entered a small gym in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area. From the first day, I found a group of participants who were welcoming to anyone willing to engage in the practice. The men were surprisingly reflexive and eager to discuss the value of MMA on a physical, spiritual, and emotional level. My interest in the stories told in this space was immediately piqued.
Minnesota provided an ideal setting; it is one of the epicenters of MMA in the United States—more than twenty schools operate within a forty-five-minute drive, many with members competing in cage fights. Most are located in suburban strip malls or warehouses on the outer edge of urban sprawl. These locations, as well as the monthly fees to join (between $99 and $200 a month), limit participation to the affluent or devoted, with white participants making up over 90 percent of gym memberships. In this manner, MMA bears more in common with serious leisure pursuits like mountain climbing or surfing than combat sports like boxing, a sport long popular among marginalized, ethnic groups, or football (see Wheaton 2013).
The majority of fighters were between twenty and forty years old, though the age range stretches from teenagers to late sixties. Wrestlers missing the physicality of sport, police officers hoping to enhance their job-related toolkit, past dabblers in the more traditional Asian martial arts looking to learn a more “fighting”-oriented style, and fans of Dungeon & Dragons and fantasy novels with little sporting background all shared the mats. The variation extends to economic and educational backgrounds: some had not finished high school, some lacked permanent work, and some considered the monthly fees a financial burden. However, most participants possessed careers in law, medicine, information technology, and banking. For the majority, fighting was neither an economic investment nor a full-time pursuit, a characteristic also noted by Abramson and Modzelewski (2011). 3 Instead, the majority of “hobbyists” trained in the six to ten hours a week range, only increasing their time in the gym before a grappling tournament or a cage fight. 4
From 2007 to 2013, I trained at five MMA schools, participating in class at least twice a week and also attended local fights. The qualities I shared with other participants shaped my research. In particular, being a white, able-bodied man in my midtwenties. My gender facilitated access to conversations that would have been difficult, if not impossible, to witness as a woman. For, I remained “one of the guys” even when not actively participating in a conversation. 5 Again, it is important to note that even though an increasing number of women are entering MMA gyms, they remain a small percentage of participants and were almost nonexistent in the gyms that I conducted my research. In this article, I focus on the narrating men.
To achieve depth as well as breadth, I spent the majority of time at two sites: the Fighter’s Destination, 6 one of the oldest and most successful gyms in the area, and Premium Mixed Martial Arts (PMMA), a smaller school transitioning from teaching children karate to adults MMA. In both locations, classes rarely had more than fifteen people, allowing ample opportunity for frequent interaction. In both, a small core remained throughout my research while others came and went because of an array of reasons, including injuries, money, general interest, or changes to job or relationship status.
I selected these schools because of their contrasting approaches. Fighter’s Destination relies more on tradition. For instance, instructors frequently reference the “Brazilian way” of doing things, a hierarchy is enforced with members wearing belts to signify their rank, and participants bow upon entering and exiting the mat. PMMA is less structured, with little formality or set routine. It is often difficult to know whether a day will include learning new moves, drilling techniques, light sparring or grappling, in which two people will wrestle, attempting to catch the other in a choke hold or joint lock, or more serious combat. And other times people simply work “focus mitts,” a padded glove used to train boxers. The looser atmosphere provides the opportunity for “lazy” training, during which the majority of participants’ time is spent stretching, talking about the everyday, and debating why they train—always on the verge of a more intense workout. However, even with the relaxed atmosphere, the reputation of PMMA far exceeds its size and age—attracting local fighters preparing for regional competition, veteran fighters looking to jumpstart their careers, and even a Japanese fighter training for his UFC debut.
The research afforded little opportunity to become “the professional stranger” (Agar 1996). Instead, I took advantage of gaps during training to engage with other participants. These informal, completely unstructured discussions came to include life histories as well as expositions on MMA. It is significant to note that the more intimate and exploratory conversations would occur between and after sparring rather than when people first arrived at the gym. In this sense the shared energy, pain, and sweat presupposed and set the stage for the discursive.
As it was not possible to take notes during training, I would dictate key observations to a recorder on my drive home. To ensure that my conclusions were not the result of faulty translation from wrestling mat to laptop, I later discussed the patterns I was observing in lengthier interviews outside the gym. These “fact-checking” sessions (twenty-six total) gave participants an opportunity to provide context, expand upon, or deny statements they made in the gym. In this article, I place emphasis on the tales from the mat rather than the more structured and safe narratives shared at the local coffee shop. Here, I once again draw methodological inspiration from Bourdieu and his emphasis on situating interviews in the field (1990).
A Typology of Stories from the Mat
Violent World
Yeah, I got my mace right here [patting his coat pocket], and I got my asp (a collapsible baton carried by police) in the car [he flicks his arm to simulate swinging it]. You can get in trouble for having a gun, but you know, it is good to have something just in case . . . [he smiles happily]
Participants discussed the potential of violence in everyday life to an extent I had not witnessed before. MMA was presented as providing the training necessary for one to react in the proper manner, whether in the cage or on the street. The men who contributed to this narrative would often stress that if life were completely safe then there would be no utilitarian purpose in learning how to fight. For instance, when I ask John, a high school special education teacher, about whether training is fun, he hesitates before answering: “Yeah . . . but, I don’t know. Video games are fun. Right? This is useful. . . . I’m not playing Call of Duty.” Since the majority of the men occupy social positions in which the threat of violence is minimal, the storytelling establishes and maintains a specter of danger through repeated discussion of the threats one might encounter and the ways one, implicitly a man, should respond.
The bar or club provides a frequent setting for the stories of violence. At the Fighter’s Destination, the presentation of the threat comes in the form of a hypothetical question posed by the instructor: “What would you do if you are at the bar and some guy ____ (throws a punch, grabs you, tries to head-butt you, pulls a knife)?” If the move-of-the-day is a choke, then “you grab their hoodie” and apply the choke. If you are working on your Thai clinch, then that is the answer. Fighter’s Destination is explicit; they do not teach for competition alone. In contrast, at PMMA, tales of actual, not potential, barroom confrontations supplement the drill. In the midst of a lesson on the importance of posture and leverage, Dan, a middle-aged banker and friend of the owner, launches into a long story about a time where his training helped him avoid violence in a downtown club. Through pacifying the threat, he ensures that the techniques work: “I got my underhook. I got my angle. And I got my wrist control.” During the storytelling, he uses his body to illustrate every step, letting the story possess him: “pushed him up against the nearest wall and just held him there like a little kid until he calmed down. And he was angry. Had 50 pounds on me and never even got a punch off. . . . The bouncers loved it.”
Members actively contribute to the narrative. During open gym, when members have a chance to spar or drill moves, I would often overhear participants exchanging personalized “what if” hypotheticals. Craig, a muscle-bound, retired Special Forces soldier, and John, a grizzled-looking doctor, commonly engaged in discussion of the proper way to react in an array of dangerous situations from someone attempting to pull you from your vehicle to an assailant attacking from behind. Sitting together on the mat, each provides a rapt audience for the others’ storytelling, each validating the potential danger so effectively that I begin to think about how I would react, even though I know that the occurrence of violent crime is extremely low, especially in the suburbs where the schools are located. During training a few weeks later, Cris, a successful classical musician, reflected on his own strategy for dealing with a dangerous circumstance, “I’ve stayed in some kind of shady areas when I was traveling with the orchestra. If my wife and I were confronted, and someone demanded our money or instruments, I would have to try to take them to the ground. I don’t want a standup fight, I’m not big enough—too risky.” Again, the hypothetical justifies the training while simultaneously affirming Cris’s ability and need to perform the properly masculine position of protector of both himself and his wife.
Much like in women’s self-defense classes (De Welde 2003), confidence is an essential part of the product being sold. The instructors, as well as other participants, serve as role models, demonstrating physical confidence through self-referential stories. Allen, who teaches at Fighter’s Destination, contrasts his mother’s worries about his plans to travel through Mexico City with his lack of concern: “Of course they [my parents] are scared because of all the drugs and stuff. But I know how to handle myself.” He laughs. “Good luck trying to kidnap me.” Here, knowing how to fight is the foundation for freedom and independence, with the practice imbuing a corporeal certainty.
Jonah, a tall, skinny instructor, is particularly convincing because of his slender build. He sees himself as representing unassuming men when entering hypermasculine environments like a bar or club. “I have never thrown a punch. I just call out the cocky people who usually get away with bullying . . . big guys who stare everyone down and do what they want. I show them they can’t do that.” He continues, “I don’t go out thinking I am going to teach people respect. It is an ego thing for me also—to prove something.” For others, this takes a more playful tone. For instance, Luke, a twenty-eight-year-old composer and keyboardist from a wealthy Northeastern family is excited to tell me about wrestling his wealthy cousin at a wedding: “He heard I started training so he started joking around and acting tough. So we went outside onto the lawn. Just like that—rear-naked choke. Then he gets all angry wants to go again. Same thing. When we went back in no one believed me until George [his cousin] came in and was going around yelling about it.” He continues to tell me that it validates the skills learned in his first year because it “shows how easy it is against people who don’t train. He is a big guy. Not like a bodybuilder or anything. But he lifts weights and looks muscular. And it didn’t mean anything. . . . He couldn’t figure it out. He was supposed to beat me up.” For Luke, much like Jonah, joy is found in turning the tables on the more traditionally dominant man.
In other cases, this narrative takes on a more vigilante brand of masculinity, with the men taking lessons from the actions heroes of their childhood (Jeffords 1994). It is here that the racial aspect of this narrative becomes more visible as the mostly white participants allude to men of colors in characterizing threats. In some cases, this occurs through geographic reference, as the dangerous inner city or streets are invoked. In other cases, racially coded language is used. Walter, a white, athletic, thirty-two-year-old, Minnesotan mixture of libertarian and liberal (“my mom was the tree-hugging type” and “my dad owned a lot of guns”) serves as example. After sparring, he tells the audience with great pride how he traveled to a town outside the cities with some friends because “thugs from the city had been heading down and mugging drunk people outside the bars. We jumped them before they jumped us.” Using language that bears striking similarity to Stroud’s study of “good men” carrying concealed handguns (2012), we see Walter taking the law into his own hands. And like the men in Stroud’s sample, the violence of the white vigilante is noble and heroic in contrast to the aggressive, violent racial threat in the form of the “thug” or the dangers found in the urban environment. In response, Lance, a successful fighter and personal trainer, nods his approval and contributes to the overt superhero characterization, “It’s our job to defend the defenseless. To protect the people who can’t protect themselves!”
The transformative power of this narrative was evident both during “fact-checking” sessions and my own reflections on the manner that the practice and storytelling had affected me during my immersion in the field. For instance, when I discussed my observations with Luke, the aforementioned keyboard player, he queries, “do you ever find yourself looking at a stranger and planning out what you would do in a fight with him?” I give a chagrined nod and he continues, “I don’t know when it started. I don’t even think about it. But now when someone comes in the door I think about what I would do. Like how to take down a tall guy or maybe set up some knees or something.” Even though I found the individual components of this narrative to be far from compelling and lack a history of physical altercation, I too had caught myself evaluating the bodies and movements of surrounding strangers. Here, as Newmahr (2008) compellingly argues, the manner that the field affected me provides key insight into the power of the practice to perception.
In MMA, I witnessed the storytelling process justify training through reifying the potential for violence. The men validate each other’s beliefs that public spaces are potentially dangerous. This admission of vulnerability both seems at odds with and validates the pressures of normative masculinity; for, if we follow Day’s argument “not being targeted by such fear is part of [men’s] ‘right to public space’” (2005, 583). The gym is a site where fear is not only acceptable, but provides motivation to strive to be the “ideal,” confident man who lives without concern, whether through maintaining “face” in the bar setting, as Jonah discusses, or pacifying a threat through strategic action, as the more militaristic, justice-oriented Allen would prefer. In either case, doubts about a loss of traditional masculine status are both revealed and curtailed through the embrace of a more traditionally hegemonic narrative of men as protectors, training bodies and mind to be always ready for and unafraid of potential violence (Messerschmidt 2000).
Satisfying Masculine Urges
It is the same as the correct fighting stance. You stand at a 45° angle, you have one foot forward, and you lean back slightly. You are leaving yourself open, but not exposed. A girl isn’t going to pay attention to you if you stand there all awkward, squeezing your drink like it is protecting you.
The second narrative also reinforces the masculine qualities of the practice as men turn to discussions of gender to explain the allure of participation. The “proper” masculinity is reinforced through tales of men “acting as men should”—in particular, meeting, attracting, and going home with “girls.” This masculine ritual is not unique to the site. Examples range from schools (Pascoe 2007), to the workplace (Quinn 2002), to the sport locker room (Curry 1991), to serious leisure practices (Robinson 2004). However, here the desire to fight and the urge to have sex are effectively gendered, linked, and naturalized. Through discussing expected actions outside of MMA, the assumed heteronormative qualities of the space are established, creating a sense of safety for some, silencing others, and generating potential unease for the few women participants. Again, MMA allows men to confirm their masculine status while simultaneously reaffirming the need to do so.
Within this thematic, there is explicit engagement with sexual identity. While on the mat, methods of attracting women are shared in great detail and success stories relived with explicit thoroughness. Those who live or desire a promiscuous lifestyle narrate while the audience of married men and teenage boys listen intently. In some cases, the age range becomes a source of humor, with married men bemoaning their own commitment or commenting that the high schoolers “will do good in college with all this knowledge.” Those who do not partake in the narrative wait in silence or start drilling moves. And, similar to the “laddish” masculinity found in lifestyle sports like windsurfing (Wheaton 2004) and snowboarding (Thorpe 2011), the attractiveness of girlfriends and ability to “go home” with women becomes a path to approval. While on the mats, I frequently overheard one man bragging about the body of a woman one of the other men went home with the night before. It would not be a stretch to say that impressing peers mattered more than the act itself, something noted in previous research on male athletes (Connell 2000).
Perhaps because of the level of physical contact required during grappling and the numerous queer interpretations of the practice that have been put forth by comedians (e.g., Conan O’Brien and Jimmy Fallon), gay magazines (e.g., Wanshel 2008), and athletes in rival sports (generally boxers), efforts to keep the specter of homosexuality at bay seems particularly high. Most commonly, the act of distancing comes through men pointing out the way a position could be sexual and laughing to demonstrate the ridiculousness of the idea—an approach eerily reminiscent of the high school halls (Pascoe 2007). However, for some, the specter is more haunting. This is more common for new members, as with Jake, who expresses being uncomfortable when another member laughs throughout a grappling session: “He is having too much fun. Maybe he is gay or something? And he always tries to grapple with me . . . I try to avoid him.”
Interestingly, explicitly homophobic comments were not as prevalent as found in mainstream sports culture (Anderson 2005), and when issues such as gay marriage were raised, the overwhelming majority expressed support. While seemingly positive, this points to the varied social location of members and provides further example of the shift from derision of gay men to the derision of “weak” or “effeminate” men (Pascoe 2007; Anderson 2011). And even in progressive moments, the overt sexual talk in MMA gyms continued to neutralize any potential erotic bond between men “through the displacement of the erotic toward women as objects of sexual talk and practice” (Messner 1992, 96).
Again, confidence is a central theme. Here, the importance is reinforced as fighting is used to explain interactions between men and women, and vice-versa. After a training session, Jacob, one of the more active bar-goers, fills the silence while people pack up their gear with an unrequested lesson, “you have to make the girl come to you. Act like you own the place, talk to everyone. The worst thing to do is buy her a drink.” He continues by drawing a more direct comparison: “You have to go forward but not be too obvious, be relaxed, make them commit, and be able to counter. You just rush in, and you get caught.” Jacob’s celebration is not just in “getting the girl,” but rather the skillful navigation of the particularities of the game. This not only reduces women to objects of pursuit but further builds the connection to fighting. Jonah, the instructor, provides reinforcement, using his time in front of the class to explain, “being the strongest fighter or the best looking or richest guy in the bar is nothing special. Good job. You didn’t show anything. Just like the super big athletic dude winning a fight. Real great job.” He pauses to clap slowly, “show me you get the system.”
This discussion of how to meet “a girl” reveals participants binding together fragments of discourse from an array of authorities to construct a narrative about why one fights. Here, in particular, bits and pieces of evolutionary biology are used to explain the gendered urges to “fight and fuck,” as one of the more eloquent men describes it. During one of the many at-the-bar conversations, Rick, an elementary gym teacher and semi-accomplished grappler, explains, “the female of the species wants to find the strongest and most confidant male, it is the very nature of evolution.” Being able to fight is seen as a key step toward presenting oneself as an “alpha male.”
Even as various discursive strands find their way to the mat, the corporeal remains the unifier. This is made particularly clear one day as I sit by Ross, a corporate lawyer and infrequent gym attendee, who is laying in a puddle of his own sweat, trying to capture why he returned to the gym: “sparring some hard rounds. Getting laid. You feel right.” Ironically, the majority of these men are far from the assertive alpha-male type that is idealized, and even as they impose biologic imperative, they partake in the narrative construction of an unattainable hegemonic masculinity (Connell 2000).
The gendered biological discourse extends beyond discussions of meeting women. After a hard sparring session, I ask Georgi, a forty-three-year-old, computer technician from Eastern Europe, why he does it. As he wipes the blood from his nose he explains, “It is something all guys need to do, fight you know. . . . I just never had a chance until now.” And, while less common, the inverse is also expressed. Robert, an older sculptor responds to the growth of women’s MMA by saying “it just doesn’t seem natural. Whenever I see it I just wonder what issues they have.” These discussions, which fit seamlessly into many men’s magazines, taps into a long tradition of naturalizing gender differences through pop-biology-filled fearful accounts of society becoming “feminized” (McCaughey 2008). The danger of the predominance of a biological account is that, as Brown argues, “aggressive competitive dispositions are all too often rendered as natural traits and, as such, lead to acts of symbolic violence that are excused and rendered as a product of our evolution rather than as socially constructed, rehearsed, and ritually performed acts” (2006, 167). As desires in the gym are attributed to assumed, natural sex differences rather than a larger shared human experience, difference is effectively essentialized (Ridgeway 2009). Through sharing the mats, I am provided audience to an underlying process that allows the naturalizing discourse to stick.
The manner that narratives rely on the gym as a masculine space is never more apparent than in the presence of women. When Nancy, a tough, middle-aged woman who once competed in both karate and muay thai, teaches one of the striking classes, some of the younger men are clearly uneasy—less jokes are made and the conversation is hushed. Most notably, Jake, an easy-going, twenty-six-year-old deliveryman with an abundance of tales of debauchery, is abnormally silent. The next day, he shares with me that he feels a bit “like a child” when Nancy is the instructor. The shift in the field is made even more evident when a teenager wearing yoga pants and a thin, low-cut tank top shows up for class. Her outfit and look of surprise upon entering the gym made it clear she was expecting an aerobic kickboxing class. And, in a manner that evoked memories of middle-school dances, the men were clearly inhibited, going as far as to work on the opposite end of the mat and quietly sneaking looks. For once, the free-flowing narrative building stopped.
It is important to note that both of the women discussed here were viewed as being outside, or on the margins, of the field—the younger woman seeking an exercise class and Nancy being associated with karate. At the gyms where women regularly trained, their effect on the men’s narrative was not nearly as pronounced. However, similar to boxing (Trimbur 2013) and traditional martial arts (Channon and Jennings 2013), the pressure was on the women to adapt to the men rather than vice-versa.
Emulating the Exotic
In Brazil they live life right. They go to the dojo all day, they train with whoever is around. If they are hungry, they pick fruit off the tree. They go to the beach, they surf, they meet some women, and then they go and train some more. Jobs? Who cares about jobs? Jobs . . . it is Brazil!
Perhaps because of the residual elements from traditional martial arts, the early dominance of Brazilian fighters in the UFC, or love of popular foreign action films, foreign lands are highly charged signifiers. In particular, Brazil and Thailand are romanticized as exotic places where men live life according to the natural inclinations of the body. Even as the enlarged Asian characters and stock karate photos that adorn the walls at Premium MMA are a source of ridicule, others consume stories of training in Thailand and Brazil and tattoo their bodies with koi fish and traditional Japanese art, literally marking their bodies with meaning.
Shared tales of extreme bodily practices reify the visions of training in faraway lands. When Joe is putting on his shin guards before sparring, he mentions that the protection is never worn in Thailand: “their bones are so calloused from kicking banana trees from a young age that there is no need.” He rubs his shin while he tells the story. “I didn’t believe it until I saw it.” The comment establishes that John possesses cultural capital within the field due to his time abroad while simultaneously suggesting differences between how things are done here and there.
Foreign lands are presented as places where violent rites of passage unite community. Thailand, in particular, is said to give proper cultural respect to fighting as a masculine ritual. Joe, once again, provides example as he frequently laments the lack of domestic ritual through wistfully telling tales of entire villages celebrating local fighters. In the United States, the story goes, having a cage fight is as good as it gets. Tim, a twenty-four-year-old accountant who frequently offers Joe an audience, describes how when he finished college it seemed like something was missing, “so I took a fight. Didn’t really know what I was doing. But no one does up in Northern Minnesota.” When I ask him when he will fight again, he simply shrugs and expresses little interest, instead referring to his lone, successful fight: “I got my one and o. Everyone thought I was crazy for doing it anyways.” For Tim, the rite of passage had been completed.
Unlike the “violent world” narrative, in which foreign lands are equated with danger, here the emphasis is placed on the chance to pursue natural desires. Time to devote to martial arts is not connected to a lack of economic opportunity, but instead seen as a “freedom” and removed from day-to-day violence. In sharing his view of the ideal gym, Jonah explains, “There are no formal classes, you go, you work on the bag, you ask someone a question, maybe you spar. It is more like Brazil.” As he continues, he weaves in elements of the biological, “It is letting down evolution to just work in a job. I am the culmination of millions of years of development . . . from an atom to what I am now. And I am just going to work in a factory?” In this statement, Jonah frames MMA as an escape from social pressures. Here the participants claim a wide range of class backgrounds, but it is the more affluent who speak with authority based on past time abroad while others look on wistfully.
These idealized stories of faraway lands as explanation of the urge to know the body and fight calls for an Orientalist critique (e.g., Said 1977). However, rather than presenting a weak, feminized “Other” to be differentiated from (e.g., Sinha 1995; Hirose and Pih 2010), participants look abroad for physical inspiration. Exotic lands are instead essentialized as places that produce practices to be emulated. And, as found in other popular Eastern-based physical practices—yoga, tai chi, massage—this newer strain of Orientalism has little overt emphasis on the rational (West) / irrational (East) dichotomy (Brown and Leledaki 2010). Instead, participants subscribe to the idea that the “Other” is both “out there” and also within—a tale made popular in the often-critiqued writings of the mythopoetic men’s movement (e.g., Bly 1990). Men, it is said, should work to unbury their more vigorous and natural masculinity. 7 Within this narrative, it is not the biological nature that is essentialized but rather the daily activities of that population.
Through sharing time on the mats, it became evident that for participants who embrace this storytelling thematic, prioritizing the body, community, and spirituality through looking abroad was part and parcel of the larger quest for meaning sometimes found in anomic suburbia (see Chaney 1996). It is not a coincidence that this strain of orientalism bears similarity to other predominantly white, identity-seeking subcultures including body modification (Klesse 1999) and participation in the aforementioned mythopoetic men’s movement (Churchill 1993). An optimistic reading of the MMA gym reveals participants exploring and admiring what the body can do through celebrating groups that have tested their corporeal limits. However, from a more pessimistic perspective, the ahistorical emulation is part and parcel of racializing the Other and enforcing a European-mind / elsewhere-body binary that continues a rich tradition of white men building identity through consumption of the exotic.
Embodying Spirituality
I like kids. Kids see the world in a more honest way. I appreciate that.
Being in the moment!
Exactly. I don’t feel I need one. I just want to be like one.
The failure of traditional martial arts in the early UFC led many to dismiss the Zen-oriented, Eastern teachings that accompany the physical techniques. While the resulting absence of a spiritual base (and moral compass) became a common source of derision from both martial arts purists and popular media outlets (e.g., Porter 2008; Freeman 2007), 8 the absence of a set belief system provided space for creative construction. The result is a spiritual potpourri of traditional Eastern teachings, Western science, pop-philosophy, and pop-psychology coalescing around the individualist focus on “living in the moment.” And again, the specter of the earlier men’s movements haunts as participants invoke a mix of popular self-help psychology, and non-Western spiritual traditions to “repair” and build strong, male identities (see Magnuson 2008; Kimmel 1996). However, here the body and the practice serve as the fulcrum, holding together and filtering the multiple discursive strands, and even serving as spiritual lesson in itself for the meaning-seeking men.
The “stickiness” of the corporeal experience is most evident when considering the eclectic nature of the ideas, cultural sources, and backgrounds of the speakers. For example, George, a well-spoken doctor in his sixties, and Steven, a local writer, often reference developmental psychology as evidence for the superiority of grappling, arguing that “martial arts follow the same path as mankind.” In contrast, Allen applies lessons learned from the Art of War and historical battles. And at PMMA, continental philosophy is invoked because of the college encounters had by Mark, the ex-Marine. Yet, somehow, on the mat they all work.
The filtering role of the practice is apparent in the prevalence of philosophies that either emphasize the body or mirror the sensual experience. For instance, continental philosophers who actively reject the mind–body dualism have staying power in the gym because the arguments fit the corporeal experience. Nietzsche appears on the mats because his appreciation of the self as an aesthetic project dovetails with the experience of people like Kevin, a successful lawyer, who feels like he “is doing something with his time” when he trains and rhetorically asks, “what better project than myself?” Similarly, when I share that I had been reading Georges Bataille, who understands intimacy as the shared waste of energy, Jonah turns to his own corporeal experience to see if he follows the complicated argument: “I know what you mean. Guess that is why I hug everyone I fight?”
Along with providing stickiness and a filtering mechanism, the corporeal also operates as a spiritual Trojan Horse for belief systems. Yoga, breathing exercises, and other alternative paths to vitality and health commonly find their ways to the mat along with fragments of larger world outlooks. When I talk to Aaron, a veteran in the local fight scene, about how this is not what I expected, he finds it humorous: “Lots of guys looked at me strange when I showed up late because of yoga. Now they are doing the downward dog right beside me.” Pat, the large, proud Irish American firefighter, adds: “Fighting, in particular jiu-jitsu, leads you toward wanting to know your body. Why wouldn’t you do anything that helps?” He later explains to me that yoga’s emphasis on posture as foundational to the health of mind and body has had a profound influence on him. Here, a desire to expand the capacities of what the body can do becomes an avenue for finding meaning for even those who actively disavow tradition and spirituality.
Even as the corporeal tests culture expertise, life helps determine the ideal physical practice. For instance, Allen criticizes wrestlers not because he doubts the effectiveness, but rather because the approach does not cultivate proper character: “Wrestlers simply going full speed, always violent clashes . . . you can’t go through life in that manner. Battle shouldn’t be decided by one brutal clash. It should be conducted with spies and with strategy.” Significantly, this is a point of overlap with more traditional martial arts (e.g., Channon 2012; Levine 2013) and stands in contrast to the assumed connections between MMA, hegemonic masculinity, and a more brutish strength-based form of fighting (see Channon 2012; Hirose and Pih 2010). And, as in traditional martial arts, mastering the physical practice is equated with inner peace and wisdom (see Channon 2012). The dialectic relationship was made clear to me one day while sitting beside Walter, still drenched in each other’s sweat, both observing Jonah train with a UFC prospect. After a few minutes, Walter shares, “he’s the best. It’s not just an MMA thing. Like the way he rolls. It is like he says, it is not about trying to submit someone. Always just moving, if something goes wrong he just slips out of it. That is a life lesson you know?” Jonah’s pop-philosophy-inspired preaching on embracing the chaos is convincing to Walter precisely because he performs a fighting style that is the corporeal expression of his ideas.
Within this theme, the ability of the shared carnal experience to mask contradictions is at its most evident. In a single conversation, Kevin invokes an emphasis on “self-actualization” and long-term improvement; Jonah discusses how we should “embrace that we are all egos burning up” and enjoy, rather than attempt to delay, the inevitable; and Walter preaches the “living in the moment” spiritual narrative made popular in Null’s best-selling book (2008). Each bring their own habitus to the field, including the way they speak, tell stories, process knowledge, and interpret the world. However, because the loosely defined nature of the practice, each explanation fits with the gym experience. Potential logical incompatibilities become less important than each man finding the elements that “stick” best to his practice. As narratives mix on the mat, the aforementioned state of hysteresis remains but does not overwhelm.
Boredom, Dissatisfaction, and (Temporary) Critiques of Capitalism
You know, I’ll tell you what I’ve realized. It isn’t about what you want, it is about doing what you do not want and persevering and just working, man. Then being able to do what you like. Get off all that crazy stuff. You think I like working in an office? “Hey, did you get that memo?” That is shit man, but I do it, and I get my $15 and benefits. Then I go fight.
For many in the gym, MMA is credited with revealing and providing remedy to the drudgery of the everyday. It is more than a temporary escape, for MMA enables the articulation of what is lacking—with the accumulation of boredom and dissatisfaction being said to produce a need to fight. In crafting a narrative that questions normative social expectations, the storytelling men often turn to Fight Club (generally the 1999 film adaptation) and its anti-consumerism message. While some in the site share characteristics with the middle-class cage fighters of Abramson and Modzelewski’s study (2011) that turn to MMA because of the qualities it shares with the American Dream; many of the hobbyists used the gym to critique the underlying values of the Dream itself. In the MMA gym, I rarely found the classic, celebrated sporting clichés of meritocracy and fair play (see Green and Hartmann 2013) extended beyond the walls of the gym.
The mixture of affluence and the hypermasculine make a critique of capitalism unexpected. However, I found successful men with well-paying jobs, long-term relationships, and health using the mats to express dissatisfaction while performing a physical masculinity not associated with their white-collar compatriots. After a particularly hard training session, as people lay around on the mats, George, a self-described happily married father expresses a sense of being tricked: “First you finish school, then off to college, then you get a job, then you get married, then you have kids and then you are like, ‘I did what I was supposed to, now what?’” Jim, another married man with children, steady employment, and a fast car, agrees: “You know, all week I just wait for the chance to get in here. . . . Not that I don’t like the rest.” Both are able to reveal an uncertainty, ambiguity, and sense of incompleteness often obscured by the cold façade of masculinity.
While the established and affluent express their dissatisfaction, some of the younger men espouse the joys of remaining unfettered. Jonah serves as the loudest example: “If you have saved up money and possessions, you will do anything not to lose them, you would give your arm to keep that last $100. But you aren’t happy. I just get what I need. I wouldn’t give that up. I wasn’t happy when I had that real estate job. . . .” He continues, “They got it right [in Fight Club]. The whole Ed Norton, Ikea-addiction part. Just blow it up and move on.”
For other working-class participants, the critique is a source of frustration; it confirms and builds dissatisfaction, but offers no viable alternatives. Rob, the mild-mannered, large blonde-haired, blue-eyed thirty-year-old construction worker explains, “I am sick of destroying my body, I don’t like my job. Once I get all my debt paid off, I can leave it. Maybe get good enough to teach jiu-jitsu, but so many people are trying to do that.” Jonah is less-than-satisfied with Rob’s inability to make the leap of faith and turns to the lessons of Fight Club to criticize him: “You are too caught up in the ‘comforts.’ Don’t be afraid to hit rock bottom.” However, when I ask Jonah about his need to fight for an income, he answers in a manner that reinforces both his independence and masculinity while continuing the critique: “It is not that I care about the money, but everyone else in society does. There are certain norms expected of me. Girls are taught not to like the guy without a job.”
For many, the critique does not travel beyond the walls of the gym. Instead, time on the mats is enough. Ray, a Latino in his late twenties, and participant in the occasional cage fight, prescribes MMA as a cure-all: “Man, it is what you need, it will change your life. Especially if you are bored with your job. You won’t regret it. There is nothing like it. It will make you more confident. Just let you get away.” Within the space, it is difficult to differentiate between those attempting to live the narrative and those seeking temporary respite. For instance, Mark, a young lawyer, is a key participant in crafting this narrative, sharing scathing descriptions of the goals of his perfectly capitalist coworkers before leaving the gym in his custom-made BMW.
Within the MMA site, there exists a narrative path that channels the joy of fighting into a radical critique of society. However, even as the violent practice is posited as the solution, through allowing a temporary escape for the hobbyist it reduces the need to make a change—the men can laugh at their nine-to-five jobs before returning to them the next morning. In a manner that invites an Eliasian interpretation, the gym provides a safe space for the experience of violence, aggression, and, excitement before returning to the established order (Elias and Dunning 1986). Further, the narrative allows those members of the group who have not pursued permanent employment to take pride in their status, while those who seek a departure from their successful but pressure-filled lives can find solace in mixing with a lower-class, more physically oriented crowd. Again the field is left ambiguously defined. Members can feel united through shared, corporeal experiences and shared narrative construction of meaning and desires that temporarily transcend class divisions. This allows the affluent to indulge in not caring about success, claiming that “you realize all that other stuff doesn’t matter when you are defending a submission” even as they reap the benefits of their wealth.
The Body as Project
Jiu-jitsu, fighting, and yoga are all simply extensions of the same principles. Yoga helps me realize at its simplest, it is about your body and gravity. It is what keeps me coming back . . . it means I am doing something with my life.
While the corporeal experience underlies all other narratives, the body is also reflexively turned toward as a thematic in itself—celebrated as both the source of desire and an object to be manipulated. Stories from the mat frame the drilling and sparring as an opportunity to reclaim a lost corporeal knowledge. And, rather than embrace a certain style of clothing or music, participants vocalize how movement and bodily awareness serve as cultural capital.
Through discussion of methods to increasing fighting capacity—whether through diet, supplements, or exercise—bodies become subject to the expertise of traditional and scientific knowledge. Kevin and Allen provide examples. Allen continually works on his flexibility, fueling his obsession with repeated viewing of Cirque du Soleil. In contrast, Kevin looks to the National Football League, telling detailed stories about the development of sport science and how it has been employed to incredible results. Both tell stories with an improved fighting-body being the happy ending. And, during open mat, both perform movements that require balance and contortion, effectively ensuring an audience for the next storytelling session.
The lack of agreement over the ideal body, and who deserves the cultural capital that it bestows, is a constant source of tension. Mark, the massive, middle-aged, former-Marine provides illustration. His decorated bodybuilding past and bull-like physique commands respect from many in the site, who turn to Mark for advice on weight training and supplement use. However, for others he represents the difference between the functional and aesthetic body. After watching Mark’s difficulty turning his hips in the manner necessary to throw a simple punch combination, John, a seasoned Muay Thai competitor, and jazz guitarist, remarks, “His body is huge, but it can’t move right.” He continues to build the narrative through a story of a muscle-bound “Jersey-shore goon” losing a fight to a smaller man who “danced around him like he was in mud.” Similarly, Rick, a health-food store manager with an abundance of “Paleo” recipes to share frequently criticizes the men he sees at LA Fitness: “all that muscle doesn’t even make any sense! All they can do is pick things up and put them back down. Good luck lasting more than two minutes running or fighting. . . . I actually feel bad for their hearts.”
The unusually heated nature of the debate over the ideal body can in part be explained through the manner that it stands in for a discussion of masculinity. Rejecting heavy musculature is also a response to what is perceived as the regionally dominant, or hegemonic, version of masculinity (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005) and a move toward establishing a different form of gender capital for the field. 9 While the shift to functional strength is also found in other middle-class-dominated risk-based sports (see Fletcher 2008) and martial arts where weight training is the exception rather than rule (see Channon 2012), the dismissal of the aesthetically pleasing body (and masculinity associated with it) also come from working-class participants who tell stories to illustrate the difference between real muscle and gym muscles. The importance of the distinction was never more clear than when at a bar with a few other fighters to watch the UFC. After glancing over at the muscle-bound, Afflication T-shirt-wearing, tanned man at the next table, Paul, a seasoned-grappler and industrial plumber, gives a disgusted laugh, “that is what people think is tough.” He then taps his mangled cauliflower ear indicating, this is tough. 10
Even the carnal act of drilling movements until the body carries the knowledge (see Spencer 2009) is not free of the discursive charge that comes through repeated narration. During training, Cris asks whether fighting movements affect others throughout the day, saying, “I find myself in the shower starting to visualize and go through moves. Even worse, I am shrimping [a jiu-jitsu movement] out of bed.” As other members laugh and affirm that they have had these experiences, Allen interjects, “It’s like you know ‘you are redneck when . . . ,’ ‘you know you are a fighter when . . . .’” The storytelling overlays meaning even as the narration emphasizes the centrality of no longer needing to think, and instead just trusting what the body has learned. The veteran of the scene learns to both trust the body and know how to discuss trusting the body.
This thematic successfully frames the MMA gym as a place of the body and for the body. At the end of the day, the participant can feel like he accomplished something by engraving another movement into the body memory. And, while the body callousing techniques that participants undergo (see Spencer 2009) bear more than a passing resemblance to the practices of Wacquant’s aforementioned boxers (2004), the goals seem markedly different. For those in the MMA gym, especially the hobbyist, the hours of work and care are not oriented toward the neoliberal transformation of the body into commodity. Instead, satisfaction and meaning is found in the body’s desires. It is said to crave more, aching to repeat particular movement patterns in the shower, in bed, and at work; always serving as a reminder that the site and training awaits. It is this altering of the phenomenological experience—feeling stronger, better conditioned, and tougher—that makes the stories stick. It is this relationship between the ontological and the epistemological that Somers (1994) urged us to heed.
Conclusion: Narrating Hobbyists
So how do most people answer the question about why they are interested in training at your school?
“To stay healthy.”
*Excerpt from a discussion regarding a survey given to new members, 09.07.09.
MMA is more than just men paying to learn to kick, punch, and choke, risking injury to stay in shape and claim hegemonic masculinity. During the course of my participant observation, I witnessed the construction of complex, detailed, sometimes contradictory, and often messy narratives justifying engagement in an activity outside the expected. It is only through entering into contact with the practice and giving attention to the narratives that emerge that one can begin to understand the allure of a space where doctors choke lawyers, older businessmen seek advice from binge-drinking twenty-five-year-olds who still live at home, a swollen ear is a badge of honor, and both “living in the moment” and conditioning bodies for the future are driving goals.
The men do not enter the site explicitly seeking a place to critique society. Rather, the critique emerges through participants examining their engagement in the painful and intimate practice. There is no set story to guide the reflection. Instead each draws on different expertise and discursive structures when adding to narratives that form through the fragmented stories coalescing. And, even as members of the group preach a discourse of self-confidence and rugged individualism, they seek constant affirmation from the others that their stories are being woven into the shared webs of meaning. They become storytellers, and the audience truly matters, whether it is Walter looking for affirmation for his worldview (“Is that spiritual stuff too crazy for you?”) or Jonah watching his own gesticulations in the mirror as he weaves biology and new-age philosophy together, ensuring he has at least one audience member who appreciates his brilliance. If MMA is a site of play, the play operates as much on the narrative as the physical level.
It is helpful to return, again, to Bourdieu’s prioritization of the disjunction between habitus and field as the moment of emerging reflexivity (Bourdieu 1990, 108). A variety of men from different walks of life occupy the site—few seemingly possessing the proper habitus. They have not been raised to occupy this site. In fact, no one has. The field is still being defined. And while Bourdieu provides a brief discussion of the tensions that result from the democratization of sport, leading to contact between “socially different sub-populations that correspond to different ages of the sport” (1984, 211), these cases rely on established traditions to define the way the sport “should be” understood and practiced. In contrast, MMA synthesizes but also rejects, as it exists tenuously between traditional sport, individualist risk-based leisure activities, and martial arts (Sánchez García and Malcolm 2010) and thus between class-based masculinities which often map onto these differences. Here, the dissonance between habitus and field that occurs in the liminal space of the gym provides a sought and temporary moment of hysteresis.
Swidler’s well-cited toolkit provides an alternative that emphasizes the complexity of culture and the often-contradictory elements (1986, 276). Most recently, Vaccaro, Schrock, and McCabe have used Swidler’s metaphor to conceptualize the way in which professional fighters have “mitigated fear and cultivated confidence” (2011, 433). The approach works well for understanding the emotion management of trained athletes. However, I found a messier reflexivity. This is not an agent selecting from a “repertoire” of “strategies of action” as much as actors fumbling around for meaning. And if the actors are choosing from their cultural “toolkits,” it appears that they are adapting tools to jobs they were not designed for. This lack of clarity is extended by the presence of men from different classes, drawn to different elements of contemporary masculinities that rarely share the same spatial, much less cultural, realm. The hypermasculine is placed in the same context as spiritual reflection, and both are drawn on in rejecting portion of the American Dream. Sometimes the class division is made evident, as when working-class men reacted negatively to discourses drawing on pop-psychology and pop-philosophy or affluent members shook their head at stories of bar fights. However, more often than not, men consumed the narratives they would be least likely to encounter outside the site. For the construction worker, MMA is not just another job that will take a toll on his body; for the computer technician, MMA embodies a physical masculinity not present in the workplace.
The men themselves are not naïve to, and some even take pride in, their out-of-place position. One participant half-jokingly brags that “you won’t find any other history professors here,” and an accountant shares that he is both embarrassed and “weirdly proud” when he shows up at work with bruises and scrapes. Both demonstrate a pride in their ability to carry markers of their occupation of multiple masculinities. In contrast, Wade, a biology teacher, reflects that he “always tells other teachers that he does jiu-jitsu. . . . I don’t want to be associated with the brutes they see on TV.” And when I talk to Cris about the abundance of “why they are there” discussions, he provides a well-articulated explanation that people seek affirmation for things that are not already accepted, “The [discussion of] ‘why I’m here,’ is a deep rooted sense of guilt, because people know they shouldn’t be violent so they have to explain it . . . you know when someone starts explaining before you ask, it’s like ‘I never accused you of being late, you are clearly explaining because you feel bad about.’” Cris continues through personal example, “At the orchestra, of all places, when everyone is like ‘you do that?’ I can’t just say I take MMA classes and leave it at that.” And while the middle-class members of the gym may be prone to talk because of their class position (e.g., Sweetman 2003), here we can see the dissonance of the site encouraging the reflexivity.
The importance of the site’s masculine aesthetic cannot be ignored. The gendered surface is key to the allure and production of the stories. An ethnographic examination allows insight into the way the men explore and selectively construct a hybrid form of masculinity. For some, the physicality of the setting allows discussion of emotional issues without fear of appearing soft—“one of the worst things a man can suffer in this culture” (Bordo 1999, 55). Others use the mat to counteract increased docility and briefly connect with the hypermasculine. Rob captures both when he shares his fear of leaving the comfort of his family home and numbing dullness of work. In contrast, he compares being on the mats to classically masculine activity: “it is similar to going into the wild, you have to be aware of what is going on at all times. You can’t just drift through or it is over.” Again the practice allows, provokes, and is shaped by reflexive examination and narrative exploration.
It is important to note that my article captures a particular moment. Cultural awareness of MMA is growing, young men that grew up with the UFC and see MMA as a way to build capital (cultural or economic) are joining the gyms, and women are becoming more common on the mat. Schools now have the chance to become more specialized and further separate fan, hobbyist, and fighter. Whether these changes bring new stories and new discussions, or the narratives become more stable and muted, remains unknown. Both possibilities tell an important story about the nature of transitioning fields. For now, the site remains open for meaning construction. The tension resulting from different backgrounds and expectations sharing the mat is perpetuated because the practice itself provides enough “stickiness” to hold together the many discursive fragments with the transformation of the body providing evidence of their truth. And the narratives themselves seem more “real” because the men took part in the construction.
The gyms provide a stark reminder of the necessity to seriously engage with the meaning participants give to and take from sites of deep play and serious leisure. For, to understand the hobbyist MMA practitioner, one must appreciate how practice can stimulate and gain meaning through rich and constant storytelling. By embracing this emerging sport’s messiness, I provide description that goes beyond previous academic focus on how professionals “build themselves” into fighters. Instead, I offer an analysis that understands how local MMA gyms serve as a place for men to work, rework, envision, and reenvision bigger cultural ideas, and to do it in an ongoing way that allows each man to relate his embodied experience to the concerns of daily life—and that understands this process as a central allure.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.