The first competition in mixed martial arts (MMA) was held in 1993 in Denver, Colorado (USA). It was a single-elimination tournament called Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC1: The beginning), which has recently become the leading organisation devoted to the sport (Spencer2012, 2014). As a full-contact combat sport, MMA brings together different elements from historically and geographically disparate fighting traditions, such as Jiu-Jitsu, Thai boxing and wrestling. As such, and as a relatively newly institutionalised phenomenon, MMA can be said to represent in many respects an ideal type of globalised sport (Hirose and Pih2010; Brett2017). As regards the number of practitioners and viewers, the sport is also growing fast. In almost every city in Sweden today, one can find MMA gyms that are affiliated with the Swedish Mixed Martial Arts Federation (SMMAF) and, consequently, also with the Swedish Sports Confederation, which is the leading organ of opinion in the service of Swedish sport (Stenius2015; Riksidrottsförbundet 2016).

The logic of MMA is quite straightforward: two contestants with various skill sets enter a cage, called the Octagon—or a boxing/kick-boxing ring—to fight one another. Here, they unleash a multitude of techniques—such as punches, elbow strikes, kicks, neck chokes and body throws—against each other (Buse 2006; Stenius and Dziwenka 2015). The winner can then be designated in one of several ways, such as by judge’s decision, knockout or technical knockout, referee stoppage or submission. As suggested by Stenius (2015), MMA fighting can be understood as a violent sport that displays an extreme form of physical and athletic aggression along with mutual respect among fighters. It is a sport in which sensation-seekers can turn fighting into their own risk-taking practice, while demonstrating attributes such as stamina, power and bodily strength. Despite the risks involved, the participants tend to ritually construct MMA as ‘not especially violent’. Consequently, we also need to engage with how the athletes define and relate to the sport (cf. Matthews and Channon 2017) (Fig. 9.1).

Fig. 9.1
A photograph of two mixed martial arts fighters in Octagon embracing each other.

(The Octagon can be seen as a site for collapsing meanings related to aggressiveness and blood, on the one hand, and to caring, respect and a sense of belonging to a community, on the other)

Embracing fighters

Full size image

Given that MMA is a male-dominated sport that has connotations of violence, it is interesting to investigate what draws (predominantly) men to this form of exercise and competition. MMA has historically been strongly associated with a masculine working-class space, where fighters measure their bodies and strength against each other, in various ways confronting and negotiating their gendered selves (Hirose and Pih2010). In a wider historical context, such practices (devoting time to strengthening the body, to building muscle and preparing the body for combat) also accord well with what Mosse (1996) calls the masculine stereotype. Scholars have frequently emphasised the various gendered aspects of the sport (Stenius2015). Bousfield (2009), for example, associates MMA with the ideology of hegemonic masculinity, militant gendered norms and the production of an extreme militant masculinity, constituted to maintain legitimacy and patriarchal power (see also, Hirose and Pih2010). Thus, it would seem to be quite easy to answer the question of the gendered logic of MMA simply by stating that male fighters are drawn to the sport because it is associated with masculinity and the notion of (male) power and/through violence. Moreover, socialisation through sports has generally been understood to be a masculinising process (Kidd 2013).

The construction of masculinity, however, is gradually changing, being re-modified and re-thought, although these transformational processes are uneven. In certain (sub)cultural settings, we find ‘traditional’ masculinities that rely heavily on polarised understandings of gender and orthodox gender hierarchies, whereas in other settings, men and masculinities are gradually moving towards more gender-equal positions (as touched upon and problematised in Chapter 8). Thus, exploring a male bastion such as MMA gives us opportunities to study contexts that are imbued with masculine-associated characteristics. Consequently, we use gender theory and other conceptual approaches that will—presumably—allow us to trace deeper changes in masculinity. There is a need for a broader understanding of MMA, above and beyond the notion that it is merely a practice intended to accentuate masculinity and what is perceived to be a gendered male body. In a similar vein, it has been argued that many combat sports appeal, through their very configuration, to working-class masculinities. There is evidence, however, that substantial changes are taking place in many sports, some of them paving the way for more inclusive masculinities (cf. Anderson and Bushman 2002; Murray2008; Seungmo 2008; Zembura and Żyśko2015).

Continuing this line of thought, this chapter focuses on the meanings inscribed in fighting MMA bodies. More precisely, our overarching aim is to investigate the relationships between gender, emotions and the fighting body in MMA. To address this aim, we use qualitative data consisting of interviews with Swedish male MMA fighters and central stakeholders in the sport (see methodological Appendix for further details), putting our empirical focus on particular situations and feelings that are described as central. Thus, we approach and analyse narratives about MMA experiences as cultural manifestations and idealisations. In doing so, we also argue that, in order to be understood, the gendered selves being negotiated need to be situated in relation to the notion of social class. Although experiences of female fighters are also of great importance to understanding the gendering of MMA and MMA culture, here we have chosen to focus on male athletes.

The chapter is structured as follows: first, we present a short survey of the field to situate the chapter in relation to the ongoing scholarly debate and then a brief discussion of some theoretical tools used in the analysis. Thereafter follow three parts in which we address the aim of the chapter from different angles. We begin with a discussion on the phenomenology of entering the cage and facing an opponent, and proceed to focus analytically on how MMA fighters’ habitus is (bodily) constructed in relation to gender. We then try to widen the debate by including a discussion on the question of gender/masculinity and class. Finally, we present some concluding thoughts, looking at the results in a more theoretical manner.

From a Subcultural to an Inclusive Enterprise

Since the turn of the century, a growing number of scholars have directed their attention to MMA, although the sport can still be considered under-researched. One of the most influential of these studies was conducted in Canada by Dale Spencer (2012, see also 2009, 2014). Spencer carried out a four-year-long participatory ethnography on an MMA club in a major Canadian city. Initially, Spencer attended two to five classes a week, but he was steadily drawn deeper into the sport and began training seven times a week. The results of his study show that MMA is gradually becoming a more inclusive sport, moving away from its previous somewhat subcultural position. Moreover, Spencer also discussed Bourdieu’s ‘stylisation of life’ thesis. Instead of finding a habitus that was strictly regulated and predetermined, Spencer found creativity and the possibility of developing multiple ways of relating to the fighting (male) body. This seems to be a common finding in many studies on lifestyle and extreme sports. Spencer’s study is one of the more comprehensive qualitative studies in this field (see also Hirose and Pih2010; Naraine and Dixon 2014; Jakubowska et al. 2016). As such, it is in good accord with earlier research on embodied and gendered experiences of combat sports (see, e.g., Wacquant 2004; Downey 2005, 2007).

Although MMA has gradually become mainstream, the sport is still heavily dominated by men. Given the gendered scripts and understandings related to sporting bodies, research has shown that female fighters are often criticised by other athletes, family and friends for their interest in the sport. Scholars have discussed the sexual objectification of female athletes, as well as their refusal to accept the orthodox gender hierarchies they are thought to threaten (Heywood and Dworkin 2003; Bruce 2013; Jennings 2015; Channon et al. 2017). Consequently, the research on MMA and gender has concluded that, in many respects, the sport upholds the notion of men’s physical superiority to justify men’s general power over women (Bousfield2009). On the individual level, researchers have shown how male fighters are fostered to manage emotional manhood by suppressing fear and other emotions (Russell 1992; Vaccaro et al. 2011; Green2011). Constructing masculine norms and values through such emotional management reflects a long-standing cultural imperative concerning the construction of a ‘real man’—the need to exhibit bravery (Connell 1995; Kimmel 1996). At the same time, Green (2016) suggests—based on an examination of how practitioners justify their engagement in the sport—that the pain-filled practice actually reveals complex gendered narratives that go far beyond the previous academic focus on how professionals shape themselves into (gendered) fighters.

Concerning the Swedish MMA scene, the field of research is limited. One of the few researchers who have engaged with the sport as both a researcher and a participant, however, is Magnus Stenius (2015). In an in-depth and partially auto-ethnographic project, he conducted a sociocultural study and analysis of MMA fighters in northern Sweden, investigating how they (and he himself) developed their bodies and were formed by full-contact training. Central to this work is the question of masculinity and how fighters’ definitions of violence are acted out, gendered and materialised. Stenius discusses how masculinity is performed in the MMA gym and how the violent, strong and competitive MMA body negotiates with homosociality and the potential homoeroticism in the cage. He conceptualises this as a masculine mix or hybridity, which is connected to the cultural framing and socio-spatiality of the sport. In a Swedish context, Stenius’ study (as well this chapter) can be situated within a particular cultural framework and within the development of a national and political agenda (Andreasson et al. 2017). It is reasonable to argue that, while scarcely researched, the ideology of gender equality—a dominant ideology in Swedish society—also influences public opinion on men’s and women’s abilities and entitlement to pursue athletic ambitions. The male-dominated Swedish MMA culture is gradually becoming more heterogeneous. Women are increasingly becoming MMA fighters, and on the federation level, there are strong incentives to include women on all levels, thus promoting gender equity within the sport (Riksidrottsförbundet 2016).

Masculinities, Emotions and the Transformational Habitus

Here, we are interested in how fighters approach and understand the concept of emotion and how this relates to their understanding of gender and the performing body. In our view, to get closer to bodily practices and the lived body, we need to study both the subjective and the carnal aspects of the lived body, and to situate and contextualise bodies in relation to particular sociocultural and institutional frameworks. Studying MMA fighters brings us close to their bodily experiences of pain, pleasure, disgust and shame, but we also need to situate the body in a societal and cultural context.

In his highly influential work Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (1979/1986), Pierre Bourdieu laid out a theory of taste, lifestyles and social hierarchies in 1970s France. A central concept of this theory is habitus. Habitus is a system of embodied dispositions, organising a person’s perceptions, experience and actions. Habitus is closely connected to class and social origins: it is structured according to the individual’s social background, and it structures the individual’s future opportunities and choices. Bourdieu creates a highly structured and organised universe that is mainly collectively founded, but this does not mean he rules out actions and potential alternative life paths altogether. For our purposes, this concept brings together many of the aspects essential to understanding the MMA fighters’ identities and positions. The objective and subjective bodies are brought together, and there is an opportunity to explore the dynamic relationship between carnal knowledge and the social and cultural structurations of an individual’s life trajectory and habitus.

The habitus points towards both the past and the future. Just as for many other sociological concepts—roles, performativity and identity—there are simultaneously structures and deadlocks, openings and opportunities for transgression. Although there is a greater emphasis on limitations and tenacious forces moulding the body and behaviour in certain ways, there are also opportunities to read actions, transformations and contingencies into the habitus. Instead of imagining habitus as a deadlock—a stop sign placed right at the human crossroads—we attempt to open it up using the notion of transformational habitus (Johansson and Herz 2018). Using the concept of transformational habitus, we can get closer to how the athletes navigate in time and space. Transitional patterns have changed, but classed, gendered and structured conditions still exist. At present, however, the classed or gendered body is not fully predictable. The different trajectories to becoming successful, respected and recognised as a fighter and a stakeholder within the community are key to understanding the successive transformation of class positions possible in MMA. Bourdieu would also, in theory, agree with this description of a transformational habitus. Individual movements in time and space, and changes in class positions as well as gendered positions, are both possible and doable. In a similar vein as Spencer, we expand on the potential for finding multiple ways of relating to the fighting body. Naturally, the stylistic possibilities, as well as the potential for developing different forms of carnal knowledge of the lived body, are not limitless. Studying the lived body brings us closer to the knowledge production and subjectivities currently present in MMA athletes’ lives. This reflexive turn has led to an exploration of the lived body’s capacity to transform and take different forms and shapes. Neither the gendered nor the classed body is fully predictable.

In addition to the above, we have also referred to the ideas of Sara Ahmed (2014), who suggests that emotions should be analysed as something that surfaces at the line of demarcation of bodily borders. Ahmed concludes that emotions are evoked when performing bodies enter a space of delineation. On the one hand, these socially constructed emotions are connected to gendered understandings of the performing body and to social class. On the other hand, however, emotions change and develop, and although MMA might be heavily imbued with masculine connotations, the emotions that surface during a fight, for example, do not necessarily have to revert to a constraining gender binary. Accordingly, in conclusion, emotions are to be understood as openings into the socio-material world and are, as such, sites for political and cultural work, as well as for class and gender configurations. Here, we consider narratives about the emotions experienced by MMA fighters and analyse how these emotions may be understood as being engendered in concert with the becoming body and how emotions circulate between bodies—for example, within the Octagon (cf. Stenius2015). In order to reveal the MMA fighters’ relationship to hierarchies and a wider sociocultural context, we ‘unpack’ personal emotions before and during combat. In this connection, we are primarily talking about the sociality of emotion and about emotions as social and cultural practices (Ahmed2014).

Using these theoretical and conceptual tools, we conduct an explorative investigation into how male MMA fighters construct and anchor their subjectivities, emotions and bodies, thus also forming specific subjectivities in an intersectional space between gender and class. In the next sections, we enter the everyday life of MMA fighters and try to understand how these athletes relate to gender, to their bodies and to the challenge of meeting a highly skilled opponent in the cage. First, we try to get closer to the feeling of entering a cage and a potentially harmful fight. Second, we zoom in on the bodily experiences and emotions expressed in the narratives and analyse how the fighters relate to feelings of pain, shame and aggression. Lastly, we approach questions concerning how the fighters’ habitus is formed and imbued with class and gender, as well as concerning their preparedness to face different risk factors over time.

Entering the Cage

One commonality in the athletes’ narratives is how they vividly describe and tend to linger on the particularity of entering the Octagon. In this section and the next, we focus on narratives concerning the emotional aspects of MMA competition. Delving deeper into the phenomenology and carnality of MMA, we also try to understand how these gendered, emotional and bodily practices are inscribed into the habitus of the athletes.

Most of the fighters describe the feeling of entering the arena as almost like being high, on drugs. Looking at MMA competitions, where fighters pound and beat on each other, kicking their opponent and defending themselves, it is not hard to understand that their adrenaline is pumping. Jorge, who works as a social work assistant, recalls his feelings and his emotional state upon entering the cage for the very first time, a couple of years ago:

It was big…huge. When they play your song in the loudspeakers, really loudly, and everyone knows you’ve been waiting for this fight…it’s a big thing. ‘This guy here is only 18’, they said in the speakers, ‘and he has to prove himself’. There’s a lot of hype. Everyone knew me. I’d been around in several clubs, so I was well known. (Jorge, 24)

The feeling of being the centre of attention—in the middle of everything, or ‘where the action is’ (Goffman1967)—is vividly captured by Jorge in the above excerpt. This kind of narrative and understanding of the fight is a frequently occurring theme in the interviews. The training, the diets, the weighing before the fight and all other preparations merge when the fighter enters the octagon, creating a situation filled with a variety of feelings: pride, fear, nervousness, excitement, vulnerability, nausea, stamina and rejuvenation. It is a critical situation in which one is about to ‘prove oneself’, both in one’s own eyes and in the eyes of the other (the audience, the coach, friends from the gym, partner, etc.). Discursively, this kind of narrative also clearly resonates with the notion of a powerful, dominant and physically superior masculinity on trial (Connell 1995; Bousfield2009). Another fighter, Loke, who works as an industrial carpenter, describes the fighter’s emotional state in the fight:

The pressure on you as you enter the cage is enormous. It’s hard to understand the psychological pressure and demands, but at the same time you have to challenge your fear. So, how does it feel to be punched? I’d say generally during the fight you don’t feel anything in particular. You’ll feel it afterwards, but not during the fight. It could happen, if you’re hit really badly, not only because the muscle itself was hit, but possibly because the muscle was unprepared − relaxed − and then you get a bleeding muscle. Or when your opponent’s tibia reaches all the way into your femur, or you get hit directly on the periosteum. These things you’d feel during a fight. They’d penetrate the adrenaline and the endorphin padding. But usually you feel nothing at all. You are now in the zone in which you’re concentrating fully, everything is running smoothly and you’re just watching yourself go by. (Loke, 42)

Entering the cage is repeatedly described as central to the ‘MMA experience’, although it also means there is a risk of injury, losing the fight and not being able to maintain your focus when meeting an opponent whose primary purpose is to knock you out. Somehow, these aspects seem quite redundant at this particular time (although we will return to the notion of pain and fear in the next section). What emerges from the narratives is a story about concentration, focus and being totally absorbed in the moment—finding oneself in the zone.

It’s hard to describe. The emotions…you’ve been preparing your body for such a long time. It’s all about trying to have a nice feeling in your body. You tape your hands, warm up your body. You’re focusing on what you want to accomplish during the fight. You visualise, to conjure up images in your mind of how the game could play out. Then you enter the cage. Obviously you’re nervous, but as soon as you get into the cage and touch gloves with the opponent, that all vanishes − disappears. Then you’re completely in that situation. There are no worries. No other everyday life thoughts. Yeah, it’s a very nice feeling. The focus you have. You rarely feel anything like this elsewhere. (Jonathan, 23)

Jonathan works part-time as a personal trainer. His description of MMA experiences reveals a more or less ritualistic approach to his preparation and to medical violence. He simultaneously feels everything and nothing. He describes the emotional process of gearing up for the task—how there is something in the challenge, in the whole framing of this situation that, for a moment, makes the world around him stop spinning and disappear. In some sense, this experience is connected to an anticipated feeling of being in the world, or being the world. It is an emotional state, just as it is a state that is being inscribed onto his body and the spatiality of the cage. The common denominator of our participants’ approaches to describing these experiences is the sense of being in ‘the eye of the storm’; it is described as an almost meditative state in which one approaches, sorts and evaluates feelings of excitement, pain and fear, but in a fairly detached way. This way of managing emotions, especially fear, seems to be an important component of the MMA fighter’s habitus, one that develops gradually over time. To paraphrase Merleau-Ponty (1962/2000), the retention of past habits can be said to leave traces that express the individual’s power of dilating his (or her) being in the world.

As the fighter’s fighting skills are honed through the mundane daily routine of training and preparation, his/her habitus is formed through a perpetual dialectic between acquired experience and experiencing the spatiality that situates him/her in the present (Spencer2009). As shown in this section, entering the cage can be seen as a unique experiential dimension that signifies the fighter’s transformational habitus.

Fear, Shame and Masculinity

As suggested in the previous section, stepping into the cage is to be understood as entering a kind of socioemotional hub, a nexus idealised in this cultural context. Thus, what we are talking about here is an emotionally constructed rite of passage (Gennep2004). It is a passage during which things collide—bodies, a sense of silence and the roar of the crowd—a place where time flies and simultaneously slows down, and a place where you feel totally present and at the same time strangely detached. Ulrich, starting from bodily surfaces and the specificity of a fight, talks about this experience in relation to the way of the warrior:

There’s so much at stake, emotionally. The feeling you experience when you’re choked or get knocked out − it’s existential. It’s not just a result. This is something you do that puts your whole existence on its head. Doing this…it’s so extreme…it’s sort of an enlightenment. I see fighting as somewhat spiritual. It’s the way of the warrior. So I actually think that everyone should do martial arts as a way to learn how to handle confrontation and aggression. Humans are really aggressive you know. War, aggression, conflicts and attempts to dominate. It’s human nature, isn’t it? But we try to suppress that in contemporary society. So instead of teaching boys to understand their aggression − that you have this ability to maximise your performance…but there’s no obvious place for this in modern society − it’s hidden or suppressed. But the shell of civilisation is so thin. But that’s a deeper discussion. What I mean is: fighting is existential. (Ulrich, 47)

Ulrich’s fighting experience stretches over some ten years. Initially, he did well as a dedicated amateur fighter, and before long he developed a professional career in the UFC. He also started coaching others, thus becoming highly involved in the sport. In his narrative, he connects the MMA experience to a cultural space beyond contemporary modern society and to an emotional world with its own logic, rules and social characteristics. To him, there is a degree of enlightenment attached to the fight, and this emotional enlightenment state opens the fighter’s mind to the particularity of the cultural context and his socio-material world. One could say that although Ulrich’s emotions are personal, he unpacks his experience within a more universal experience, one of enlightenment (cf. Ahmed2014).

The internal logic of his feelings, and their structure, can also be traced to the specificity of gendered institutions. Here, then, the emotion of enlightenment is also a site of political and cultural work. It is obvious that Ulrich connects his vision of enlightenment to masculinity, and that he explores through his fighting career not only his own sense of masculinity, but also the meaning of manhood across the generations (the warrior’s way of teaching young boys to become men, as touched upon in the narrative above). As a coach, he is apparently teaching boys, not girls, to understand their aggression and the meaning of masculinity and of a body in combat. Discursively, he negotiates the gendered emotions felt in a moment of total exposure. Thus, the way of the warrior is also a story about how Ulrich makes his body into a site of action, as he strives to harden his body—a process Spencer (2009, p. 135) describes as body callusing, which suggests that, over time, the body is geared up for fight preparation, and upon reaching a bodily zenith, it is crystallised into a veritable weapon, poised for battle. In the excerpt below, the gendered dimension of the sport is further emphasised and culturally contextualised.

So, in the national league, there are maybe three female fights and some 25 male fights. I don’t know, but say there is this small woman who wants to become a member in a club, and there are loads of guys there, and you’re supposed to train together. It’s quite intimate you know, especially ground fighting. I guess women don’t feel at home with this, and also there will be guys hitting on them. That might be intimidating. Also, it is masculine to do it. I mean, measuring your strength, defeating your opponent, those are core values in the sport. MMA is about defeating your opponent and dominating. You can’t escape that. (Mattias, 29)

To Mattias, who works part-time as a supervisor, MMA has strong connotations to masculinity and the meaning of being a man. Although women are increasingly found at the MMA gym, the gendered scripts of the sport and its core values are basically understood as masculine and thus intimidating for women. Measuring one’s strength and defeating an opponent become interwoven with homosocial narratives of masculinity in the making.

Another fighter, Sean, continues and talks about the fighting lifestyle and the emotional aspects of fighting. Being a fighter and running his own MMA gym, he is very familiar with the feelings attached to MMA. He talks about the fear and potential shame of not being a good enough fighter/man. When asked if the fear goes away over time, he answers as follows:

No, no, but you learn to recognise it. It becomes like a friend, as Mike Tyson said. It’s an ugly friend, who smells bad, but who can save you from drowning. My last fight, I felt like that, those feelings were there again. I was not afraid of fear, so then it’s something you can use instead.

Interviewer: What were you afraid of?

It’s not the beating that’s the main thing. We get beaten all the time. It’s the exposure − the fact that you become visible to others. You invest a lot, and then you don’t go all the way, or turn out to be a coward. That’s what the fear is about. It’s not so much about getting hurt.

Interviewer: A coward?

Yeah, if you don’t take the fight − if you pull away or give up. (Sean, 32)

It becomes obvious how different emotions surface during a fight and how they are negotiated and given meaning in relation to an understanding of the situation, the sport itself and masculinity. The emotional management done is connected to the ability to ‘stand your ground’, and the fear of being a coward, or of not being able to do what one expects of oneself. Key here is not only Sean’s fear, but also the potential feeling of shame over how he may appear to the (imagined) other when potentially losing his masculinity (cf. Sartre1996).

Yet another fighter, Bachir, who is a student, initially talks about fear, pain and a recent fight in which he was injured quite badly, but he also brings in other aspects of life.

I met this guy from Lithuania a while back. He grabs me, brings me down on the mat, and then I break my arm. And there are these huge TV screens…everyone’s watching. ‘What happened?’ they ask, and then they see the replays, and the audience goes ‘Oooh, that looks bad’. I lost, and my game plan had been to stay undefeated. There is this fear in MMA that only undefeated fighters can earn money!

Interviewer: Is there no fear of the physical aspects?

Nah, not in the beginning. Only if you have children. I’m getting to that. You’re afraid to lose…the performance. You’re scared, but it’s not the pain. /…/ I thought I could come back, but then I had my second child. With the first one I had a lot of time to work out, but with the second one, well, things change. You feel you want to take time and you have a responsibility. (Bachir, 24)

Just as pleasure can open the body to another body (e.g. in a sexual act), so can pain. Finding himself in a situation of intensification (Ahmed2014), the pain of a breaking an arm or receiving a soft-tissue injury opens Bachir’s body to his opponent, but also shifts the focus from the fight to his relationship with his children and his fatherly duties. In a way, this situation, while charged with fear and most certainly involving pain sensations, commands Bachir to pay attention to his (embodied) existence. It is not the bodily pain he fears, but rather the limits of his body. Bachir fears not making it as a fighter; in other words, this is a relational emotion, a towardness or awayness/apartness from success and exalted cultural/commercial ideals (Ahmed2014). He also fears not being able to be there for his children and possibly even feeling shame over not being a good enough husband and father. In this connection, fear and potential pain should be seen as anything but private emotions. Situated on the body surface are somewhat opposing bodily trajectories strongly imbued with masculine ideals, namely that of the competent fighting body and of the present and nurturing body required of a masculinity built around fatherhood.

The Violence and the Cultivation of Masculinity and Class

Although our participants have a variety of backgrounds, the majority are working class. Pursuing a career in MMA is difficult to combine with a time-consuming career. For this reason, several participants do part-time jobs to maintain their training regimes. Leaving aside the bodily experiences and emotional management described in previous sections, we will now proceed to position the fighters’ narratives in a somewhat broader sociocultural context. Using our participants’ own descriptions of the people populating the MMA gym as well as their definitions and explanations of different groups, we will look more closely at the diversity of lifestyles among the fighters and how they have formed an MMA habitus.

MMA has become a largely mainstream sport. Consequently, it is increasingly becoming a popular form of doing exercise and getting in shape (Gentry 2011). This means that new groups of people have found their way to the MMA gyms. When talking about recent developments in MMA culture and various gym users, the participants reveal a stratification system. They talk about a core group—the gym elite—who are prepared to invest enormously in cultivating a fighter lifestyle and others who lack the motivation and dedication to pursue a fighting career. Thus, when we enter an MMA gym, we also enter a differentiated space, occupied by different groups. One fighter describes this space and the tensions currently evolving there, as follows:

You have this conflict between different groups at the MMA gym. If I were to aim for large groups, and try to become more commercial, I would have to avoid working with contact sparring and prioritise differently. When you have guys working out twice a day you will also have disgusting underwear laying around. You won’t have a nice, tidy gym, you know?

Interviewer: How do they find the time to work out twice a day?

Well, you know, they work as security officers or something like that.

Interviewer: Why MMA?

You want to challenge yourself, you know − hard to say. There are people with all sorts of backgrounds. You find them everywhere in the world. For example, a farmer or someone from the favela…and they behave in the same way. You would imagine you’d find lots of guys who got beaten and had a bad childhood, and I think those are the ones who keep at it, because they have nothing to lose. Anyhow, there is something in each one of us that just wants to fight. (Stephan, 33)

There is clearly a new differentiation of lifestyles in the MMA gym. We have the ‘ordinary’ exercisers (who’s fees cover the cost of running a gym), and then, we have the fighters, those involved in competitions and the more extreme/dedicated aspects of the sport. Stephan, who is a service manager, also addresses the question of fighter typologies; he describes one type of fighter who got involved for a limited time, and another who just keeps on fighting, having nothing to lose outside the cage, but perhaps not much to win either. Another participant, Lars (a telemarketer and MMA coach), also addresses the latter group of fighters when talking about MMA, the culture and the social effects he feels are part of the sport.

This is a macho culture. It’s an ultimate sport, and people watch it − especially outcasts, young criminal guys, roaming around and looking for a role model. They can always relate to being an MMA fighter, and it also works quite well in an exit process, when someone is trying to quit a destructive lifestyle. We get lots of people here who are maybe taking drugs, committing crimes or fighting. They are a pain in the ass, and some of them actually seem to be predisposed to ending up in an institution. They come here to try MMA and, as I see it, I then have a responsibility. Maybe they have the wrong attitude at first, so you’ve got to foster them. You know, no one from the street will step into an MMA gym and win a fight. The guys here will just squash them totally. But it’s a cool sport, and maybe they want to impress their mates and just make a statement, like ‘I’m an MMA fighter now’. That would be an acceptable exit process. If someone says, ‘I’ve started to go to church − I’ve become a Christian’, their mates would just say ‘fuck you, go to hell’. If you’re an MMA fighter, you’re still cool. You have credibility. I can still keep my bad boy image, and be accepted, but I can live a totally different life. (Lars, 45)

One group of fighters often mentioned in the narratives are the so-called thugs or villains who approach the sport as an excuse to learn how to fight in the streets. This group is often described in a somewhat demeaning fashion. To become what is considered a real MMA fighter, however, these young athletes need to be civilised and fostered into something more socially acceptable. Their bodily calluses and fighting habitus need to be put through a regime of disciplined training. Lars describes how MMA can be used in this way to promote exit processes and help young men (and women, although they are not mentioned in the excerpt) leave a lifestyle of criminality and street violence, while still drawing on capital they may have acquired through previous experiences. This kind of class-based and highly gendered narrative is also discursively inspired by numerous biographies of famous MMA fighters who describe their trajectories from poor backgrounds into the limelight of sports and commercialisation (see, e.g., Couture and Hunt 2009; Liddell and Millman 2009; Gustafsson et al. 2016).

Furthermore, some of the fighters might later shift their career trajectory, from fighter to coach, for example, fighting only occasionally and using their fighting experience as social and cultural capital for achieving legitimacy. Applying this logic, the MMA career is constructed as a transitional phase that entails both opportunities and limitations. On the one hand, there seems to be a certain toughness and narrative about a hard life connected to the understanding of the fighter habitus—a toughness that is in many ways formed by and accords well with the notion of a hard-core working-class masculinity. On the other hand, there are also narratives that imply differentiations in the fighter habitus—narratives concerning an MMA career and the possibility of new gender formations connected to middle-class values and masculinities. What we are approaching here is the possibility of a transformational habitus—formed and permeated by gender and class—that opens up new possibilities (Fig. 9.2).

Fig. 9.2
An image of a fighter from the mixed martial arts fighting club with two of his coaches. Saeed Ganji, the gym, and Gladius M M A are all printed on the apparel.

(Many coaches are themselves experienced fighters, who have developed a career within the sport. Although not always a very lucrative job, they earn symbolic capital within the MMA community and help fighters by offering expert advice)

Making a career in the hurt business

Full size image

Conclusions: The Transformational Habitus of MMA

Although the masculinity formed at the MMA gym is multiple and complex, a number of common denominators and themes emerge in the narratives. The participants refer to the potential shame and fear of losing a fight in a degrading way—a fear that is largely connected to the potential loss of ‘masculinity’. They also talk about the experience of total absorption in the moment, discipline and the cultivation of an extreme body and mind. When they enter the arena or the cage, fighters are also entering a historically defined masculine symbolic and physical arena. Although the number of women engaged in the sport is increasing and men and women often train together, few attempts to challenge the historically dominant gender scripts attached to the sport are mentioned by our participants. Consequently, the habitus formed within MMA appears to have a common core that connects emotional and bodily experiences during a fight with the notion of masculinity.

A key characteristic is the absence of narratives of real pain or fear. Instead, the fighters’ main fear is losing the fight in an uncontrolled, fearful and ‘non-heroic’ manner, and thus becoming a loser. It is therefore neither the pain nor the risk or fear of being beaten unconscious that is primary. Being able to manage emotions, especially fear, in this way is probably a necessity in the sport. Naturally, this emotional management does not necessarily have to be described as an exclusively male concern. But when this emotional management is considered part of a more general narrative on becoming a warrior (cultivating an essential genetic need to fight as well as becoming a role model for young men with a background of violence and criminality), we can extend the lines and talk about the construction of hyper-masculinity, closely connected to the ideal of the warrior and to the use of violence.

At the same time, when we relate this construction of masculinity to class, we find a more nuanced pattern. The transformational habitus of the fighters is characterised not only by a working-class background, but also by a successive transition from doing part-time jobs and exercising twice a day to becoming a professional: that is, an established fighter, a coach and/or a self-employed entrepreneur, often (but not exclusively) found in the context of the MMA community. Realistically, however, this (idealised) trajectory is not always attainable. The MMA space is, of course, also occupied by a number of other actors, agents and ideals. Key here, however, is the established narrative of different trajectories to becoming successful, respected and recognised as a fighter and a stakeholder within the community.

In this chapter, we have shown the interactive characteristics connecting perceived necessity of a hard-core masculinity and an idealised form of middle-class masculinity. These gender formations and negotiations are not mutually exclusive, but rather aspects of a transformational habitus that is being negotiated on the surfaces of fighting male bodies. On a structural level, the notion of a transformational habitus points to a process of cultural distinction in which dominant values and gender configurations in MMA are gradually transforming, making the sport into a (more) accepted form of exercise. And on an individual and emotional level, this transformation means that the participants can tune into a physical experience that is increasingly influenced my middle-class trajectories and gendered constructs, selectively and potentially authorised by their previously established ‘warrior capital’ (cf. Abramson and Modzelewski 2011; Anderson and Kian 2012).