Jon Bois and Felix Biederman have just
released a five part documentary about the rise of MMA into the
cultural phenomenon that it is now. It's got some slick production
values and Felix does a good job of narrating it, but there are some
pretty big gaps in the history of MMA and their central thesis of its
rise connecting to the downswing in the economy and our fractured
political landscape don't really have any connection to its rise. Or
if there is some connection, they don't put the facts there to back
it up. The biggest problem with the conceit is that it felt like
somebody who watched Fight Club and took the idea seriously.
They tie the rise of UFC to the
increase of political correctness in the work place, but that's not
really the zeitgeist that it followed. The UFC followed in the wake
of pop culture as a whole being much more open about sex and violence
in the nineties and not really caring about anything. There wasn't
some primal need that was being repressed due to the workplace
changes. Combat sports have been a part of human history for as long
as we have recorded history. Wrestling has been practiced for
thousands of years and gladiator combat in Rome was a big draw. UFC
was a little ahead of its time, but there was always a crowd for
seeing the different combat disciplines face each other. What helped
UFC and MMA get big was a confluence of four things. The internet
becoming ubiquitous and especially streaming sites and filesharing
services let people find the fights and become a fan, The Ultimate
Fighter blowing the fuck up, boxing was in a downswing and didn't
have big names, and Jackie Chan and Jet Li were becoming movie stars
in America and that made more people interested in martial arts.
The internet made finding everything
easier. I used it to find pro wrestling and then slowly moved into
watching MMA fights I could download on Kazaa or find on youtube or
dailymotion. It gave an easier way to introduce the sport to new fans
as well and you could make sure they saw a good fight as opposed to
getting them to come out to a bar for an event and hoping a good
fight happened. I know I did that plenty of times. It also made it
cheap to introduce somebody to it instead of convincing them to split
a PPV since they weren't really aired regularly in bars yet. The
internet also created one of early MMA's biggest sensations in Kimbo
Slice. Slice had a youtube channel where he would walk around and
challenge people to a fight in their backyard and usually destroy
them. He was huge, had an awesome beard, and a weird balding pattern
and people loved him. In college the first fighting event I watched
with a bunch of non-fans was an Elite XC show that was supposed to be
headlined by Kimbo vs. Ken Shamrock. Shamrock got hurt and was pulled
from the card and replaced by Seth Petruzelli who I had seen in King
of the Cage so I put my money and him and won some money from people
who only knew about Kimbo Slice. Kimbo was such a big draw that Dana
signed him to UFC and put him on a season of The Ultimate Fighter.
Speaking of the Ultimate Fighter this
is one thing that the documentary hit on that was a really big deal.
The first season of it showed up when reality TV was the biggest
thing going and it was good tv and the competition aspect was
excellent. The first season had awesome fighters and most of the
fighters ended up in UFC eventually. Later seasons kind of lost that
part as UFC grew it already had the best fighters under contract or
they were signed to other promotions. The first season was different
though. The personalities clashed like every reality show, and the
hook to get people in was the coaches were going to fight on PPV
after it ended and their teams competed and Chuck Liddel and Randy
Couture and had name recognition and the talent to draw people in. It
all built up to the first free UFC show on television and it couldn't
have asked for a better finale than Forest Griffin vs. Stephen
Bonnar. It was a decision in the favor of Griffin, but it was a war
that everybody watching loved and both men went on to good careers in
the UFC and into the hall of fame since they had one of the best
fights ever and helped balloon the UFC into mainstream consciousness.
The reason UFC could creep into
mainstream consciousness is because boxing was falling out of favor.
They didn't have the big name heavyweights that drew peoples
attention and the boxing was starting to get boring. It wasn't about
just technical skills and boxing it was also about working the refs
and holding to prevent damage. The general public didn't appreciate
the work of the fighters and that left a hole for a new combat sport
to take the spot and MMA fit the bill. People were getting interested
in not just boxing, which was a limited form of fighting, but wanted
something more.
And a part of that was the resurgence
of martial arts movies. They had made a decent inroad into the
popular conscious with Bruce Lee's movies, but didn't really move
beyond that. In the mid to late nineties that started to change
again. First with Jackie Chan's Rumble in the Bronx and then with his
other movies and also Jet Li's movies. The two men brought their
movies to America and their fighting styles with them. The fights are
very stylized in the movies and don't seem realistic, but people
still respected the styles and the knowledge of them made them want
to see something other than wrestling or boxing showcased in fighting
sports. For the most part that style didn't really work in the
octagon, except for Lyoto Machida and Anderson Silva. Silva didn't
really fight like them, but he landed a front kick knockout that was
straight out of a movie and really helped showcase those strikes
being effective. Later in MMA there would be even more movie like
knockouts the most famous of which with would be Anthony Pettis
jumping off the cage and roundhouse kicking his opponent in the head
in what is probably a top five knockout of all time.
Those are the elements that really
contributed to MMA's rise and more specifically UFC's rise to being a
global sport and powerhouse. There is a section that talks about
PRIDE, but for the most part the documentary also focuses on UFC too
much. Sure, it is the biggest organization around, but a lot of
companies helped bring MMA to the powerhouse it was and developed
talent that UFC managed to grab because it had the most money. It's
also really weird that they put such a focus on the Gracie's without
mentioning the Gracie Hunter himself, Kazushi Sakuraba. Granted I'm
more fond of him than most MMA fans since I also enjoy pro wrestling
which he dabbles in. I remember watching the PRIDE Grand Prix from
2000 when he fought Royce Gracie in a no time limit fight that went
ninety minutes before Royce's corner threw in the towel. Those two
guys fought at the highest level for ninety minutes and it was
awesome. They vaguely reference Quinton “Rampage” Jackson, but
not the crazy slams that made him famous. Most importantly they don't
talk about the time he lifted a dude up and tried to throw him out of
the ring. They mention the steroids being fine in PRIDE but don't
call out Mark Kerr by name who made a huge name in Pride as being a
giant muscle monster and dominated with ground and pound and made it
a strategy in the sport. He also had a documentary about him from HBO
the Smashing Machine which was a pretty big deal back in the day. And
then there is my favorite PRIDE fight Don Frye vs. Yoshihiro
Takayama. These dudes don't defend at all. The first thirty seconds
of the fight is them grabbing each other by the back of the head with
one hand and raining punches with the other and it is nuts.
Okay that kind of got off track, and I
thought about editing it out, but those fights are awesome and
everybody should know about them if they don't and check them out.
MMA had a lot of influences that helped make it big and it wasn't
just UFC. Obviously PRIDE was a big part and PRIDE Never Die! There
are others. The first one I watched on DVD was King of the Cage which
was competing with UFC in the beginning and lost and a bunch of
fighters from there ended up in UFC. World Extreme Cagefighting was
making good strides before it got bought by UFC and was a feeder
organization before tv deals meant UFC needed more shows and they
closed them down and brought most of the fighters into UFC. Bellator
is the biggest competitor for the UFC right now and the shitty Reebok
deal has led to a lot of fighters leaving UFC for Bellator. K-1 is
also a company that helped change the way combat sports are viewed.
It's not full on mixed martial arts, but kickboxing does have
different rules that allow throws and kicks, just not ground
fighting, and it has a big crowd viewing it. There are several
companies trying to garner viewer support by signing big names from
the past as well, but they are often not that long lasting.
Strikeforce was another of those
challengers and it was the one that brought Ronda Rousey to the
forefront of women's MMA. Gina Carano and Cyborg kind of made a dent
in the public conscious about it, but until Ronda dominated everybody
it wasn't really a big thing people were paying attention to. Once
UFC bought Strikeforce it was only a matter of time until UFC added
women's divisions. Ronda changed the sport and made it a big deal,
which makes it even worse that she's a garbage person. So moving on
the biggest miss the documentary made was they talked about the straw
weight division season of The Ultimate Fighter without mentioning
Invicta. Invicta started as an independent organization that is all
women's fighting and probably ran for four shows before UFC took them
in as a company that they aired their shows on their streaming
service, and for the TUF season with straw weights they almost all
came from Invicta's roster. Bringing in women's fighters was a boon
to UFC because it harkened back to the early days. Too many of the
men's fighters had rankings now, they had standing, so when they
fought they didn't want to lose it now. The women fighters didn't
have that. Every fight was their chance to make a statement and they
took it. If you lose by taking a chance and being exciting you still
made a name in the eyes of the fans and Kat Zingano nailed that. She
got a shot against Ronda and went for a big flying knee and missed it
and got tapped out like everybody else. But she was the first that
didn't show fear against her and she showed personality in her
interview after the loss and it was awesome. Rousey's loss was
probably the best thing to happen to women's MMA because it changed
it from being a one woman show and now there were a bunch of names in
the top tier and gives other fighters name recognition to be pay per
view draws.
The Documentary makes a really good
point about the Reebok deal and how it is undervaluing the fighters,
and UFC starts to do this as well. Early in the UFC it was all about
the fighters making names and selling shows around the fighters. This
would be the only part that kind of fits the thesis of political
correctness in corporate places changing fighting. The brand of UFC
is what sells the shows. Most people don't even know what MMA is,
it's just UFC to them. The fighters lose their individuality and just
become fighters, they don't market the fighters they just market UFC.
If a fighter can't market themselves their PPVs don't sell and Renan
Barao is the best example of that. That dude couldn't be beat, but
he's from Brazil, can't speak English, and therefore can't sell his
fights, and UFC doesn't bother doing it either. It doesn't matter
that he's one of the best fighters in the world because he can't sell
his fights. And on the opposite end of the spectrum is Conor
McGregor. He had a mediocre record, but he could trash talk and that
sells fights. For three years I went to the local Buffalo Wild Wings
to watch UFC PPVs and it was never as full as it was for Conor or
Ronda PPVs. The documentary does this weird thing where it basically
blames Dana for being shitty for being a Republican, which he is, and
I agree with, but at the end it does a weird thing where it seems to
sympathize with him during his press conference after the end of the
Khabib vs. Conor fight. It tries to tie us to Dana because he's
defending the sport from being a sideshow, but that's bullshit. Dana
loved that shit when Conor did it. Conor jumped over the cage after
winning a fight and went face to face with Jose Aldo to challenge him
for his belt for no reason. He ignored Conor breaking a bus window
and injuring fighters so they missed a fight. But when Khabib jumps
the cage and gets in the face of one of Conor's managers who was
racist to his trainer, now Dana has a problem with it. If Khabib can
keep selling PPVs I'm sure Dana will change his mind.
Probably the biggest umbrage I take
with the documentary is them framing Jon Jones as a misunderstood
person. He's a great fighter, that part is true. But other than that
I don't agree with anything they say about him. Jones talked like a
holier than thou fighter then got a DUI. I'm not going to bag on him
hard for that, I've got one of those, we're all stupid when we're
young. Then he got in trouble for a hit and run which Biederman kind
of runs past quickly. Jones was under the influence at the time, hit
a pregnant lady, came back to his car to grab the rest of his stash,
then fled again. Then he got busted by USADA several other times for
steroids and cocaine. So it doesn't really matter how good he is as a
fighter, because he can't follow the rules. It felt like they wanted
to make a point about how USADA is unfair and there are really good
points to be made about it, but Jones is not the one. The Diaz
brothers would have been a solid case. Marijauna is a painkiller, but
it also slows your reaction speed so we could argue if it is actually
performance enhancing. But the bigger thing is you can't tell when
they did it and if it was after the fight and didn't actually help
them. Josh Barnett recently won an arbitration against USADA after it
was revealed his positive test was because of a contaminated
supplement and not because he was doping. There are arguments they
could have made they just chose the losing one for some reason.
The first two episodes of the
documentary lay out a good beginning of how MMA grew into the what
became the UFC. The history is very interesting and laid out well.
When they highlight a fight with narration it makes the fight feel
awesome. Those sections got me excited to go check out the fights
again. So it's a real bummer that the central point of the
documentary just kind of hangs there without any support from the
argument he's making. It's hard to say if its really worth watching
for that reason. It has a lot of well done stuff, but when it falls
flat it falls really flat.
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