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In 2006, I walked down into my living room where I saw my brother eagerly watching a DVD he had just bought.
Curious, I looked up to see two heavily tattooed men circling each other inside a black chain linked fence. Then, out of nowhere, one of them spun effortlessly and landed a spinning back kick to the gut of his opponent.
In obvious pain, the wounded combatant retreated back to the cage clutching his side, only for his opponent to charge towards him and launch a flying knee strike to his face.
Crumpled against the cage, the downed man was hit with a couple more strikes for good measure before the referee intervened.
With that, I had experienced my first taste of Mixed Martial Arts or more specifically, the Ultimate Fighting Championship or UFC.
It wasn’t anything I had ever seen before, and flew in the face of everything that boxing had ingrained in society about combat sports.
For many, the initial image of a cage that holds two men beating the hell out of each other from one side to the other jars and repulses them.
The idea that you can knock someone to the ground and then continue to punch them is abhorrent and the fact they are allowed to try and break each other’s limbs and choke each other unconscious is just wrong. The many that had those reactions to the sport most likely never gave it a second viewing.
I and millions around the world persevered with the sport however and quickly began to see the logic and method behind the perceived brutality.
The sport’s biggest detractors would have you believe that the success of the UFC and Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) is to do with the growing desensitisation the public has towards violence.
I would argue that it is education, not desensitisation that is the reason for the massive success and legion of fans the UFC and MMA has gained over the past few years.
“I see MMA as an art form, there’s some brutality to it but there’s a lot of beauty to it” said UFC 127 headliner, Jon Fitch at the UFC 127 pre-fight press conference on Wednesday morning in Sydney.
“It’s not just guys with no skill and no talent running around bashing on each other. There’s a lot of technique involved and the more you get into the sport, and the more you watch the sport and if you get involved in training in the sport you start to really understand the artistry behind it.”
UFC 127 will be held in Sydney this Sunday at Acer Arena. Acer sold out in just half-an-hour, the equal fastest sell out in UFC history.
If you tune in to UFC 127, watch it with an open mind, and logically assess what you are watching, you will begin to find, just like I did, that your preconceived notions about combat sports begin to fade away and the “artistry” that Fitch mentions starts to come to the fore.
By watching and learning about the sport you will begin to realise that what you initially thought was mindless brutality is in fact a strategic meshing of various martial arts and disciplines which has been aptly dubbed by UFC commentator, Joe Rogan as “kinetic chess”.
Many of the disciplines used such as boxing, wrestling, judo and tae-kwon are Olympic sports.
You will begin to realise that the chain-linked cage known as the Octagon is far safer for the sport’s athletes as it stops them from spilling out over the side and injuring themselves, which would be the case in a boxing ring.
You will begin to realise that fighting on the ground is not barbaric but rather a subtle and strategic game of leverage and positioning with the fighter’s being able to submit or “tap out” if they get in a compromising position.
You will begin to realise that knocking a fighter down and then following them down to the ground with punches is far better for the fighter’s health than the traditional boxing method of allowing a fighter to temporarily regain his wits so he can return to his feet and suffer another concussive blow or series of concussive blows.
Finally, you will realise that comparisons between MMA and boxing are futile.
They are two completely different sports. Applying the ideologies of boxing to Mixed Martial Arts is inherently flawed, but because boxing has been the premiere combat sport for decades upon decades, it became all we knew and associated with combat sports.
To find out why MMA has become the fastest growing sport in the world you have to understand and realise that those preconceptions are just preconceptions. You don’t have to and shouldn’t be a slave to them.
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