The Allure of Mixed Martial Arts: Meaning Making

276 Pages·2015·4.92 MB·English

by  Kyle Green

The Allure of Mixed Martial Arts: Meaning Making, Masculinity, and Embodiment
in Suburbia

A Dissertation
SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF
UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA
BY

Kyle David Green

IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS
FOR THE DEGREE OF
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Douglas Hartmann, Teresa Gowan

AUGUST 2015
© Kyle Green, 2015
Acknowledgements

Thank you friends, family, loved ones, colleagues, co-authors, and intellectual mentors.
You have inspired and supported.

Thank you to the Department of Sociology for generous and continued financial support
(and being generally great to me). I could not have asked for a better place to spend my
graduate years.

Thank you to The Society Pages. I owe my vision of public sociology, my appreciation of
the larger discipline, and my passion for podcasting to my time as part of the graduate
board.

Thank you to the amazing people who have shared my office and put up with my many
approaches to distracting.

Thank you to the people who have shared a table with me at a local coffee shop and put
up with my many approaches to distracting.

Thank you to the people who have shared time with me at the library and put up with my
many approaches to distracting.

Thank you to my advisers (Douglas Hartmann and Teresa Gowan). You are the reason I
am in sociology.

Thank you to my committee (Josh Page and Arun Saldanha) for continued guidance and
inspiration.

Thank you to the TASC crew. So this is how a big collaborative project is done?

Thank you to all the people outside of academia who accepted my weird writing hours
and constant state of being busy.

Thank you to all the people who shared time on the mat, sweat, pain, blood, and
conversation. You inspired me to write a book.

i
Dedication

My dissertation is dedicated to Marsha.
ii
Abstract
This dissertation builds on my six-year ethnographic immersion into the mixed
martial (MMA) scene in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan region to contribute to
our understanding of pain, intimacy, meaning making, and masculinity. In training
alongside men who devote their time to learning MMA, whether for hobby, local and
regional competitions, or dreams of “making it big,” I move beyond mainstream
spectacle and media-fueled public crisis to further understanding of a site where a painful
brand of carnal knowledge is exchanged daily. I pursue a classic sociological and
anthropological goal of making sense of the seemingly bewildering, explicating the allure
of the embodied, violent practice to the communities of men that fill the schools that dot
the often-suburban landscape to exchange energy, pain, sweat, and blood with little hope
of utilitarian reward. In doing so I expand sociology’s theory toolbox through engaging
traditions and writers generally overlooked within the discipline.
In each chapter I take seriously a different facet of the appeal of the sites and
practice. With each exploration I begin with the writings of Pierre Bourdieu and the
carnal sociologists he inspired before encountering the limits of this dominant approach
to physical practice. To overcome these limitations I turn to scholars often relegated to
the fringe of the discipline and place into conversation bodies of literature that rarely
speak to each other. In particular, I draw on affect theory as I discuss the manner that the
participants seek to discover their own corporeal limits through painful exchanges; the
writings of Georges Bataille to understand an intimacy formed through shared
transgressive moments and physical vulnerabilities; and scholars of storytelling as I argue
that the discursive and the carnal are mutually constitutive. Taken together, my work not
only offers a corrective to theories of embodiment and practice, but also tells the story
where the excesses of contemporary American masculinity, in particular contemporary
suburban masculinity, reveal themselves in the punches, chokes, hugs, and narrative
explorations that take place on the mat.

iii
Table of Contents
Section I. Introductions: What, How, and Why
A Moment on the Mats ………………………………………………… 1
1. Preface ………………………………………………………… 3
Mark’s Stories .….……………………………………………………… 8
2. A Longer Introduction …….………………………………………… 9
And Then the Talking Began ………………………………………………… 37
3. Letting the Gym Speak: Fighting to be Affected & Tales from the Mat… 39

Section II. Pain, Intimacy, Community, and Meaning Making
Returning to the Gym/Reuniting with Pain ……………………………………… 80
4. It Hurts so It is Real: The Multiple Allures of Pain……………………… 83
Buffering Differences and Muting Annoyances ……………………………… 135
5. Finding Georges Bataille: Intimacy and Community in the MMA Gym 140
Everyone has a story 181
6. Telling Stories and Making Meaning (a choke is never just a choke) 184

Section III. Concluding Thoughts: Playing with Masculinities
Masculine Movements …..……………………………………………… 235
7. Masculine Reflections: Towards Fluidity and Embodiment …………………….. 237

Bibliography ………………………………………………….………… 249
iv
*A Moment on the Mats*

The grappling coach finished demonstrating the move of the day, a more advanced
transition from back control to a choke that involved hooking the other person’s leg while
they are crouched on all fours, and then sort of somersaulting over them, taking them
with you and exposing their back and neck. After a few demonstrations, and again
breaking down particular aspects of the positioning of the leg that would make the move
work or fail, it was our turn. The instructor divided us into pairs while hitting play on his
mp3 player, letting the mid-90s rock signal that the time for talking was over. The pairs
were generally chosen by weight and skill. The only exceptions to this was the
partnering of the only two women in the class—one a tall, black teenager whose dad
brought her to her first class the week before and a smaller white woman in her late 20’s
who had trained for over two years out on the east coast—and Farid and I. Due to being
the only women in the gym, Camille and Laura were almost always training partners.
Farid, the lone Arab-American in the gym, was a relative newcomer, and he outweighed
me by at least fifty pounds. No one there knew exactly what Farid tipped the scale at as
he seems self-conscious of his weight—usually wearing a baggy sweatshirt throughout
the class even on a sweltering hot day like this one and possessing the type of stare that
dissuades people from asking questions—but guesses usually fell in the 230 pound
range.

Farid volunteers to let me drill the move first, getting down on the mat on all fours. This is
not a surprise since his talent was only matched by his lack of confidence and whenever
he learned a new move he would let his partner figure it out first. The first time, my foot
gets caught in his baggy shorts and I manage to aggravate my long injured big toe—a
common malady for those training in MMA. I make a joke about how his baggy shorts
give him a defensive advantage, and, after he realizes it is a joke and not an accusation,
we share a laugh. I try the move four times, feeling like I am only turning him over
because he is letting me—no, assisting me. Then, it is his turn. He drills his moves with
an unspoken seriousness, getting a little more fluid each time, and always seeking
assurance after with a quick “that feel right?”. Between the moves, as Farid plays out
what he is going to do in his head before moving into action, my attention drifts to the
group next to us.

A short, stocky computer programmer with a baggy shirt covering his big belly is
laughing loudly with his two partners—a tall classically trained pianist in a form fitting
rash-guard and a gangly teenager with unkempt hair who is recovering from a self-
described “severe” meth addiction. As I try to follow the piano player’s story about
getting in a wrestling match at a fancy NYC wedding, Farid’s weight brings me back to
the matter at hand. Each time he begins the move I feel a sharp ache and get a sense of
the impending collapse of my lower back. I focus on tilting my hips forward to better
strengthen my posture, hoping he will transition to the roll quickly and not stall with his
weight directly on top of me while figuring out how our bodies might connect. The
instructor walks over to the laughing group to see if they need help with the move but
soon he too is drawn into the story and laughing along with them. He seems much more
entertained by the re-telling of the rapidly escalating event—now involving an additional
wedding party member, rain and mud, alcohol, and torn dress pants—then by the others
groups following his instruction and repeatedly drilling the technique that he had shown.

Again my attention returns to the task at hand as I am flipped over and a strong forearm
slides across my throat, lifting up my jaw and finding space to forcefully stop the flow of
! 1!
blood to my brain. I tap his arms quickly, three times, signaling that the move worked. He
releases me and I return once again to all fours, a little slower than the previous time,
wishing that I was training with someone much lighter and a little less sweaty, or that the
drilling would come to an end. As I wait once again, bracing myself for the impact, I note
that the chorus of the Pearl Jam song emerging from the boom box seems strangely
fitting for the moment at hand, if a bit clichéd:!
!
I, I'm still alive
Hey I, but, I'm still alive
Hey I, boy, I'm still alive
Hey I, I, I, I'm still alive, yeah!

July 2012 – Immortal Mixed Martial Arts and Grappling Club

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1. Preface
The above scene took place at a small mixed martial arts (MMA) school located on the
outskirts of a suburban town about a half-an-hour drive from Minneapolis. Sandwiched
between an economy hair salon and pet store in a strip mall, the owner dreams of moving
to a new location to escape the muffled barks of dogs and passive aggressive emails from
the owner of the hair salon who is always exceedingly polite when mentioning that
products have a way of falling off shelves when people are slammed into the wall they
share. The participants who make their way to the strip mall during lunch hour and after
work include a mixture of active and retired affluent business men, lawyers, janitors,
traditional martial arts converts, artists, industrial plumbers, college students, and
younger, almost-out-of-high school guys looking to eventually compete in the cage. And,
while the “fat-burning” kickboxing class draws a number of young and middle-aged
women, there is next to no crossover with the MMA and grappling crew.
The following chapters are the result of my six-year ethnographic attempt to take
seriously what happens inside the walls of the MMA gym. While I would not claim the
label of grounded research or entering the site with blank intellectual slate to be inscribed
upon, throughout this project, I let the multiple allures of mixed martial arts guide my
theoretical inquisition and extensions. As I immersed myself in the gym, more questions,
paradoxes, and theoretical quandaries emerged. Some are rather obvious and will not
surprise the reader; for instance, why are people willingly subjecting themselves to
something that hurts so much and can lead to permanent damage to the body? Or, is this
just some sort of violent reclamation of masculinity project, as popular critics are quick to
claim? Other questions emerge from the less expected qualities of the site, such as, why
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are there so many stories? Soon my experiences on the mats had me travelling down
more abstract theoretical paths: What is the connection between the experience of pain
and intimacy? What is the relationship between the physical practice and the narrative?
What is the allure of feeling somewhat out-of-place and what can the liminal qualities of
the gym help us understand about masculinity? Does the spatial and temporal qualities of
the gym help us understand anything about the particular masculinities performed in the
site?
In some ways this is a personal story and project. My first exposure to mixed
martial arts (MMA) came in 1994, soon after it was brought to the United States by a
famous Brazilian martial arts family and an American business man and media
entrepreneur. My older brother heard about the seemingly absurd event from other
members of the college wrestling team and managed to find the VHS tape for UFC II at
one of the local video stores. As a young fan of action movies and video games that pitted
exotic fighting styles against each other I was both shocked by the brutality and drawn to
the spectacle of the event. And, as many participants of the site were quick to mention in
their origin tales, I was enthralled by the ability of the smallest fighter in the competition
to dominate large street fighters and martial arts masters without throwing a single punch.
There was something rawer and less rule-bound about this particular practice – an
attribute that was central to the rapid surge and subsequent crash of the first wave of
MMA. An arena packed with fans screaming in delight as one man pins another down
and elbows him repeatedly in the face was at some level different than other sporting
options. Even with medical studies proclaiming that boxing, football, and hockey all had
greater connections with injury and brain trauma, the aesthetic qualities of MMA
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