Unmixed Martial Arts

So, Brock Lesnar beat Randy Couture by referee stoppage in that MMA heavyweight title fight. Lesnar caught Couture with a right hand in the second round, sending Couture to the ground, then Lesnar got on top of him and kept punching him in the head until the ref decided Couture wasn't intelligently defending himself and stepped in. The size differential between these two dudes was something greater than anticipated. Couture weighed in at 6'1" and 220lbs, and Lesnar weighed in at 6'3" and 265lbs. During the fight, it looked like Lesnar was at least four inches taller and 75 pounds heavier than Couture. Couture explained his loss thusly: "That's a big summbitch." He was right. Rounding out the night, Joe Rogan co-announced the fight and he was in full douchebag form as predicted right here in this blog. Joe wasn't wearing his usual ball cap though, prompting one of the girls we were watching with to say "that dude needs some Rogaine." Good idea: more Rogaine and less Rogan.

In my last post, I joked that I am going to become an MMA fighter. This is not entirely unrealistic. True, my fighting background goes only as far as a karate green belt and a couple of bar brawls so I might be a tad inexperienced. But I have what is apparently the most important trait: I'm white.

Saturday's title fight featured two white guys fighting for the heavyweight championship. The undercard was also filled mostly with white guys. As I thought more about it, most of the MMA fights I've seen are between white guys. Based on empirical evidence, I'd say that latinos are represented in MMA in about the same proportion as in the general population, and blacks are proportionally under-represented in MMA. Why is this? Although this topic probably deserves actual research and intelligent writing, I've come up with a few possibilities.

Possibility #1: MMA Intentionally Recruits White Guys and Discourages Minorities. As a relatively new sport, MMA is trying to grow itself. The demographic most coveted by advertisers are males aged 18 to 34 years old (meaning advertisers are after The Wood Dog but couldn't give two shits about me) and white males within that group are probably more affluent than minority males. So it would make good business sense to cater to young white males by featuring fighters that target audience can identify with.

Boxing has become increasingly unpopular over the years, and it seems to have been surpassed by MMA. The majority of boxers are ethnic minorities. If whites don't identify with these boxers and quit following the sport, that's a huge audience to lose and could account for the fall in popularity. I don't follow boxing, but I do know more about Kelly Pavlik's career than I do about any other boxer's. Which is to say I am vaguely aware of it. When Floyd Maywether fought Ricky Hatton, I was a bit torn as to which fighter to root for. Maywether is a black American and was viewed as the more talented fighter. He was also portrayed as an arrogant asshole. Hatton was a scrappy white fighter from Britain who was the underdog. I ended up pulling for Hatton, though I don't know how much race played into that and how much the underdog factor played into it. More recently, white European fighter Joe Calzaghe defeated black American Roy Jones Jr. in a title fight. Jones was portrayed as something of a reformed former asshole in the lead-up to that fight, while Calzaghe was portrayed similarly to Hatton, a small-town white fighter who is trained by his father, a Man of the People who never forgot about the old neighborhood. I didn't watch that fight so I didn't really have a rooting interest in it, but I will say this: Calzaghe's girlfriend is HOT.

In addition to those two title fights, I believe there are some white Russians who have been passing the heavyweight boxing title around. And I know there are some White Russians that are currently being consumed on these premises. But since these Russian fighters look more like white Americans, it may be easier for white Americans to identify with them. However, they're still Europeans so it would be tougher to get entirely behind these guys. And maybe we see that in boxing's flagging popularity.

However, boxing's unpopularity might also be due to perceived corruption in the sport, fighters with lackluster personalities, or the increase in viewing alternatives. Muhammad Ali was an interesting and controversial fighter, and boxing was wildly popular when he was heavyweight champion though his biggest fights came against other black fighters like George Foreman and Joe Frazier. However, a controversial figure like Ali would risk losing endorsement deals in this day and age, so it may be that many boxers have made a conscious choice to be relatively boring. Additionally, in Ali's time viewers could only choose between boxing or whatever was on the other two TV channels, and they'd actually have to get up off the couch and walk over to the TV to change to another channel. It's much easier to click over to an episode of Top Chef today.

In a somewhat similar vein, some might blame the NBA's decline in popularity on the perceived Thugification of that league. In a mostly black league where the on-court players are more visible than in any other sport, did the cornrows, tattoos, on-court fights and off-court incidents cause "white flight" from the NBA? Although the majority of NBA players are probably well-behaved, media coverage of the transgressions feeds into the perception that the league is full of thugs with whom white audiences have little in common. At a minimum these incidents have led to changes in the sport, such as mandatory suspensions for players who leave the bench area during fights, and dress codes for injured or inactive players while they are on the bench during games. Although there are also white players with tattoos and cornrows in the NBA, these players are less prominent and don't receive as much media attention. I know I don't care about the NBA now (I do participate in an NBA fantasy league each year, but I don't prepare for the draft or follow the league). I did in the 1980's and early 1990's when Larry Bird, Danny Ainge, Kevin McHale, Jerry Sichting, Scott Wedman, Brad Lohaus and Greg Kite played for the Boston Celtics. That could be because the Celtics were about all I could talk about with my father during that time, or it could be because I could relate better to a team with white players. Still, I also liked Reggie Lewis, and one of my favorite Celtic players was Dirk Minnifield, a scrappy black player who was the last guy off the bench. The Boston home crowd (and me) would go wild whenever Dirk came into the game or scored a bucket. Like boxing, the NBA seems to be getting "whiter" with an influx of European players, but again it might be difficult for white Americans to fully get behind and support white European players.

So, it could be a conscious choice by MMA to seek out white American fighters, and maybe to exclude or discourage minority fighters, in order to appeal to the white American audience. I'm not saying it is, I'm saying it's possible.

Possibility #2: White Guys Wrestle. Ground-fighting is a huge part of MMA. Almost without fail, an MMA fight is going to go the ground at some point and if a fighter doesn't have ground-fighting skills he's in big trouble. At my high school, basketball season and wrestling season ran concurrently. More black guys went out for basketball than for wrestling, and most of the black guys who tried out made the basketball team. This left a bunch of open wrestling slots, and since most of the black athletes in the school played basketball, the remaining athletes to fill the wrestling slots were largely white or latino. If this same scenario is playing out throughout the country, then there's a much larger "farm system" of white and latino wrestlers who are developing the base skills to become MMA fighters. Why might blacks be more attracted to basketball? Possibly because of opportunity - there are likely a lot more basketball courts in urban areas than there are wrestling gyms. Maybe most colleges don't offer wrestling scholarships (I don't know if they do or not) while most offer basketball scholarships, so black players may pursue basketball as a "way out" of the streets and into college. It could also be that black players are attracted to basketball because it offers the potential for a pro career in the U.S. or in Europe, whereas until the recent rise of MMA there weren't as many opportunities to make a career out of wrestling.
Whites may also be attracted to wrestling because it is a more level playing field for them athletically. Although disputed, some have theorized that black athletes are more agile and have greater footspeed and jumping ability than white athletes. These athletic advantages would be largely negated in close combat. For instance, the majority of "skill position" players in the NFL, where footspeed is a primary requirement, are black. However, there are still significant numbers of white offensive and defensive lineman, for whom size and strength is relatively more important than speed. On a personal level, I don't think I've ever seen, in person, a white guy fight a black guy where the white guy tried to box the black guy for any length of time. The white guy would realize he was outmatched in handspeed, and would try to take the other guy to the ground. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't, but the strategy is pretty consistent.

Possibility #3: White Guys Bleed. Nothing makes for good spectating quite like someone bleeding all over the place. This is true in boxing, and the best hockey fights involve someone getting beaten to a bloody pulp on the ice. Empirically, it seems to me that white fighters get cut more often and become bloody messes mid-fight more often than black fighters. The blood certainly contrasts better with a white face, and the same goes for black eyes and bruises. Whites and blacks both suffer these injuries, but the purple contrast on a white face is immediately noticeable during a fight, whereas it can be difficult to notice these injuries on a black fighter until the break between rounds or the press conference afterwards. The more-visible injuries and blood on the white fighter will incite "blood lust" in the crowd, making for a more exciting experience. So maybe the equation is that simple: White MMA Fighters => Bloody MMA Fighters => Exciting MMA Fights => Popular Sport.