MMA must now choose between sport and reality TV
AT WHAT stage does it stop being all about the rematch? Somebody in MMA has to make that call. And, until it does, Mixed Martial Arts will never get the sporting legitimacy it craves but does not deserve. MMA is at the cusp. It can decide to continue trying to be a video game, or try to be a sport.
MMA has made enormous inroads into popular culture. It occupies the place that professional boxing held during the middle decades of the last century and is fighting, unsuccessfully, to retain the worldwide media coverage, the identity parade of celebs at ringside, headlined by Mel Gibson, Mad Max watching mad Mac.
Just over a century ago, boxing got its legitimacy and became a real sport, with a small army of dedicated coaches and volunteers, ex-boxers wishing to pass on their skills without any remuneration, taking country boys and street children and teaching them about pain and endeavour, victory and defeat.
The so-called science of boxing. Boxing has had its wobbles. Pre-match patter became more mock-heroic. Ring entrances were turned into sound and light shows. The structure of the sport became an alphabet soup of bodies more attentive to TV contracts and pay-days than legitimising its elite performers.
The smell of corruption still lingered around big professional fights, and an unsettling proportion of criminal families occupied those ringside seats alongside the celebrities. But it had an amateur heart which, if not always pure and true, was dedicated to sporting endeavour.
MMA has none of these. Its roots, downplayed by its besuited defenders, are in the cages which have evolved to become the octagons of today.
Human cock-fighting was an accurate depiction of the chaos from where it came.
Each of the six sports from which MMA has evolved have bottom-up structures from which the elite of the sport will emerge. Conor McGregor was a Leinster semi-finalist in boxing, a real sport. So is jiu-jitsu, the sport of Dillon Danis, whom Khabib Nurmagomedov leaped at to start the scuffle.
MMA combined the rules of these six sports and calmed them down a little, not to protect participants, but to win the approval of the US authorities.
This is part of the problem. As martial and combat sports were forced to tone down the violence, adopt helmets, larger gloves and irritating intrusions like health and safety, MMA took a Hollywood concept of violence and packaged it for a live and ever-growing audience.
That makes it different from real sports. Organisation is top-down, not bottom-up.
It would not exist without its premier promotional vehicle, UFC, and the Fertittas, the casino-owning family that promulgated it.
Without the avarice of tickets, PPV packagers and other cheerleaders, MMA would not reach beyond the shoddy back street taverns where it was born.
It is all about the money, not about the kids, not about participation, not about the pursuit of excellence. Fall out with the UFC, as Dennis Hallman did, and your career is over.
The problem with the top-down model is that it is beholden not to master, but to paymaster, and, in recent years, to the McGregor that laid the golden egg.
For two years it has been waiting for the paymaster to return, like a sequel hero, while his foray into boxing managed to shred the credibility of two sports.
UFC president Dana White was left like a circus master who had lost his bear.
McGregor cannot be blamed for hamming up the script he was given. This was always about theatre, not the real thing.
The cameras are rolling, so it is OK to take on a bus (what did the bus make in the weigh-in?), to offer his Muslim opponent a whiskey, to dispense the sort of opprobrium that is usually the domain of talent-show panellists and (shamefully) US presidents.
It should be no surprise that the boundary of the octagon was so easily crossed in both directions by the protagonists of the Vegas chaos.
As boundaries were pushed inwards in combat sports, MMA celebrated breaking them. That made what happened in Vegas on Saturday night if not inevitable, highly probable.
Did anyone realise what was happening on Saturday night?
Certainly not Dana White, with his eye on his licence and his revenue stream, talking about having the brawlers refused visas to get back into the USA. Certainly not Conor.
“Good knock. Looking forward to the rematch,” was McGregor’s verdict on the chaos. In his head, at least, it is still about the rematch.
Many years ago, Ireland had sporting heroes in Steve Casey and Danno O’Mahoney. They wrestled in front of huge crowds and returned to heroes’ welcomes. The sport they pursued, professional wrestling, was still attached to its amateur roots.
Within a few decades, their sport became choreographed nonsense, led into the land of make-believe by avaricious promoters and television producers.
MMA is at the point where it can try to be a sport, or follow wrestling’s course into quasi-reality TV.
Vegas on Saturday shows how close it is to making the wrong choice.
The identity parade of celebs at ringside, headlined by Mel Gibson, Mad Max watching mad Mac