haggholm | MMA, UFC, and stuff (Reply)

I don’t watch a lot of MMA fights, but if I ever watch sports, they are combat sports. I have no interest in watching anything else; if I don’t have some understanding of the intricacies of the game, there’s nothing to catch my interest. Football (“soccer”, for you Americans) is just a bunch of guys kicking a ball back and forth. Where’s the interest in that? What are the skills; what’s there to watch? Hockey is much the same, only on ice and with a puck. —I don’t dispute that there is skill involved: Not at all. I just don’t get it.

MMA, though—I’m a poor grappler and a terrible striker, but at least I have some familiarity with the game. I can tell an armbar from an americana or a kimura, I know why you should never cross your ankles when you take somebody’s back, and I have some idea of when you should cross your ankles in the mount. I may not grok it, but I get it. That makes it interesting. Looking for lessons to take home makes it interesting, too. The adrenaline that goes with combat sports helps as well.

But the sport has a reputation for brutality. Personally, I think it’s largely undeserved. On the surface, that looks like a patently absurd statement: Is this not a sport where the aim is to beat or choke your opponent to unconsciousness, or to apply such pressure to his joints that he has to submit or suffer serious injury? Well, yes, yes it is. That is the sport. But glossing quickly over the fact that the people who take part in it are there of their own free will and choice and largely enjoy it, the simple fact is that mixed martial arts look a lot more brutal and dangerous than they really are.

Among the people who like to rile at MMA (and promotions like the UFC) for their brutality, decrying it as “human cockfighting” and the competitors as thuggish brawlers rather than athletes—among these detractors are, ironically enough, many boxing fans. It’s doubly ironic: Not only does boxing itself have a bit of a reputation for brutality (“sweet science” monicker notwithstanding); it is in fact far more dangerous than MMA.

Yes, really—boxing is more dangerous than MMA. Let’s review: In boxing, two fighters go at each other wearing large, heavy gloves. They are allowed only to punch, and go at it until time runs out (and one fighter wins on points) or one fighter is knocked out and cannot make the count. That’s important: If you’re groggy and fall down, but can get up by the ten-count, the match goes on.

In MMA, two fighters go at each other wearing small, light gloves. They can punch, kick, elbow, knee, throw, grapple, choke, and joint lock each other to their hearts’ content. The match can run the distance and be determined on points, or end whenever a fighter is knocked out, or choked unconscious, or submits via tap—typically to choke or joint lock (”submission techniques”), but sometimes to strikes. Note two differences here: First, in MMA, the referee will stop the match whenever one fighter is “unable to competently defend himself”. This means that unlike a boxing match, a fighter who blacks out is not stood back up (if he can make it at the count of ten) for more punishment. Second, many fights end with grappling submissions, which cause no damage at all to a fighter who taps out in time—I practice Brazilian jiu-jitsu, no small part of MMA’s grappling arsenal, and I certainly am not a tough guy…

The lack of a ten-count, the immediate loss for a fighter who can no longer defend himself, is significant. The condition known as dementia pugilistica, boxer’s dementia, or “punch-drunk syndrome”, is caused by many, many repeated blunt traumas to the head. A boxer not only takes more blows to the head to begin with (unlike MMA, standing and punching is all that’s allowed, after all); he may also be stood up for more punishment even after going down!

MMA, incidentally, often looks more brutal because there is much more blood. This is a consequence of the smaller, lighter gloves, but appearances to the contrary, those gloves probably make the sport safer. Boxing gloves do much more to protect a boxer’s hands than his opponent’s face; smaller gloves make knock-outs easier and therefore reduce the prolonged pummeling seen in a boxing bout. MMA certainly sports a lot of superficial injuries in the form of nicks and cuts, but it’s low on truly dangerous ones.

In the history of MMA, exactly one fighter has died as a result of a sanctioned match. (I believe he had an undisclosed medical condition.) Boxing has a less glorious record. But we need not go so far as to boxing: I admit to not having looked at detailed numbers, but I believe that MMA has a better safety record than an awful lot of sports—including football (whether the kind actually played with feet, or the other one), where leg injuries are very common.

There have been ups and downs, of course. I came across an interesting account in slideyfoot’s blog, of a disturbing event in UFC II, in 1994. In the first two UFCs, the referee did not have the power to stop a match. A fighter could be knocked out or choked out, or submit, or his corner could throw in the towel—but the referee could not make the decision. Big John McCarthy, the iconic referee of UFC II (and many subsequent UFCs) was none too happy about this—and his fears were well founded.

I had the mistaken belief that people were going to take care of their fighters, they were going to do the right thing. It quickly became evident that fighters were telling their corners don’t you ever stop the fight. It was supposed to be in the beginning that a fighter tapped out or the corner threw in the towel, that was it. It quickly became evident that was not enough because you had fighters who truly were not skilled in a true fight—some of them—and they might have been going against somebody who was, but their corners believed in them.

I told the fighters and the corners in the rules meeting that we would have before that, if I see your fighter in trouble, I'm going to point to that corner and I'm going to say, watch your fighter. That's a clue that hey, you might want to start thinking of throwing the towel, this guy is starting to have a problem. If you see that he’s continuing to have a problem, I need you to throw the towel so I can stop the fight and get your fighter out of there. They would all say no problem.

Well, Scott Morris, the guy going against Pat Smith, he ends up trying to take Pat Smith down, his foot slipped out, and Pat Smith ends up in a mount on him, then starts hammering him with big punches and starts hammering him with elbows. I was screaming at his corner, watch your fighter! Watch your fighter! Then I was telling them throw the towel! throw the towel! They looked at me and shook their heads, took the towel and threw it into the audience. The camera was on me, and my mouth was wide open, like oh my god, I can’t believe you just did that.

The here unnamed corner man, showing a stunning disregard for his student’s health and safety, was a man called Robert Bussey.

Big John McCarthy went on to express his feelings to the people running the show, and starting with the next UFC (UFC III), the referee gained the power to stop a bout. These days, there’s also a ringside doctor who can request a stop to the match. And much as the UFC’s detractors may cry shrilly about “human cockfighting”, no one has died in the Octagon.