A future of violence thanks to the UFC

Amie Seier

Despite the fact that the WWE signed Floyd Mayweather Jr. to fight the Big Show (real name Paul Wight) at WrestleMania this year, there is only one legitimate way to find out who would win a fight between a boxer and a wrestler. It is that type of question that has spawned one of today’s most watched “sports” on television: mixed martial arts. And leading the North American boom in popularity is the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC).

The UFC was born in 1993 under the wonderful world of advertising. It was created to get see which fighting style was best — a novel idea at the beginning: let men take each other down in their own specific form of martial arts, wrestling or boxing. However, it became somewhat of a sideshow, one that U.S. Senator John McCain compared to “human cockfighting” and almost successfully banned.

After being forced back underground, the UFC popped up again in the states of Iowa, Mississippi, Louisiana, Wyoming and Alabama before making its full-fledged return in 2000 by adopting stricter rules. The UFC continued to rise in popularity thanks a sound marketing strategy, eventually winning the title of most pay-per-view watches in 2006.

One of the UFC’s smartest moves came in 2005. At the time, mixed martial arts was back in the public eye, and so too the American viewing public’s need to watch copious amounts of violence. So, UFC teamed up with Spike TV in putting together two of America’s favourite things: reality television and pure, raw violence. And so, The Ultimate Fighter was born. What gun-packing redneck American wouldn’t love a Survivor version of their favourite bone-crunching, blood-sucking, organ-flying sport?

Mainstream violence has now become commonplace on regular television, but the UFC brings a whole new level of violence to the table; one that is desensitizing us to pain and blood. Aside from the one minute of rest between rounds, the UFC is just a constant flow of violence in the media. When does it stop? Will television ever stop portraying that it’s perfectly all right to dropkick John Smith in the head?

Fans will argue that UFC is an extremely skilful sport, even moreso than boxing. But in reality, what can be any less skilful than a 275-pound heavyweight ready to destroy his opponent in any possible way inside the caged octagon? Boxing, on the other hand, is filled with many more rules and requires much more skill. Compare trying to knock someone down any possible way to knocking someone down with just your fists and let me know which one requires more talent.

Left in the wake of UFC, what are other sports to do? With the bar set even higher in sport violence other sports will now in the eyes of UFC fans look much more sissy-like. There is no question that violence has always existed in sports; but has there ever been such a huge popularity in just violence in sports?

The pressure from fans, media and coaches on players to become more violent continues to grow. The epidemic that is sports violence will likely continue to spread.