Surprise, surprise: Zuffa Boxing is a failure. 11 months in and no fighters signed.

definitely a niche sport. Certainly in America.

Pride would have collapsed. Maybe Strikeforce and Dream would have become the UFC vs Pride of the day instead. Dream had quite a bit of momentum for a while to be sure, and Bellator hadn't really made a huge splash in America yet. Sengoku likely would have tried fighting with Dream but would have been absorbed or something. WEC and Shooto would be dealing with lower weight classes.

You know, sometimes I wonder whether the MMA explosion was inevitable. There was a shift in the wider culture in the early/mid 2000s that continued and intensified today -- more appreciation for aggressive sports, greater acceptance of violence in entertainment, and more interest in emotional, showy machismo that the UFC's marketing tapped into. Maybe it's the flipside of daily life becoming so restrained, sedentary, and disconnected that people needed something a little more primal. Whatever it was, though, I do wonder whether Zuffa would have gotten explosive growth regardless of TUF. Maybe not as fast, admittedly.
 
You know, sometimes I wonder whether the MMA explosion was inevitable. There was a shift in the wider culture in the early/mid 2000s that continued and intensified today -- more appreciation for aggressive sports, greater acceptance of violence in entertainment, and more interest in emotional, showy machismo that the UFC's marketing tapped into. Maybe it's the flipside of daily life becoming so restrained, sedentary, and disconnected that people needed something a little more primal. Whatever it was, though, I do wonder whether Zuffa would have gotten explosive growth regardless of TUF. Maybe not as fast, admittedly.

Is this really the case? If anything, I'd consider the 80s and 90s to exemplify these qualities far more than the 00s or the present day. Almost every single major sport has gotten markedly less violent starting around the time that MMA started to blossom in 00s through tonow (this goes for every single major sport I can think of), although, I think the general decline in the tolerance of violence in sport generally began before that, in the 80s, mostly in the sport of boxing. It can be argued that the public opinion towards boxing started to suffer in no small part due to the increasing anxiety surrounding the long-term effects on health that sport had on fighters (starting in the 80s with some highly-publicized deaths and perhaps most significantly affected by the public degradation of Muhammad Ali's health in the 90s).

Professional wrestling (probably the best cultural manifestation of simulated "emotional, showy machismo") seemed to reach its zenith in popularity in the mid-to-late 90s, and has steadily been declining since. A notable cultural phenomenon that did spring up in the early to mid 00s was reality television and I think that, along with the generally strange and very brief cultural moment that made Spike TV, energy drink culture, and clothing lines like Affliction so popular, is what really allowed MMA, and particularly the UFC to break through. Add in the explosion of the internet (MMA was a sport almost completely sustained by the internet in the dark days, and perhaps there even remains an argument today that it's massively reliant on the internet in a way that many other sports are not), and MMA was allowed to gain a foothold. I mean, it's not like the idea of MMA, or something very similar, is novel either in North America or beyond. Something like it has always existed, it's just that larger cultural and societal trends allowed it to finally gain mainstream acceptance in the 00s.
 
Is this really the case? If anything, I'd consider the 80s and 90s to exemplify these qualities far more than the 00s or the present day. Almost every single major sport has gotten markedly less violent starting around the time that MMA started to blossom in 00s through tonow (this goes for every single major sport I can think of), although, I think the general decline in the tolerance of violence in sport generally began before that, in the 80s, mostly in the sport of boxing. It can be argued that the public opinion towards boxing started to suffer in no small part due to the increasing anxiety surrounding the long-term effects on health that sport had on fighters (starting in the 80s with some highly-publicized deaths and perhaps most significantly affected by the public degradation of Muhammad Ali's health in the 90s)..

You raise some good points. It's true that sports as a whole have gotten less violent since the 90s, and I think that played a role in why MMA -- which at least *looks* extremely violent -- became more popular with the general public. (Even though MMA itself was affected by the same increasing interest in safety that happened in other sports.)

If anything, I think that MMA's rise to popularity among the general public was a reaction to the domestication of other sports.


Professional wrestling (probably the best cultural manifestation of simulated "emotional, showy machismo") seemed to reach its zenith in popularity in the mid-to-late 90s, and has steadily been declining since.

Yeah, 90s pro wrestling came to mind when I made that statement. I'd differentiate pro wrestling by emphasizing the same thing you mention: that it was simulated, not real.

If people wanted genuine violence as a counterpoint to sitting at a computer screen all day, as I think they did, then it makes sense that they'd switch from pro wrestling to something more basic. TUF had the pro wrestling drama and the violence, but both aspects seemed more genuine.

Pro wrestling might have been the gateway drug that opened the public up for MMA.

A notable cultural phenomenon that did spring up in the early to mid 00s was reality television and I think that, along with the generally strange and very brief cultural moment that made Spike TV, energy drink culture, and clothing lines like Affliction so popular, is what really allowed MMA, and particularly the UFC to break through. Add in the explosion of the internet (MMA was a sport almost completely sustained by the internet in the dark days, and perhaps there even remains an argument today that it's massively reliant on the internet in a way that many other sports are not), and MMA was allowed to gain a foothold. I mean, it's not like the idea of MMA, or something very similar, is novel either in North America or beyond. Something like it has always existed, it's just that larger cultural and societal trends allowed it to finally gain mainstream acceptance in the 00s.

Yeah, the Spike / energy drink / Affliction / internet confluence was pretty unusual in retrospect, wasn't it? Do you just think it was luck -- a community forming that would be natural consumers for MMA?
 
Yeah, the Spike / energy drink / Affliction / internet confluence was pretty unusual in retrospect, wasn't it? Do you just think it was luck -- a community forming that would be natural consumers for MMA?

Largely. I'd also speculate that one point you made, the general decline of professional wrestling into anything other than a cult or children/teen's show, opened helped create the proper environment. I still maintain that there isn't really much about MMA purely as a spectator sport that makes it particularly palatable to the mainstream. Not that I don't genuinely enjoy the sport, but a lot of it is stuff that the general consumer doesn't care for, whatsoever, and as has been mentioned in this thread, the UFC hasn't done a great job trying to extend general respectability (as superficial and silly as any attempt to make the more brutal sports "respectable" in a conventional sense) to the sport. It does appear WME might be trying, but I really do think MMA is a much more precarious sport than people realize.

There needs to be a concerted effort to build a meaningful infrastructure in the form of an international amateur system, or, at the very least formal relationships with other amateur martial arts (including wrestling, judo, and boxing, sports rather resistant to MMA at those levels), if people want the sport to grow and flourish. It's these structures which allow sports like boxing to constantly replenish talent pools and ultimately create stars regardless of lean years. Combat sports will always have peaks and valleys in terms of popularity, and I'm not at all sure that MMA has the infrastructure to meaningfully maintain its momentum in the long-term.
 
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Largely. I'd also speculate that one point you made, the general decline of professional wrestling into anything other than a cult or children/teen's show, opened helped create the proper environment. I still maintain that there isn't really much about MMA purely as a spectator sport that makes it particularly palatable to the mainstream. Not that I don't genuinely enjoy the sport, but a lot of it is stuff that the general consumer doesn't care for, whatsoever, and as has been mentioned in this thread, the UFC hasn't done a great job trying to extend general respectability (as superficial and silly as any attempt to make the more brutal sports "respectable" in a conventional sense) to the sport. It does appear WME might be trying, but I really do think MMA is a much more precarious sport than people realize.

There needs to be a concerted effort to build a meaningful infrastructure in the form of an international amateur system, or, at the very least formal relationships with other amateur martial arts (including wrestling, judo, and boxing, sports rather resistant to MMA at those levels), if people want the sport to grow and flourish. It's these structures which allow sports like boxing to constantly replenish talent pools and ultimately create stars regardless of lean years. Combat sports will always have peaks and valleys in terms of popularity, and I'm not at all sure that MMA has the infrastructure to meaningfully maintain its momentum in the long-term.

That's an interesting point. BJJ used to be the feeder sport for MMA, but it's starting to morph into something less connected with NHB competition.

Wrestling might fill the gap, as it seems to be doing right now, since there are so few outlets for great wrestlers to turn professional. Although with the gradual professionalization of Olympic sports, and the constant threat that pro wrestling might revive, I can see how this would be precarious too.

What sort of formal connections could MMA make with other amateur combat sports?

There are, of course, disadvantages to an institionalized amateur system specifically for MMA. Olympic TKD, WKF Karate, and the occasional goofiness that we see because of rule changes in Olympic boxing and judo come to mind. With something like MMA, I'd worry that the Olympic committee or whatever "USA MMA" organization that emerges would introduce bizarre amateur rules to leach all the combativeness out of the sport, making it palatable for an Olympic audience. Do you think that would be a risk worth taking?
 
You know, sometimes I wonder whether the MMA explosion was inevitable. There was a shift in the wider culture in the early/mid 2000s that continued and intensified today -- more appreciation for aggressive sports, greater acceptance of violence in entertainment, and more interest in emotional, showy machismo that the UFC's marketing tapped into. Maybe it's the flipside of daily life becoming so restrained, sedentary, and disconnected that people needed something a little more primal. Whatever it was, though, I do wonder whether Zuffa would have gotten explosive growth regardless of TUF. Maybe not as fast, admittedly.
DFW said something a while back which makes me doubt that. The early UFC shows were literal gladiator combat. Watch Royce vs Kimo. It was a freakshow that Street fighter couldn't make up. You had two rules: no eye gouging (which happened anyhow) and no biting. Everything else was legal. AT the time, saying you watched MMA was like admiting to ordering the worst kind of porn, So the UFC (under Zuffa) started increasing regulations, adding rules, working with sanctioning bodies, adding weight classes etc... So that it looked more like boxing with more moves available than anyhting else. I think it also tapped into a market because people wanted to see karateman vs wrestler. Still, the UFC was on its way out, and to be totally frank, stuff like K-1 was more entertaining and more consistent in having high level matchups. I think TUF really save the UFC. Cobmine that with the fact that I think early/mid 2000s boxing was a bit of a low point in the sport (and boxing was and probably still is the #1 combat sports), it's easy to see how the UFC took off for a bit.
 
DFW said something a while back which makes me doubt that. The early UFC shows were literal gladiator combat. Watch Royce vs Kimo. It was a freakshow that Street fighter couldn't make up. You had two rules: no eye gouging (which happened anyhow) and no biting. Everything else was legal. AT the time, saying you watched MMA was like admiting to ordering the worst kind of porn, So the UFC (under Zuffa) started increasing regulations, adding rules, working with sanctioning bodies, adding weight classes etc... So that it looked more like boxing with more moves available than anyhting else. I think it also tapped into a market because people wanted to see karateman vs wrestler. Still, the UFC was on its way out, and to be totally frank, stuff like K-1 was more entertaining and more consistent in having high level matchups. I think TUF really save the UFC. Cobmine that with the fact that I think early/mid 2000s boxing was a bit of a low point in the sport (and boxing was and probably still is the #1 combat sports), it's easy to see how the UFC took off for a bit.

The crisis in boxing in the early 2000s was something I hadn't considered, but yeah, that absolutely played a role. You're right.

As to the rehabilitated image of MMA, I agree that MMA has gotten a lot more rules, which helps bring in the general public. We still aren't at a point where early UFC style fights would be mainstream. But I think that the interest in MMA is a sign of the "center" of viewership shifting toward more acceptance of violence, not less. The early UFCs, which were considered really brutal back in the day as you say, are just eyebrow-raising now. To steal an overused political metaphor, it's like an Overton window shift, except for violence in combat sports instead of politics.

EDIT: Was there any MMA org in the US waiting in the wings to replace the UFC, if it had gone bankrupt? I suppose that's another factor -- the sport of MMA only had a few centers of activity back then. If they fail, the whole thing collapses.

Wasn't there a proposal to do a TUF style show with K1 fighters, but K1 turned it down and they went to the UFC instead?
 
DFW said something a while back which makes me doubt that. The early UFC shows were literal gladiator combat. Watch Royce vs Kimo. It was a freakshow that Street fighter couldn't make up. You had two rules: no eye gouging (which happened anyhow) and no biting. Everything else was legal. AT the time, saying you watched MMA was like admiting to ordering the worst kind of porn, So the UFC (under Zuffa) started increasing regulations, adding rules, working with sanctioning bodies, adding weight classes etc... So that it looked more like boxing with more moves available than anyhting else. I think it also tapped into a market because people wanted to see karateman vs wrestler. Still, the UFC was on its way out, and to be totally frank, stuff like K-1 was more entertaining and more consistent in having high level matchups. I think TUF really save the UFC. Cobmine that with the fact that I think early/mid 2000s boxing was a bit of a low point in the sport (and boxing was and probably still is the #1 combat sports), it's easy to see how the UFC took off for a bit.

Doesn't guys like Howard Peschler and especially Paul Smith of the IFC deserve most of the credit for that kind of stuff? I know the IFC had redrafted the ruleset and had gotten government sanctioning in a number of states after doing so, and I believe that all happened some time before Zuffa took over UFC ownership.
 
DFW said something a while back which makes me doubt that. The early UFC shows were literal gladiator combat. Watch Royce vs Kimo. It was a freakshow that Street fighter couldn't make up. You had two rules: no eye gouging (which happened anyhow) and no biting. Everything else was legal. AT the time, saying you watched MMA was like admiting to ordering the worst kind of porn, So the UFC (under Zuffa) started increasing regulations, adding rules, working with sanctioning bodies, adding weight classes etc... So that it looked more like boxing with more moves available than anyhting else. I think it also tapped into a market because people wanted to see karateman vs wrestler. Still, the UFC was on its way out, and to be totally frank, stuff like K-1 was more entertaining and more consistent in having high level matchups. I think TUF really save the UFC. Cobmine that with the fact that I think early/mid 2000s boxing was a bit of a low point in the sport (and boxing was and probably still is the #1 combat sports), it's easy to see how the UFC took off for a bit.
i can only remember as a spectator, the early ufc's were definitely known by everyone, they were notorious if not marketable. Everyone knew about it after the first few ones, everyone. Honestly, the biggest detractors were the old martial artists, still are probably and they lost a lot of money when it became obvious that grappling trumped striking. It was so violent though that it created enemies, was banned just about everywhere john mccain was a major vocal one. he's since said the sport has grown up and it's ok. It sure looked violent didn't it? even after watching boxing all those years, totally unprepared for the brutality of the sport. You'd think women would hate it and I think they did but I recall vividly in those years, almost every night some dingbat would be there watching the guys roll, maybe it turned some women on, it was wierd.
 
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