Society Geared For MMA

A new angle on why MMA has surpassed boxing as America's dominant combat sport by Doug MacEwan

As an avid fan of both boxing and MMA, I have taken notice of all the different theories as to why MMA has replaced boxing as the most popular combat sport in the world. On the surface you hear the talk of the rampant corruption in boxing turning long time fans away, but wasn’t it Don King who promoted “The Rumble in the Jungle” during boxing’s golden age? And furthermore isn’t it the Ultimate Fighting Championship, undoubtedly MMA’s most popular organization, that is run by two casino owners with alleged connections to the New Orleans mob?

I have also listened to many an argument about the apparent brutality of MMA drawing today’s blood thirsty masses away from the more sterilized boxing environment, but anyone who has watched Gatti vs. Ward or Corrales vs. Castillo 1 can tell you that there is plenty if not more violence over the course of a twelve round boxing match as compared to a three or five round MMA fight. This theory is supported by the fact that no MMA athlete has ever died as a result of fight related injuries while boxing produces unfortunate deaths year after year.

So why are we tuning into MMA and tuning out the “sweet science”? The answer suddenly came to me this morning as I was checking my email on my new i phone while watching old UFC clips on youtube while using tivo to fast forwarding through lulls in action in last nights fight between Bernard Hopkins and Ronald “Winky” Wright . We have become an instant gratification society that wants their e-mail, their coffee, their television, and especially their knockouts RIGHT NOW!!! We move so fast these days that we find a twelve round chess matches between two boxers (no matter the skill level) to be boring. We are so over stimulated these days that we can only commit all of our focus on one fight for about ten minutes before we get up to check our myspace or fast forward to the next fight. The UFC, and MMA in general, is much better geared to entertain our society where stimulation of all shapes forms and sizes is bombarding from every direction. We don’t have time to wait for boxers to feel each other out for three rounds…..we want to see a high kick to the head in the first three minutes so we can respond to all twenty text messages before the next fight starts. Even UFC fans constantly boo the fighters when they lock up on the ground fighting for better positioning to sink in a tight submission.

I realize how oversimplified my explanation is, but you can’t deny the facts….we want action and we want it now. From the day TIVO came out and gave the viewer the ability to fast forward through commercials, our society changed. I still love boxing and will continue to fork over $50 for the big PPV events, but I don’t see the trend of MMA being the premier contact sport ever changing, and it would not surprise me if it was absorbed into MMA altogether some day. The truth is twelve rounds of chess-like action no longer fits with main stream society, and I am surprised it has taken the likes of HBO and ESPN so long to hop on board with MMA. I think an ex girlfriend summed it up best as she was breaking up with me: “you’re like a little puppy that stops playing with one ball as soon as another ball come racing across the floor….” and even though her comment had nothing to do with boxing or MMA, I kept hearing that over and over in my head as I paused the Hopkins-Wright fight ten at least times to check if I could find a particular highlight of last years PRIDE “Open Weight Grand Prix”.