Slugging Its Way Into the Arena
Alan Abrahamson, Los Angeles Times, 28th December 2005
Extreme fighting, once denounced as ‘human cockfighting,’ has seen its popularity soar. California is the latest to sanction it.
Music screamed, colored lights flashed overhead and nearly 12,000 people howled as Rich Franklin, a math whiz from Cincinnati, shattered Nate Quarry’s nose with a left hand.
Franklin, the middleweight champion, moved in. Quarry, a 33-year-old challenger from Oregon, circled warily. His nose flopped to one side, but he was still standing, still competing.
Franklin delivered another left, snapping Quarry’s head back. Unconscious and bloodied, Quarry tumbled straight back, felled like a tree in the forest.
“This is as pure as it gets,” shouted Paul Skifter, 20, of Oakdale, Calif., “a pure adrenaline rush.” Added Ken Clement, 27, of Toronto: “It’s the best thing in sports.”
The Nov. 19 event at the MGM Grand was not a boxing match. It was a relatively new event known as mixed martial arts, or MMA, which incorporates wrestling, boxing, kickboxing, karate and jiu-jitsu.
Excoriated at first as gratuitous mayhem, extreme fighting toned down the violence to a degree, and since 2000 has been sanctioned in 20 states, including California, and has seen its popularity and TV ratings rise.
Ultimate Fighting Championship, or UFC, is the leading U.S. brand name in mixed martial arts, in which fighters compete barefoot, wearing shorts and small gloves, protected only by a mouth guard and a cup.
Rules ban biting, hair-pulling, spitting, eye-gouging, groin strikes, abusive language and “small-digit manipulation.”
What remains still might cause boxing purists to blanch, though promoters and some regulators say it is safer than boxing because the bouts are shorter, head blows are discouraged and “tapping out” – how a losing fighter signals that he wants to quit – is an accepted part of the sport’s culture.
Fans in growing numbers, in person and at home, apparently crave seeing what happens when a boxer and a karate master collide. Over the last year, UFC has presented two editions of “The Ultimate Fighter,” a reality series on the male-oriented cable channel Spike TV. The second season’s finale, on Nov. 5, drew 2.6 million viewers, said Nielsen Media Research, making it cable’s highest-rated program that night among males 18 to 24. Casting is underway for a third season.
The sport’s competitive legitimacy is spelled out in New Jersey’s state rules: “The contests are not scripted like most professional wrestling events.”
Last month, the California State Athletic Commission became the latest to give its approval. The new rules take effect today, with the first bouts expected in March.
Armando Garcia, executive director of the California commission, said his small staff had been inundated with inquiries about how soon and under what conditions mixed martial arts contests could take place.
In an early December letter to would-be fighters, managers and officials, Garcia said the onset of the bouts in California was an “exciting moment for mixed martial arts” but a “challenging one” for the commission.
He said the agency initially sought an allocation of about $46,000 to “run the [mixed martial arts] process,” which includes the processing of licensing applications and oversight of the training of referees.
Garcia said a commission priority was fighter safety. He said he had asked for a budget increase and at least two more staff members, anticipating the sanctioning of dozens of mixed martial arts bouts in 2006 throughout California – on top of perhaps 100 boxing events.
Promoters such as Darrin Dotson of West Hills can already hear the jingle of ticket and merchandise sales.
“People will be able to go … see the UFC, and it’s going to blow up here in California,” Dotson said. “It’s going to be a huge, growing sport.”
Four years ago, a UFC event in Las Vegas drew about 4,000 spectators. Now, attendance is regularly triple that, according to Nevada state records.
The move into California caps a comeback few would have predicted nearly five years ago when brothers Lorenzo and Frank Fertitta, who own Station Casinos in Las Vegas, and Dana White, a longtime friend with a boxing background, took over UFC. Their company is called Zuffa – an Italian word meaning “to fight.”
Mixed martial arts contests first appeared in the 1990s, and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), after seeing a match, urged a ban on what he called “human cockfighting.”
McCain’s remark instead prompted states to move toward regulating it.
By 2001, when Zuffa bought in, UFC had slipped into the shadows. But Lorenzo Fertitta had served on the Nevada State Athletic Commission, and where others saw pandemonium, he and White saw opportunity in a some-holds-barred version.
“While other groups run from regulation, we run toward it,” Fertitta said, adding that such government sanctioning bestowed legitimacy. “I want to be regulated.”
White said that if not for McCain, “this could still be a freak show. He helped take this to the next level.”
A spokesman at McCain’s office declined to comment.
UFC action takes place in an eight-sided chain-link enclosure that sits on a raised platform.
Pride Fighting Championships, the leading mixed martial arts promoter in Japan, uses a boxing-style ring with ropes along the sides. California permits only the cage-like setup, but executives at the Los Angeles offices of Pride’s parent company, Dream Stage Entertainment, are pushing for a broader rule.
“Obviously, if California is serious about wanting our business, like they say they are, they’ll be able to make this amendment,” said Turi Altavilla, a company vice president.
The UFC octagon has a “menacing” feel that might suggest spectacle rather than sport, Lorenzo Fertitta acknowledged. But he and other Zuffa officials insist the cage heightens safety, saying a fighter might otherwise fall through the ropes.
Competitors sometimes end up in a hospital. But boosters say this is no different than football and reflects the sport’s commitment to safety.
Quarry was examined in Las Vegas’ Valley Hospital Medical Center after being knocked out. He said a scan determined his brain functions were normal; doctors confirmed the obvious, that his nose was broken, and sent him back to his hotel.
Quarry said he felt fine the day after his knockout, and that critics who focused on violence missed the tactics and strategy of a well-fought match: “This is literally a chess match in motion.”
Peter Carmel, a New Jersey neurosurgeon and American Medical Assn. trustee, isn’t buying it. The AMA has called for boxing and mixed martial arts to be banned on the grounds that their primary goal, Carmel said, is to “to damage, maim or incapacitate your opponent.”
State regulators say the evidence doesn’t support that claim – especially regarding mixed martial arts.
This year, two boxers have died in Nevada. In the roughly four years since Nevada approved the sport, the most serious mixed martial arts injury has been a broken arm, said Marc Ratner, the Nevada commission’s executive director.
Nick Lembo, counsel to the New Jersey State Athletic Control Board, said there had been no major injuries since the sport was sanctioned there in 2000.
“In MMA, you’re going to see there’s more violence in their advertising and marketing, and to the casual observer it does seem more primitive and more violent,” Lembo said. “But in terms of serious injuries, it seems safer than boxing.”
Bouts include fewer rounds than in boxing, and mixed martial arts referees tend to end fights more quickly than their boxing counterparts. In addition, gloves offer only minimal hand protection – a design meant to discourage repeated pounding of an opponent’s head, a form of contact that worries regulators and medical experts.
Moreover, fighters and officials say there is no shame in conceding defeat. Boxer Roberto Duran may have earned enduring infamy against Sugar Ray Leonard years ago when he was reported to have said, “No mas,” but the honor code among mixed martial arts fighters enables a loser to “tap out” – and to come back to fight another day.
The sport is receiving a boost from “The Ultimate Fighter,” which places 16 rivals in a house for weeks while they train and battle in elimination fights. Winners earn six-figure UFC deals.
Zuffa, privately held, does not disclose financial results. But White said pay-per-view buys were 20 times higher than four years ago and DVD sales were “stellar.”
“Right now, the business is working,” Lorenzo Fertitta said.
The fighters have helped by making themselves accessible to fans, pausing for autographs and pictures after every show.
“I cannot do anything but express my gratitude to these people,” said welterweight Diego Sanchez, 23, of Albuquerque as fans clamored for his signature.
Light-heavyweight Chuck Liddell, 35, perhaps the sport’s biggest name, has a Mohawk that shows off tattoos of Chinese characters that he says mean “place of peace and prosperity.”
A college wrestler at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Liddell said he graduated in 1995 with a business degree. He has a daughter, 8, and a son, 7.
“We’re just normal guys,” he said. “I’d do this for fun on weekends if I had to.”
Franklin, 31, said he holds a master’s degree in education and undergraduate degrees in math and education from the University of Cincinnati.
After knocking out Quarry, he was asked how his mother felt about her son’s unusual career path. “I just got off the phone,” he replied, “and she’s really proud of me.”
edit: Also, this article on the same topic in the Modesto Bee:
Cage Brawls Are On The Way; Critics Outraged That ‘Barbaric’ Ultimate Fighting Is Going To Be Officially Sanctioned By State
Melody Gutierrez, The Modesto Bee, 27th December 2005
Urijah Faber calls himself the “California Kid” when he climbs into the cage as an ultimate fighter. His job is to choke, punch, strike or elbow an opponent into submission within three five-minute rounds.
It’s a career he’s paid for in blood and bruises. His only defeat cost him seven staples in his head.
Ultimate fighting – also known as cage fighting or mixed martial arts – is spurring interest and outrage as it moves from the smoky netherworld of unsanctioned backroom brawls and loosely regulated Indian casinos to formal recognition by California authorities. The state will give its blessing, effective Wednesday.
The California State Athletic Commission, which oversees professional boxing and martial arts, agreed in November to sanction ultimate fighting, which it prefers to call mixed martial arts because the term ultimate fighting is associated with Ultimate Fighting Championship, one of several promoters of the sport.
The decision gives cage fighting legitimacy -and raises concerns among critics who believe it hardly qualifies as a sport.
Faber needed no formal approval to stoke his interest in ultimate fighting. The former standout wrestler at the University of California at Davis has a degree in human development but prefers to earn up to $6,000 per fight with the promise of higher paydays.
“For my weight class, some of the higher-paid guys get $60,000 (per fight) in Japan,” said the 26-year-old, 145-pound Faber. “In the near future, it will probably be more than that.”
Big purses are not worth the price ultimate fighting extracts from its participants, critics say. American Medical Association board member Dr. Peter Carmel said it’s difficult to condone – medically or morally -a sport whose aim is to incapacitate an opponent.
“I’m intrigued by the popularity of the sport,” said Carmel, a neurosurgeon. “I don’t know what that says about our society. I have no doubt if we bring back lions and Christians, we would fill coliseums. I’m surprised we don’t draw the line.”
The outcome of ultimate fights is most troubling for critics such as Carmel and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who in the 1990s referred to ultimate fighting as “barbaric” and “human cockfighting.”
McCain’s disapproval threatened to drive ultimate fighting off television. In 2001, new promoters stepped in with the promise of cleaning up the sport. Weight classes, time limits, gloves and mouthpieces were among the things added.
But that’s not enough, Carmel said.
“Do I see a future in it for the entrepreneurs?” Carmel asked. “Oh, yeah. It’s a brilliant future. Do I think these men in this sport have a future? It’s bleak.”
READY TO RUMBLE
Moments before his fight at the Chukchansi Gold Resort and Casino, northeast of Fresno, Faber displays no reluctance.
Cruising down the small walkway as he’s cheered by several hundred fans, Faber is focused on the cage in the center of the room.
His task this night is to pummel Charles “Crazy Horse” Bennett who, of course, hopes to deliver the same fate to Faber in the title fight.
The men are soon grappling. With limbs interlocked, they roll around while the audience roars. With 12 seconds left in the first round, the California Kid pins Crazy Horse in a chokehold.
Faber improved his record to 10 victories with one loss.
Ultimate fighting appears to appeal to boxing purists as well as wrestling fans enthralled by theatrical mayhem. While boxing audiences traditionally have been mostly male skewing toward middle age and pro wrestling has targeted teenagers and even families, ultimate fighting seeks to be a crossover.
“We’ve got to have some excitement and violence in our lives, too,” said Leeann Corbaley, 67, of Bass Lake before the eight fights on the card featuring Faber’s bout.
The state approval promises to bring those aspects, for better or worse, to arenas across California. The financial incentive for promoters is significant. The Dec. 11 show featuring Faber quickly sold out. The audience was overwhelmingly male, but the ages were spread across the spectrum.
“It’s not a bunch of lowlifes coming here,” said 63-year-old Claus Erlemann, who retired from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and now lives in Bass Lake. “There are professional people here, too.”
Dana White, president of Ultimate Fighting Championship, the premier brand name of the sport, has referred to it as the new generation’s boxing.
“Boxing has become your father’s sport,” White told USA Today.
Ultimate fighting had an underground appeal before the UFC went mainstream with a reality show on Spike TV called “The Ultimate Fighter.” The show saw its average audience grow to nearly 2 million viewers during its 13-week run, according to Nielsen Media Research.
As ultimate fighting’s popular-ity increases, there are at least 20 states that still don’t sanction it.
The California State Athletic Commission licenses boxers, trainers and promoters, and strives to maintain neurological records in a sport where in past generations there was less concern for injuries.
Before California decided to sanction the sport, ultimate fighting was conducted in places where there were few, if any rules, such as Indian casinos, where state and federal agencies do not have jurisdiction.
Soon the tribal casinos could have competition from venues such as Arco Arena. Athletic Commission Executive Officer Armando Garcia said there will be major Las Vegas-style events in the sport throughout California as soon as March.
Public demand is one reason Garcia was determined to sanction ultimate fighting when he began his job in June.
Garcia said he believes official involvement will make ultimate fighting safer.
“California is such a big state it’s hard to regulate,” he said. “What’s scary about those (unregulated) events is that you don’t know what kind of medical staff they have on the scene. It’s reckless. It’s about safety.”
WILL STATE HELP MAKE IT SAFE?
Carmel, the doctor, said he doesn’t think sanctioning can remove the dangers. He said it’s “only a matter of time” before life-threatening injuries occur.
For Faber, who continues to participate in bouts that pay him several thousand dollars each, he says there is plenty of time to think about what he’ll do when the cage door closes on his ultimate-fighting career. He thinks about opening a gym and training other fighters.
For now, he’s enjoying the limelight as he makes more and more money for each fight.
He doesn’t dwell on his lone defeat, when he continued fighting for 11 minutes after his head was split open on a metal bar that wasn’t properly padded.
“It kept bleeding into my hair,” he said. “I looked like a redhead at the end of the fight.”
The better-known fighters can earn $200,000 for a fight, while beginners can make as little as $100, Faber said.
The money doesn’t add up for Faber’s mom, who once tried to pay him not to fight.
Beyond the money, the attraction of ultimate fighting is basic to Faber.
“I make a living, and it’s a lot better than a desk job,” he said.
The UFC, and MMA in general, has come a long way in the last 10 years. Compare the above to this story from 1996:
Amateur fighting carnage sickens lawmakers; Officials mount drive to stop tough man' and ultimate’ fights while deaths increase
Rocky Mountain News, 23rd June 1996
When Eric Crow, a young father, decided to enter a local ``tough-man’’ boxing contest, he saw it as a chance to bring home a quick $1,000 top prize and surprise his wife by carpeting the family’s apartment.
Indeed, things seemed to be going his way as he won his first bout. But when he suffered a seizure on the way home and died four days later, his death became the latest reason cited for banning or enacting tough regulations over the growing business of amateur fighting, for which combatants can walk in off the street.
The action ranges from ``tough-man’’ contests, like the one that cost Crow his life in December 1995, which basically pits almost all comers against each other, to extreme or ultimate fighting, in which only eye-gouging and biting are forbidden. Backers of both competitions say they are safer than mainstream boxing, but the contests are being increasingly banned by states and cities around the country.
While there are no official figures on how many fighters have been killed or seriously injured, many authorities are growing alarmed at the rising toll.
New York State officials canceled a lease on the Brooklyn Armory for an ultimate fight in 1995, and legislation is pending in Albany that would outlaw such contests. The New York State Athletic Commission already considers ``tough-man’’ fights unlicensed boxing and thus illegal.
In December, Denver barred the Ultimate Ultimate Fighting Championship from taking place in a city auditorium, although its promoters found a private venue in the city.
In Missouri, as the result of Crow’s death, lawmakers passed a bill banning combative sports. Gov. Mel Carnahan has promised to sign the legislation.
And Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican who was a college boxer, and Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, a Colorado Republican, are leading a national campaign to ban extreme fighting. McCain has also been pushing legislation that would require all states to set standards for professional boxing, which is unregulated in several states. It would include provisions for insurance, prefight medical examinations and ringside doctors.
``Tough-man’’ fights, however, are not covered by either measure, as the degree of skill is far from professional and the extent of carnage is somewhat limited by rules and safety gear. But Marilyn Jarczyk, Crow’s mother, is leading an effort to get both tough-man and ultimate fighting banned.
John Wayne Gibbs of Flint, Mich., also entered a ``tough-man’’ contest in 1995, fought two nights and spent several weeks in a coma after his second bout. His lawyer, who is suing the promoter, says Gibbs has permanent brain damage as a result.
The Brain Injury Association in Washington, which is distributing the Missouri law around the country as model legislation, says there is no real difference between the two types of fighting.
They're dangerous,'' said Greg Goodale, director of government affairs for the group. This simply should not be occurring. If we can ban cockfights and dog fights, we should be able to ban human fighting.‘’
But Arthur Dore Sr., a former boxer and trainer, who started the tough-man'' contests in 1978 and now promotes about 100 of them a year, insists that his events are as safe as any sport in which the goal is to knock someone out. This is an inherently dangerous sport,‘’ he said.
Dore, whose company is called Adore Ltd., said that to make it as safe as possible, rounds were kept short, doctors were stationed at ringside and boxers were always examined before and after fights. The contestants sign waivers releasing the promoter from claims resulting from injury or death.
But a civil suit filed by Crow’s wife, Paula, contends that the physical was inadequate, that the ringside ``doctor’’ was, in fact, a chiropractor without the proper experience or training for what he was doing, and that the promoter misled contestants about the risk involved.
``These kids are wooed into this, and they bring in people who know how to hit,‘’ Crow’s mother said.
The suit, which seeks unspecified damages, accuses Dore and Elmer Sharp, the chiropractor, of gross negligence and fraud.
Robert M. Meyrowitz, the promoter of Ultimate Fight events, said his contests had resulted in no serious injuries in three years. He said that Ultimate Fights were safer than tough-man'' bouts because he uses only accomplished fighters. They are engaging nonprofessional fighters,‘’ he said of tough-man'' fights. That’s inherently dangerous.‘’
While tough-man rules limit participants to non-professionals who have won fewer than six amateur bouts, boxing experts say that still leaves a great potential for a serious mismatch.
It becomes carnage,'' said Bill Eastman, the chairman of the California State Athletic Commission, which has banned such fights. It’s like the old warehouse days: you don’t know who you’re fighting.‘’
Despite the mounting opposition, Dore said the business remained popular and profitable.
``Everyone likes to see a fight,‘’ he said.
Or finally, there was this widely syndicated story by George F. Will of The Washington Post:
Cruelty For Sale
George F. Will, The Washington Post, 26th November 1995
Here are some sounds of entertainment in a nation entertaining itself into barbarism:
“I was hitting him to the brain stem, which is a killing blow, and when he covered up I’d swing back with upswings to the eye sockets with two knuckles and a thumb. There was no other place on his body you could hurt him.”
“There’s the toe stomp!” “There’s an open thigh there - he should do some punching.” “His tooth went flying out of the ring!” “He’s going to snap his arm - he did, too!”
Those are words from a participant and some announcers involved in “ultimate fighting” or “extreme fighting,” which involves two combatants in an octagonal pen, governed by minimal rules: no biting or eye gouging. There are no rounds, no judges, no weight classifications. (The man pounding the brain stem and eye sockets was fighting a 650-pound wrestler.) The combatants fight until one is unconscious, disabled or “taps out” - taps the canvas, signaling surrender. The referee’s job is to watch for the tapping, occasionally summon a doctor to see if a participant can continue and exhort the combatants to pour it on.
Six states have permitted such a spectacle. One permissive state is enough to make this a flourishing amusement on pay-per-view television. Three months ago about 300,000 subscribers paid $20 each to see the seventh Ultimate Fighting Championship.
More are coming, but if you can’t wait, your neighborhood Blockbuster, which will not rent sexual pornography, probably offers cassettes of some UFC events like the one in which a man’s face was pounded to a pulp while he crawled across the canvas, leaving a broad smear of blood. Especially memorable is slow-motion footage from an overhead camera showing a man pounding the face of a pinned opponent. Aficionados savor full-force kicks to faces and elbows smashed into temples.
Participants in these events are frightening, but less so than the paying customers. They include slack-jawed children whose parents must be cretins, and raving adults whose ferocity away from the arena probably does not rise above muttering epithets at meter maids.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a former naval aviator who was a boxer at Annapolis and spent more than five years being tortured as a prisoner by the North Vietnamese, knows appropriate manliness and is exhorting governors and local officials to ban “extreme fighting” events because they pose “an unacceptable risk to the lives and health of the contestants.” To the objection that the contestants are consenting adults, McCain, arguing within the severe limits imposed by our society’s respect for choice, contends that the consent may be somehow illusory. He says perhaps a contestant is “driven by profits or the enticements of publicity associated with it and unknowingly is placing his or her life at risk.”
To which libertarians respond: If you ban being driven by profits and enticed by publicity, what remains of modern life? Besides, no one has yet been killed in “extreme fighting,” which is more than can be said for boxing.
Although in one letter to a governor McCain says he is “solely” concerned with damage done to combatants, he also worries about the “glorification of cruelty,” which raises the problem of virtue: What do we want government to do in the name of that?
The historian Macaulay, disdaining the Puritans, said they banned bearbaiting not because it gave pain to bears but because it gave pleasure to spectators. The Puritans were, of course, tiresome, but were they wrong? Surely, there are ignoble, unwholesome pleasures. The federal government is moving against what it considers one such: Never mind the lawyers’ palaver about job discrimination, it is the problem of incorrect pleasure that has Washington scowling at Hooters restaurants.
Washington manages to make even a concern about virtue seem ludicrous, but “extreme fighting” forces a commercial society to decide when the morals of the marketplace are insufficient. Do we really ban cockfighting only because the birds cannot consent? Suppose (one hates to give entertainment entrepreneurs any of the few odious ideas they have not yet had) someone offers a $10 million prize for a Russian roulette competition - winner take all, necessarily. Imagine the pay-per-view potential.
Would - should - we so respect “consumer sovereignty” that we would allow that? The question is hypothetical, but perhaps not for long. In entertainment, competition does not elevate. Competition for audiences in an increasingly jaded, coarsened and desensitized society causes competitors to devise ever-more lurid vulgarities to titillate the sated. If you think “extreme fighting” is as extreme as things can get, just wait.
Hopefully the days of ignorance regarding MMA are now finally coming to an end, and MMA will continue its gradual acceptance as a legitimate sport.