![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) is a sport on the rise within the field of martial arts in which competitors fight in a cage and utilize full-contact movements using their fists, elbows, and knees as well as kicks, other strikes, and submission techniques to defeat their opponents. Ironically, the mass-mediated presentation of deregulated fighting revealed that, instead of being humanity’s natural state, it was technically demanding, dependent upon substantial enculturation of athletes’ bodies, and far from instinctual. In addition, fighters modified their own bodies to make them better suited for the activity, for example, altering perceptions of pain. Seemingly minor changes in the tools available to contestants - ‘mundane technology’ such as the structure of the fighting space, standardized clothing and lightweight gloves - shifted radically how contestants’ bodies could be used. Fighters had to adapt to several waves of changes in fighting strategies and to strategic revisions of match regulations intended to make them more obviously violent. The matches revealed how resilient a trained fighter’s body might become. While critics were scandalized by the permissiveness of these contests, aficionados were stunned by the effectiveness of relatively non-violent fighting techniques. Starting in 1993, the Ultimate Fighting Championship broadcast ‘no-holds-barred’ fights, pitting athletes trained in a variety of combat sports against each other. ![]()
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