Vice's Fightland questions whether mixed martial arts could ever find its way into the Olympics, and whether those passionate about the sport would ever want to see mixed martial arts sanitized for netword daytime programing:
Pankration, the ancient Greek precursor to modern-day mixed martial arts, made its debut at the Olympics sometime in the seventh century BC. Taking its name from the Greek word for “all powers,” Pankration was the first competitive anything-goes fighting sport, famous for its blend of boxing and wrestling and its barely there rules (that there were rules at all bothered some purists, including the Spartans, who boycotted the Olympic Pankration competition when they learned that biting and eye-gouging wouldn’t be allowed). Since Pankration was the “manliest” sport in a rough-and-tumble era, those who did take part often chose death over the shame of submitting to their opponents’ chokes. Legend has it that one early champion fought a lion. Another, a Minotaur. It was, as they say, a different time.
When the modern Olympics were inaugurated in 1896, the no-holds-barred brutality of Pankration didn’t jibe with the event’s new spirit of enlightened internationalism, so the sport was left on the trash heap of history, a relic from a more brutish time, I guess. As a consequence, in 2012, fans of the Olympics can watch athletes competing in many of the disciplines that make up mixed martial arts – wrestling, boxing, judo, and taekwondo – but not mixed martial arts itself. This is one of the great ironies of MMA: Take the time and effort to master one fighting style and you’re revered; take the time and effort to master all of them and you’re an animal.
Today marks the opening of the Sochi Winter Olympics, which got me wondering: With mixed martial arts becoming one of the biggest sports in the world, and half of the sports its made of already long-established summer events, isn’t it about time it got its own place in the Olympics? Many say it does but I’m not so sure.
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Besides, does MMA really want the sanitized, mainstream legitimacy that comes with Olympic status? UFC President Dana White and International Mixed Martial Arts Federation President August Whallen say yes – Wallen because it would bring legitimacy to a sport stuck on the fringes of most of the world’s imagination, and White because it would be an enormous promotional boon to his business. But it sounds like a devil’s bargain to me: What good is it for a sport to gain worldwide marketing appeal if it loses its soul?
In an IOC-approved MMA, would fighters be required to wear headgear? Shin guards? Would the governing body outlaw elbows to cut down on bleeding? Would they eliminate head kicks to lessen the chances of flash knockouts or submissions to limit opportunities for serious injuries? And if so, at what point does a sport stop being itself and become something else? Everything that makes MMA MMA is exactly what would make it impossible for the IOC to stomach: It’s brutal and violent and terrifying and harrowing and dangerous and completely wrong for the safety-first world of Olympic competition. Maybe it’s time to admit that cage-fighting isn’t family-friendly entertainment meant to go down easy like water polo or the long jump. Maybe it’s time to admit that MMA is something darker than that.
I'm a skeptic about the Olympics as a way of celebrating human athleticism. It simply doesn't make that much sense to me for people to cheer along nations and the atheletes competing under the flag of a nation when what matters are the achievements of each atheletes. One of the compelling elements of any fighting sport is that it is necessarily the battle between two individual people. Whether it is George Foreman fighting Muhammad Ali or Jon Jones fighting Glover Teixeira, the narrative is always going to be one person fighting another person. That simply doesn't fit very well into the Olympics' narrative about national pride, and co-existence between nations.
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