Issue 057

December 2009

A decade ago, most publishers would have laughed at the very idea of MMA fans being able to read.  They certainly wouldn’t have been falling over each other to churn out autobiographies, instructional manuals, confessional / journalistic accounts and analytical looks at the sport’s brief history. Today though, MMA fans have so many books to choose from it can be hard to know where to start. This month Andrew Garvey has been happily wading through the best of the sport’s literature to recommend the Top 5 MMA Books.

1 No Holds Barred by Clyde Gentry

Originally published way back in 2001 and subtitled Evolution – the Truth Behind the World’s Most Misunderstood Sport, Gentry’s groundbreaking book has gone through some welcome revision and re-editing in the last few years. But the original core text is what makes this an absolutely essential read. Detailing the sport’s early years, Gentry’s overview is rich in anecdotal detail, particularly on the chaos surrounding the mid-’90s events in the US and Canada, the political, legal and media circus surrounding the sport at the time, and some hair-raising yet hilarious tales about the mid-’90s scene in the former Soviet Union. A genuine classic.

2 Total MMA by Jonathan Snowden

A great accompaniment to Gentry’s book, Total MMA was published earlier this year and covers plenty of the same ground, but goes back much further in time, providing some finely researched work on the Gracie dynasty and generally has a broader, more up-to-date scope. Taking in the post-2005 popularity explosion of the sport in North America and the bizarre, murky world of big-time Japanese MMA, Snowden’s book of almost 400 pages is the ideal purchase for any new fan looking for a quote-packed, one-volume history of the sport. For longer established, widely-read fans little of the information is completely new but it’s all structured in a pleasing and highly readable way. 

3 Got Fight? by Forrest Griffin with Erich Krauss

The overwhelming majority of sports autobiographies are useless. Turgid slabs of vacuous crap dictated to a bored ghost-writer by a slow-witted dullard who hoofs a ball around a field for a living tend to be the order of the day. Griffin’s book (which spent some time on the New York Times bestseller list) couldn’t be more different, and in just about every way imaginable. For a start, it’s not really an autobiography. There are plenty of revealing tales about Griffin’s career, but they’re buried amidst his ramblingly free-form observations on everything from the true meaning of manliness, to analyzing your opponent, to finding the right woman. Easy to read (though very short), gloriously foul-mouthed, riotously funny and highly recommended. 

4 Blood in the Cage: Mixed Martial Arts, Pat Miletich, and the Furious Rise of the UFC by L Jon Wertheim

It may be saddled with an awful title and had the misfortune to be published around the same time as Total MMA but sportswriter Wertheim’s lookbook is much-underrated, and well worth picking up. Written by an outsider (whose previous books were about women’s tennis and basketball in Indiana) Wertheim’s account looks at MMA through the prism of Miletich’s life and his legendary fighting and coaching career. Well-written, fast-paced and if anything too short, it’s a very, very good read. If you don’t have time to sit down and read it, you can pick up the unabridged audio version and listen to it instead.  

5 The Gracie Way by Kid Peligro

First published in 2003, this affectionate, biographical amble through the history and lives of ten of the most significant members of the Gracie clan is worth a try. True, it strays more than a little into Gracie propaganda territory at times, presenting the family’s fights as something akin to the epic struggles of classical mythology, and Peligro is an unashamed admirer, but it’s still an entertaining, enlightening read which makes excellent use of the family’s photo archive. And anyone who says Gracie propaganda is a bad thing should go back to the top of this list, read Clyde Gentry’s book, and contemplate what sport we’d be reading about and watching right now if it weren’t for the family’s immense talent for self-promotion.