Issue 028

August 2007

By Hywel Teague.

Think how often you hear “I love this guy” or “I hate that fighter” at an a mixed martial arts (MMA) show. If you’re logging on to the net with any frequency you’ll see it on almost any forum.  

Like almost any sport, MMA has the amazing ability to make people emotional. MMA fans may not cry with joy when their favourite fighter wins or loses (like football fans seem to have a habit of doing), but voices are lost and arms waved in the air across the world every week as supporters get behind the athletes.  

It is rare that you’ll see a person in a heightened state of arousal able to behave rationally. When emotions run high, so do reactions, and emotional fans will scream and yell as long and loud with joy as they will with displeasure.  

Though the majority of crowds are respectful, wherever you go you will still see some examples of pretty heated behaviour. Drum-playing Brazilians singing and cheering their countrymen on, partisan locals vociferously booing the ‘away’ fighter, fans who are happy and fans who are angry, each of the above examples are experiencing some pretty strong emotions.  

Fans invest a lot of themselves in their chosen sport. Money and time are two obvious examples – they’ll spend their hard earned cash on pay per views, tickets, merchandise, DVDs and so on, and they’ll spend hours reading magazines, websites, watching TV and going to shows.  

Almost every single follower of MMA will have a favourite fighter, even those who profess to be ultra-objective (yes, even editors of international magazines have their favourites). Those same fans will also have their least favourites, the ones they can’t stand to watch fight (I know what you’re thinking, I have some of those too).  

When you hear a fan describing their favourite fighter, they will often say they love them. Usually that kind of statement is reserved for your wife, your mother, your children or your car… but to say that you love a brutish beefcake whose job it is to smash someone else in the face? Sounds weird, eh?  

Fans don’t really have what you would describe as ‘love’ for a fighter, and if they did, they’d probably keep it to themselves! In reality, it is more a manifestation of the way they feel about the sport. When they put so much of themselves into something, they need to focus that energy, and rather than just be a fan of a pretty exciting sport, they will align themselves with a particular fighter. They will proudly wear their t-shirts, they will defend their fighter against criticism, and they will champion them over all others in discussions of ‘who would win in a match between…’  

When fans get behind a fighter, it can quite literally help win fights. Many times I have witnessed a fighter on the losing end of a particularly memorable battle come from behind to win in spectacular fashion as his fans cheer him on. It sounds like a cliché from a movie, but it actually happens. The confidence that a fighter can feel when he has a crowd of thousands cheering his name is something most of us will never feel. It’s no wonder that fighters can get addicted to it (see our feature on page 32 for more on that) but even those who remain level-headed will recognise the importance of having the support of the public. Few people will pay to watch someone they don’t like.  

But that said, there are fans of the sport who will actually pay to watch fighters they despise, solely in the hope of seeing them beaten up! It is a well-known tactic of fighters to court controversy (think Tank Abbot, Tito Ortiz, and even new bloods like Josh Koscheck). It’s not that these fighters don’t have their own fans, but they understand that by being abrasive, by behaving disrespectfully or by simply not abiding by the rules of ‘sportsmanlike’ conduct they can get people, who might not normally bother, to watch their fights!  

Trash talking, showing off an attitude, incendiary comments in interviews or even out and out bad behaviour may not buy fighters respect, but it certainly gets people watching their fights. Abbott was special in that he genuinely didn’t care what fans thought of him, whereas someone like Ortiz (who has equal amounts of fans and haters) knew that to market yourself you could choose to be a good guy or a bad guy. No wonder he plumped for the nickname ‘The Huntington Beach Bad Boy’.  

Just as having thousands of fans can inspire you on to achieve great things, having thousands of people scream and jeer you can actually have a similar effect. Josh Koscheck sarcastically thanked the crowd for paying to watch him after his fight with Diego Sanchez even though they had booed him for much of the bout, and he admits that much of his perceived image is from marketing himself in a particular way.  

And, just as in real life, fans can fall out of love with a fighter and fall in love with another. It’s a fickle old business, MMA.