The Ultimate Fighting Championship

Mixed Martial Arts is the fastest growing sport in the world. Mixed Martial Arts (or MMA) is a combat sport that combines every and any fighting technique in a bout. To look closer at this sport as a discourse community, we will break down the sport into 5 different categories. We will take a look at the goals and values of MMA, the typical fighting styles or genres of MMA, the general rules of MMA, tasks and roles of each MMA community, and the targeted audience of MMA.

Throughout world history people have enjoyed watching two men compete in hand to hand combat. Professional boxing made its debut here in America around the turn of the 20th century. Unlike boxing, mixed martial arts is a relatively new sport. Both sports are very technical and require their fighters to be in superb condition. Many fighters train all their life to make it big, but few ever get there. Although both sports are immensely popular, one stands alone as the dominant sport. In this paper I 'll prove that the sport of MMA is more technical, more exciting, and much safer than boxing.

The ultimate goal of a boxing match is a knock out. The knockout punch brings satisfaction to the winner of the boxing math and the crowd. This one punch can make a fight exciting. However, if there is not a knockout punch, the fight is often times dull. After a knockout punch, one man loses consciousness while the other man dances around the ring raising his hands in victory and is swarmed by his coaches and the press. Oates continues to argue that boxing is the cruelest sport by comparing a boxing match to a tragedy. If a fight has no knock out by the end, it seems like the fight is missing something. The knockout punch is a cruel but key aspect to boxing which makes people love

The viewers are the main encouragement for boxers to keep fighting or to fight harder. “They don’t come out to see a tee party,” said Mike Jacobs evenly. “They come out to see the knockout. They come out to see a man hurt. If they think anything else, they’re kidding themselves” (qtd. in

The UFC, Ultimate Fighting Championship, belongs to the mixed martial arts industry. It is actually the largest MMA promotion company in the world. Mixed Martial Arts is a full contact combat sport. It allows the use of both striking and grappling techniques. There are numerous types of mixed martial arts including boxing, wrestling, kickboxing, karate, and taekwondo.

Utilitarianism is the ethical theory which states what is morally good and helps the greatest number of people. A utilitarian could defend the UFC by pointing out the fact that other sports also celebrate hatred and injury, but are not deemed to be immoral. They could also state that many other sports come with risks that may cause injury and brain damage. Another point that could be mentioned is that sports are a form of entertainment that contributes to the greater good of all people. The UFC fighters might willingly take these risks, but the people watching these fights aren’t going to be harmed. If anything, they will be entertained and enjoy the fight that brings so many people together.

Sack, Dave. "The MMA Minute – Major MMA Organizations ." Hijinks Inc.. N.p., 13 August 2010. Web. 1 Nov 2010. http://hijinksinc.com/2010/08/13/the-mma-minute-major-mma-organizations-non-ufc/

Without fighting the sport would not be the same it would be a lot more entertaining for the fans to watch because there would be no more contact. The coaches of the teams will pay the people getting in fights non stop a lot of money

This is a fight that UFC fans have been dreaming about the second their first match ended.

Boxing - a violent cage fight, or a crowd pleasing sport? Boxing is a high intensified sport that can be seen as helping the fighter in life or permanently damaging the fighters future. Many say that boxing is one of the safest sports; however, boxing can leave permanent brain damage from constant punches to the skull. The sport boxing is for managers to earn money while their fighter is in the ring fighting against another human until one gives up, or gets knocked out. A fight could be the end of one’s career, or even one’s life. Boxing should be banned because the money earned does not trump the risk of death, the mixed messages from fighters in the ring confuse the laws regarding assault, and the constant punches to and athletes head leaves permanent damage.

Elliott J. Gorn’s The Manly Art is a unique book that tells readers the origins of boxing in American culture. The book was published in 1986 by Cornell University Press, the book discussed the development of boxing and American society. Gorn takes sport history, a commonly misunderstood and misinterpreted topic and wrote a book that not only was easy to read but allowed readers to gain knowledge on the sport. Gorn says “To understand prize fighting, I have discovered, is necessarily to understand something about nineteenth-century America. Ideology, ethnicity, social class formation, violence, urbanization, gender roles, religious world views, productive relationships, all are a part of sports history in general and boxing in particular.” (Gorn, pg. 12)

Time limits, protective gloves, banned techniques lists, and many more were added in order for society to accept it and this allowed the UFC to advertise more as a sport instead of a blood-sport. The only problem after the UFC and MMA became legal in many states was attracting attention. In the early days the sport was not profitable due to the ban in almost all U.S states so the original owners sold the company. Dana White, Frank, and Lorenzo Fertitta “…spent $2 million to buy the Ultimate Fighting Championship…” (Anderson). White and the Fertitta brothers were millions in the hole trying to make the company profitable and were ready to sell but, than they came up with the idea of the Ultimate Fighter. The Ultimate Fighter was a reality show where a group of athletes were all put in one house where they would only focus on fighting. This show allowed people to view how the fighters trained and learn the various personalities each athlete had. The finale of this show is what resurrected the sport. The contest between Forrest Griffin and Stephan Bonnar was a “three 5-min. rounds of compelling intensity” ( Chua-Eoan et al.). In this fight both contestants put everything on the line which resulted in a brawl than an actual technical fight. This however attracted viewers for as the fight went on, viewers started tuning in. This Fight is regarded as the most important fight in UFC history (Mannion). This led to

The genre of MMA was chosen because it is a relatively new sport, but despite that, it has been gaining grave amounts of publicity in the sporting world. Unlike other long-established, mainstream sports such as soccer and basketball, the sport of MMA only commenced approximately 20 years ago, back in 1993. The power of social media has revolutionised the way humans

Boxing, also known as pugilism, is a very old and famous type of combat sport which was invented few centuries BC. It is an ever-changing sport which develops into different styles through time and it is regarded as one of the most popular and exciting types of sports nowadays. Some people make it their profession and fight for prizes, and money while some enjoy it as a hobby and a way to be physically active and have a healthy lifestyle. As it is a very entertaining kind of sport and it is part of the Olympic Games, the sport has garnered many fans worldwide. A lot of people prefer watching it and following championships and different athletes.

sport, the UFC is making progress of cleaning up the sport from what it used to be.”(Smith 1).