Unleashing Manhood in the Cage: Masculinity and Mixed Martial Arts

Description

Unleashing Manhood in the Cage: Masculinity and Mixed Martial Arts addresses the question “Why do mixed martial arts participants endure grueling workouts and suffer through injury, with little or no pay, just to compete?” The answer is since the participants enjoy a type of idolization from their supporters, every other, and culture more normally, which is linked to masculinity. In reality, MMA organizers, from the very beginning, purposefully created elements of the sport that are linked to dominant narratives about manhood. In this context, men don thin open-fingered gloves, lock themselves in a caged enclosure, and slug it out in a fight with few rules to see who comes out on top. This all occurs at the same time as “ring girls” in high-heels and skin-tight shirts and shorts stride around out of doors the cage holding signs and peddling t-shirts. The sum of these elements is the creation of a kind of a publicly accessible and consumable type of masculinity. The sport of mixed martial arts is a wealthy and intriguing space where the construction of gender can also be explored through a sociological and ethnographic lens.