The Daily Beast Follows Up on their 'Is Ultimate Fighting Gay?' Story

When WKR first read Thaddeus Russell's "Is Ultimate Fighting Gay?" story over at The Daily Beast we let out a collective groan before diving into what we thought would be an ignorant piece of drivel. After all, when 'ultimate fighting' is in the title you know things are going to go from bad to worse in a hurry. 

To Russel's credit the piece was not a hit job, rather an attempt at identifying an interesting dichotomy within the world of Mixed Martial Arts; a growing gay fanbase in one of the most testosterone laden -and perceived homophobic-- sports in the world.

WKR wrote our thoughts about the piece here and we tried to point out that homoeroticism is in all sports (male and female).

Yesterday The Daily Beast posted a follow up to Russell's piece entitled, "Ultimate Fighting: Not Gay, Per Se" by Sam Sheridan.

Clearly this is an attempt to further develop and explain the world of Mixed Martial Arts --they point out the UFC is a promotion not the whole sport-- and the varying disciplines of martial arts involved (WKR guesses that they got a lot of angry emails about the first piece).

Sheridan spends most of his time going over the basics of grappling but there is one particuallarly interesting passage,

Having fought and trained a little, let me assure you that there is nothing sexual going on-fighters are in survival mode, the "fight-or-flight" instinct is in full swing. It's kill or be killed, intensely claustrophobic, and a mental and physical war of counter and bait, deception, and speed. A fighter's grappling style reflects his body type, his temperament, his training and his thoughts, just like an artist's. There are thousands of variations on attacks and defense, "the ground game" is hard to appreciate at first, but worth the study. Is it homoerotic? Sure, if you want it to be. But, as Freud said, sometimes a cigar is just a good smoke. Of course, to those boxers and boxing promoters who don't understand and are threatened by MMA, homophobia is the last refuge of the scoundrel.

WKR believes that Sheridan hit the nail on the head with the final sentence.

For whatever reason individuals who dislike Mixed Martial Arts rely on a veiled homophobic insults in order to knock the sport down or justify their dislike (it also serves the purpose of causing inflamed outrage from the perceived uber-masculine male fans). MMA fans already saw boxing promoter, Bob Arum, compare the ground game to, "...rolling around like homosexuals on the ground."

But is this mode of attack effective?

WKR doesn't believe so.

The majority of MMA fans are within the 18-34 demographic. That is the only generational demographic where a majority (58%) supports gay marriage (if we consider gay marriage support as a litmus test).

Basically the point WKR is trying to make is that the younger generation, which just so happens to like MMA, doesn't have the same degree of homophobia as the older generations. Thus any attempts at insulting MMA as "gay" don't  matter, because the younger generation doesn't care.