Towards a Cultural Economy of the Ultimate Fighting Championship

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Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School

2013 Fighting Culture: Toward a Cultural Economy of the Ultimate Fighting Championship Michael E. Armstrong

Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY

COLLEGE OF EDUCATION

FIGHTING CULTURE:

TOWARD A CULTURAL ECONOMY OF THE ULTIMATE FIGHTING CHAMPIONSHIP

MICHAEL E. ARMSTRONG

A Thesis submitted to the Department of Sport Management in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science

Degree Awarded: Summer Semester, 2013 Michael Armstrong defended this thesis on June 28th 2013 The members of the supervisory committee were:

Joshua Newman Professor Directing Thesis

Michael Giardina Committee Member

Jennifer Proffitt Committee Member

The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members, and certifies that the thesis has been approved in accordance with university requirements.

This thesis is dedicated to my parents whose continued support made this whole process possible.

iii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to acknowledge the help and support of my supervisor Dr. Joshua Newman, and the members of my committee, Dr. Michael Giardina and Dr. Jennifer Proffitt. Their feedback and guidance was instrumental in completing this project. I would also like to thank all those in the Department of Sport Management, the wider College of Education, and Florida State University for encouraging and advancing my academic career. Finally, a special thanks goes to my colleagues in the Tully Media Lab for putting up with me, lending a hand, and keeping me more or less sane throughout this project.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Figures ...... vii Abstract ...... viii CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION ...... 1 Mixed Martial Arts & The UFC ...... 4 The Labor Structure in MMA ...... 13 The Contract ...... 14

CHAPTER TWO: REVIEW OF LITERATURE ...... 28 Economics of the Spectacularized Sporting Body ...... 29 Demand for the Product of Sports Labor ...... 30 The Sport Labor Market ...... 35 Toward a Cultural Economy of the UFC ...... 43 On Culture ...... 45 On Cultural Economics ...... 46 Culturalizing the Economic: Beyond Bourdieu ...... 51 The Economization of Culture: Watching as Working ...... 57 Resolving the Dialectic in the Society of the Spectacle ...... 59 Situating the Fighter in the Spectacle of Combat Sports ...... 67 A Spectacle of Reality ...... 77 Conclusion: Fighting the Cultural Economy ...... 86

CHAPTER THREE: METHOD ...... 88 Paradigmatic Foundations ...... 94 Studying the Spectacle ...... 95 Critical Discourse Analysis: Reading the TUF Text ...... 97 Self-Reflexivity ...... 101

CHAPTER FOUR: RESULTS ...... 103 Identification ...... 103 Production ...... 113 Situation ...... 118 Physical Location ...... 119

Sporting Context ...... 121 Corporate Context ...... 127 The UFC Spectacle ...... 138

CHAPTER FIVE: DISCUSSION ...... 145 TUF Spectacle ...... 146 The Fighter Contestant ...... 146 The UFC Contract(ed fighter) ...... 148 The UFC Organizational Identity ...... 149 Occlusion ...... 152 Institutional Human Capital ...... 157 An Apparatus of the Spectacle and the Collapse of a Metonym ...... 162 Conclusions ...... 168

APPENDIX: IRB APPROVAL LETTER ...... 174

REFERENCES ...... 175

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ...... 188

LIST OF FIGURES

1 Annual cumulative PPV buy rate based off available public data from multiple sources ...... 8

2 PPV buys by UFC event ...... 9

vii

ABSTRACT

This research looks to extend beyond the sports economic theory to present a cultural economic

conception of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). Utilizing the theory of “spectacle”

put forward by Guy Debord I conducted a critical discourse analysis of season one of the UFC’s

subsidiary realty TV show The Ultimate Fighter. Results indicated a specific construction with

regard to the fighter-contestant identity positioning them as members of the lower/working class and, as such, the positioning of the UFC as an emancipatory institution. Such construction is interpreted as creating cultural forms that have the potential to aid in the UFC’s extraction of surplus value from its labor force while propagating and legitimating the current systems of late capitalism and neoliberalism.

viii

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

In December, 2011, the ‘Ultimate Fighting Championship’ (UFC) CEO and 40.5% stockholder Lorenzo Fertitta, along with the organization’s president, front man, and 9% stockholder, Dana White, were named among the Sport Business Journal’s “50 Most Influential

People in Sport Business.” The article opens: “Media moves as well as labor harmony (or lack thereof) shake up our annual list of the executives who set the agenda for North American sports.” This was, of course, in reference to the previous seasons’ lockouts in both the National

Football League and the National Basketball League and harking back to 2005 in the National

Hockey League (or perhaps written as a premonition of the NHL lockout occurring nine months

after the article’s release). While the players of three of the United States’ most popular sports

were entering into drawn out revenue negotiation with the league’s ownership, the UFC was able

to keep its labor force “under control” through strict individual contracts and centralized private

governance. Simultaneously the UFC brand value appreciated at an exponential rate. From their

initial investment of $2 million in 2001, Fertitta and White constructed an empire controlling 80

to 90 percent of the Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) market (Zwick, 2012). Valuations in 2008

suggested an appreciation of that initial investment to $1 billion just six years later (Miller,

2008). The most recent valuations see the organization worth in excess of $2 billion (Snowden,

2013).

The UFC has certainly moved from the margins to stake a place at the table with the top

sports in the United States. Financially, the Mixed Martial Arts fight promotion company is

comparable with the top valued NFL franchises (Forbes, 2012) and is increasingly encroaching

on the entire league valuations of the NHL ($ 8.5 billion), NBA ($11.8 billion), MLB ($18.2

billion).1 The UFC has posted a remarkable growth rate never before seen in the global

professional sport market.

What was the impetus for this meteoric rise? And how has the decade long growth of the

UFC, now synonymous with MMA, impacted the working conditions of the sports athlete

laborers? The lack of labor disharmony noted in the Sport Business Journal article suggests a

content labor force, equitably remunerated for their services. However, there have been a

growing number of fighters speaking out against what they perceive to be an inherently

inequitable and unjust relationship. The UFC, with its natural monopoly over the MMA labor

market is afforded a hugely disproportionate share of market power compared to the single

employee.

This research project aims to elaborate on the construction and maintenance of such labor

relations. Typically this would imply the employment of techniques emerging from the growing

field of sports economics. However, in what follows I argue that such analyses tend towards

abstraction and reductionism and, importantly, tell us very little about the individual sport labor

environment. Furthermore, traditional approaches offer little in the way of explanatory value as

to the way such conditions come to exist, and persist, despite refuting economic logic.

In this study I aim to work beyond this superficial portrayal to establish the cultural and

economic basis of the UFC organization, a conception that stands in contrast to the dominant

neoclassical sports economic logic. I am extending beyond the sports economic methodology to

explore the professional sports ‘cultural economy’—the influence of homogeneous and unifying

1 Figures based on 2012 numbers supplied by http://www.sportingcharts.com/articles/off-the-charts/a- look-at-franchise-values-across-the-nfl-nhl-mlb-and-nba.aspx and cross referenced with figures from Forbes.com 2 interpersonal factors of a specific social group or institution and the impact this has in constructing and constraining economic relations (DuGay & Pryke, 2002).

Building from such a position, I aim to use the MMA labor environment to develop a conception of sport labor economics as a holistic socio-cultural, socio-economic phenomenon—to present the prevailing market logic as incomplete and inaccurate in its ignorance to cultural forms and influence.

The UFC provides a unique opportunity for such a cultural-economic investigation for two key reasons. First, the sport itself has proven very dynamic and responsive to market forces and proved highly successful in an already-crowded global sport marketplace. Second, the impetus for this remarkable growth seems to stem from the UFC’s unique approach to self- promotion: through reality television. As such the UFC provides us with a continual look into the labor culture and practices of the sporting institution.

With growing condemnation of the UFC’s compensation of its labor force (Grammy,

2001; Snowden, 2013), this project seeks to explore the role of the reality television spectacle in cultural-economic labor relations. Such research is based on appropriations of Guy Debord’s

‘Society of the Spectacle’ (1994), which proposes a degradation of human life to a life of representation through the confluence of technological and capitalist economic advancement.

However, before this theoretical position can be developed, it is important that a clear picture of the UFC is provided both as an economic and cultural institution. To this end, the remainder of this introduction will further elaborate on the UFC’s history, growth, organizational culture and the growing discourse of exploitation and mistreatment of the laborer at the hands of their employer.

Mixed Martial Arts & The UFC

Mixed Martial Arts is a contemporary sporting competition in which fighters trained in a

variety of striking and grappling/ground-fighting disciplines compete (Garcia & Malcolm, 2010).

Historically, MMA severed as the battleground for supremacy between specific martial arts

styles and as such was characterized by few rules so as to not favor one style over another. This

defining characteristic can be seen in combat competitions throughout history, as far back as the

ancient Greek Olympic sport of Pankration (Gardiner, 1906). However, the roots of MMA’s

introduction to the United States lie much more recently in the Brazilian no-holds-barred

competition of Vale Tudo (Portuguese for ‘anything goes’).

The sport reached US shores in 1993 with the inaugural ‘Ultimate Fighting

Championship’ held in Denver, Colorado—due to the lack of state law regarding pugilistic

pursuits (Weirtheim, 2009). Serving as an exposé into the power of ‘Gracie Jiu Jitsu,’ Royler

Gracie and his promotion company WOW entertainment hosted the event in consortium with

Semaphore Entertainment Group (SEG). Looking to sensationalize the events’ drama, the

organizers decided that the fights would be held in an octagonal cage.2 Eight fighters ranging

from a Dutch kickboxer to a Hawaiian Sumo Wrestler entered into a no holds barred knockout

tournament in which fights could only end with knockout or submission of a fighter. The

eventual winner (Royler’s brother Royce) took home $50,000 for victory in his three fights that

evening (Wertheim, 2009).

By many accounts, the event capitalized on the ferocity and barbarism of a spectacle

theretofore not witnessed by the US domestic sport-consuming audience. It was sensationalized

2 Ideas from management included John Milius’s (director of Conan the Barbarian) proposition of fighting in a pancrase pit while advertising executive, Art Davie, favored an alligator filled moat surrounding a boxing ring (Wertheim, 2009). 4

as a blood sport where “there are no rules,” where “they fight to survive” (Van Bottenberg &

Heilbron, 2006, p. 260). Subsequently, in spite of its detractors, it was a resounding financial

success. Utilizing the recently developed ‘Pay-Per-View’ (PPV) broadcast platform pioneered by

SEG, the fight night now referred to as “UFC1” was broadcast to some 80,000 households at a

Pay-Per-View cost of $14.99; generating total revenue of $1,199,200 before ticket sales. Clearly

the promoters had financial incentive to host further UFCs but, after witnessing abhorrent

displays—such as fighter, Gerard Gordeau, fighting a further two fights with Telia Tuli’s incisor

embedded in his right foot (Wertheim, 2009)—where would they find a willing labor market?

In the days following the event, the offices of SEG were flooded with applications from men willing to enter the cage (Wertheim, 2009). From trained karate experts to back-street brawlers the “No-rules. No weight classes. No rounds. Essentially no-holds-barred, may the best man win” competition had found its market labor force (Wertheim, 2009, p. 54). The UFC started to gain momentum. From the initial 80,000 PPV buys for UFC 1, this increased to over

100,000 buys for UFC 2 and by April 7, 1995, the PPV buy rate for UFC 5 was 260,000. The growth is an astounding 325%! By 1995 the PPV sports industry—previously confined to professional wrestling (WWF, later re-named WWE) and professional boxing—began to take notice. By way of comparison the WWF, with a 12 year head start on the UFC, returned 340,000 buys with its top ranked event in 1995, ‘WrestleMania XI’. Boxing however, was enjoying record popularity with the likes of George Forman, Mike Tyson, Evander Holyfield, and Lennox

Lewis dominating the heavy weight division. These bouts frequently drew over 1 million buys.

The UFC’s popularity paved the way for entry of a number of “No Holds Barred”3 competitions emerging in the US and around the globe in the late 90’s. These operated under monikers such as: absolute fighting, extreme fighting, cage fighting, world combat, ultimate combat, PRIDE, and later World Extreme Cage Fighting (van Bottenburg & Heilbron, 2006).

Interestingly, at around the same time as the UFC’s emergence there was a distinct turn to hyper violent fight-based programming and movies (for review, see Dixon, 2000). These also featured films focusing on the life of ‘the fighter’ whether that be a pugilist, a martial artist, or a

“street fighter”. Examples of the latter include: Bloodsport (1988) and Bloodsport 2 & 3 (both released in 1996) featuring Jean-Claude Van Damme; Bloodfight II (1990); Bloodmatch (1991)

Best of the Best 2 (1993); Death Match (1994); Balance of Power (1996); Fight Club (1999);

Snatch (2000); and Confessions of a Pit Fighter (2005) to name but a few. Similarly, the WWF reflected this turn to violence with a large upswing in its PPV buy rate. In the year 1999 the buy rate for WrestleMania had more than doubled to 800,000. Wrestle Mania X-Seven in 2001 was the first event to break 1 million buys.

However, unlike the WWF or fictional movies, the UFC’s violence follows no script; the violence is real. This aspect, hyped by the promoters, drove sales. However, it also stirred social and political resistance. By the mid 90s there was growing social unease surrounding the hyper- violent blood sport. Leading the anti-MMA crusade was Senator John McCain who, in 1996, wrote an open letter to all state governors referring to the sport as “human cockfighting” and requesting the banning of the sport (Van Bottenburg & Heilbron, 2006). Events were denied sanctioning in almost all the United States and in 1997-1998 the cable networks, succumbing to political pressure, pulled their coverage.

3 “No Holds Barred” (NHB) is a moniker describing ruleless combat. The terminology pre-dates “Mixed Martial Arts” (MMA). MMA has become the dominant synonym primarily through the promotion of the label by the UFC. 6

The organization responded to this problem with moves to Brazil and Japan; however,

these markets were expensive and failed to serve the dwindling US market. As a response, the

UFC moved toward codification (van Bottenburg & Heilbron, 2006) and political acceptance by

placing round time limits and introducing weight classes in November 2000. This was followed

by the drafting of “the Unified Rules of Mixed Martial Arts” by the New Jersey State Athletic

Control Board. These rules ruled out among other things: head-butts, eye-gouges, the kicking to

the head of a fallen opponent, and fingers entering the mouth, nose or open wounds of the

opponent (van Bottenburg & Heilbron, 2006; Weirtheim, 2009). Their permanent adoption by

the UFC in May 2001 at UFC 31 lead to sanctioning by the athletic commissions and the return

of PPV television.

It was, however, too little, too late. In 2001 SEG was almost bankrupt, and the UFC was

all but dead when heirs to Station Casinos Inc.,4 Frank III and Lorenzo Fertitta, stepped in to buy the brand under the newly formed fight promotion company Zuffa LLC. (Italian slang for “fight”

or “scuffle”). The brothers were alerted to the opportunity by their childhood friend Dana White.

White was himself an amateur boxer who had started a boxaerobics business in Massachusetts

before moving to Las Vegas to work as a UFC fighter manager representing the likes of Tito

Ortiz and Chuck Liddell (one of the eventual coaches of The Ultimate Fighter season 1). It was

in this role that White became aware of the UFC’s impending sale. Speaking of the deal in 2012,

Lorenzo Fertitta reflected, “it was probably the worst brand in the United States because of all

the negativity surrounding it” (Miller, 2012). Despite this Zuffa LLC. paid $ 2 million for the

UFC. Lorenzo Fertitta became the CEO and Chairman of the company while White, who was

4 Station Casinos Inc. is a Las Vegas based gaming company that owns and operates a number of casinos throughout the US (17 in Vegas alone according to Miller, 2008). Frank Fertitta Jr. started the company in 1976. Frank Fertitta III became CEO in 1993 and took the company public. In 2006 Frank, Lorenzo and Colony Capital LLC made a highly leveraged offer to purchase all outstanding shares to re-privatize the company. 7

gifted nine percent of the company stock in the deal, became the company president and was

placed in charge of the companies day-to-day operations. The Fertitta brothers have maintained their controlling stake in the company with 40.5% ownership each, while Sheik Tahnoon of Abu

Dhabi and Flash Entertainment joined White as a minority shareholder in 2010 with a purchase

of ten percent of the company.

The Fertitta’s investment certainly did not turn around instantly. For the next three years

the company continued to lose money. The Fertittas reportedly sank $44 million into the brand

up until 2004 (Miller, 2008), a period which saw PPV buy rates remain suppressed below the

rate set by UFC1 (See Figure 1& 2).

10,000,000

9,000,000 Total PPV 8,000,000

7,000,000 Average Annual Buy Rate 6,000,000 5,000,000 4,000,000 PPV Buy Rate 3,000,000 2,000,000 1,000,000 0 1995 1997 1998 1999 2001 2005 2007 2008 2009 2011 1993 1994 1996 2000 2002 2003 2004 2006 2010 2012 Year

Figure 1: Annual cumulative PPV buy rate based off available public data from multiple sources*

1,800,000

1,600,000

1,400,000

1,200,000

1,000,000

800,000

600,000 Nunmber of PPV buys

400,000

200,000

0 TUF 5 TUF 3 TUF 6 UFC 8 UFC 1 TUF 11 TUF 15 UFC 15 UFC 22 UFC 29 UFC 36 UFC 42 UFC 49 UFC 55 UFC 66 UFC 85 UFC 91 UFC 97 UFC 103 UFC 109 UFC 122 UFC 128 UFC 134 UFC 140 Ulmate Fighng Championship Event

Figure 2: PPV buys by UFC event*

Facing such continued losses, the Fertittas looked to sell the company. However, just as rejection by the television-media signaled the deathblow for Zuffa’s predecessor, it was a new form of UFC televised spectacle that many, including UFC President Dana White, have claimed gave the organization the breath of life. In 2004, after being unable to find a worthy offer for the company, Zuffa began production on their own reality television show The Ultimate Fighter5— epigrammatically acronymed TUF—to air on Spike TV; “the only television network in North

America ‘for men’” (Walton & Potvin, 2009, p. 3). The show featured 16 up-and-coming (un- contracted) fighters placed in a single house. The production would be all under the onus of the

UFC who effectively rented the hour-long 11.05pm EST slot (following the WWE) from Spike for $10 million for the 13-week season. The show offered insight into what it means to be an

5 The Ultimate Fighter season 1 featured the first time the UFC was available on television outside of Pay-Per-View events. 9

‘ultimate fighter,’ it featured considerable footage of the intensity of their training and promoted the fighters as “martial artists” competing for a “six-figure contract in the UFC”. The Ultimate

Fighter departed form the all out scrap of the lowest common denominator—that had previously defined the sport—to present a rule bound, challenging competition (Maher, 2010). However, it was not all about the fighting competition:

. . . part of the drama was the winnowing of the field. But of course the real theater was

the dynamic of the testosterone-palooza, observing how these gladiators—each

convinced he was the baddest motherfucker on the planet—would coexist under one roof.

(Wertheim, 2009, p. 180)

The young fighters were placed in a single upmarket Nevada estate fully stocked to meet all the fighters’ so-called ‘needs’ including: food, supplements, ice baths, spas and saunas, and of course, an endless supply of alcohol (with the presumption that drama would ensue. It did.) The first season featured regular and overt displays of conflict and physical violence, both in and out of the cage. As it was put by the eventual winner of Season 1, Forrest Griffen:

It’s a reverse socialization process. There are 16 dudes with that knuckle-dragger in them,

and if you put them in that situation, they’ll devolve. We all turned in to cavemen. It took

me two weeks after I got back to return to normal. (quoted in Wertheim, 2009, p. 179).

The finale episode of the show featuring bouts between Diego Sanchez and Kenny Florian and

Forrest Griffin and Stephan Bonnar attracted over 3 million viewers (Maher, 2010). The Griffin and Bonnar fight has since been coined by many “the best fight in the octagon,” and on July 6th

2013, resulted in both fighters—since retiring with mixed UFC careers—being inducted into the exclusive UFC Hall of Fame. As Dana White notes, “Nobody knows more than me how much

that fight meant. For us, that fight meant everything, and I never forget it” (quoted in Myers,

2013, para. 6).

Now beginning production on the 18th season, The Ultimate Fighter has produced many champions in the UFC and directly increased the popularity of MMA (Kim, Andrews &

Greenwell, 2009).7 From its place of exile on the margins the UFC quickly gained popularity. In the same year as The Ultimate Fighter’s debut UFC 47 marked the first time PPV buy rates exceeded 100,000 since 1997, a floor rarely tested since (see Figure 1). In fact 2006 saw an approximate average PPV of 525,000 and breached the 1,000,000 buy rate on December 30,

2006, at UFC 66 featuring a title bout between White’s previous clients and future Hall of

Famers Chuck Liddell and Tito Ortiz. The fight night generated $5,397,300 in gate sales alone and featured a total disclosed purse of $767,000 to be shared between the 18 fighters. Salaries for the night ranged from $250,000 for Liddell to $3,000 for Anthony Perosh.8 An astounding profit for the UFC without even factoring the PPV revenue.9

UFC events now regularly draw greater television viewership than the NBA, NHL and

MLB (Kim et al., 2009) and has taken over from boxing at the top of the PPV industry,

surpassing the former leader in PPV buys every year since 2009 (Snowden, 2013). The UFC has

truly hit the mainstream, acquiring sponsorship deals with major multinational corporations such

7 Since 2004 USA based rival leagues have emerged capitalizing on the UFC’s momentum. This includes Strike Force (2006), USA-MMA (2007), Bellator MMA (2008). All of which are dwarfed by the UFC for market share. 8 Perosh exemplifies the career trajectory of a lowly ranked fighter. Having lost his first fight in UFC 61, and lost in UFC 66. He didn’t feature in the Octagon again until UFC 110 in 2010 as a stand in after two days notice. He has since missed two bouts for injury, and registered two wins in UFC 127 and 138 however the payday for these is estimated at $12,000 ($6,000 to show, $6,000 for the win) in both (www.mma-manifesto.com). In July 2012 at UFC 149 Perosh lost by KO in the opening seven seconds of the bout and received the same $6,000 to show. 9 Data retrieved from www.mma‐manifesto.com, an MMA blog that receives fight data on the salaries and PPV rates for each UFC event from the respective fight athletic commission, however, as a secondary source this data may introduce some unreliability. 11 as Harley-Davidson, Bud Light, and US Bank (Lim, Martin & Kwak, 2010). In 2012 it was estimated that the UFC brought in over $600 million in annual sales (Snowden, 2013) and was broadcast to over a billion homes in 148 countries.

This strong market position, as suggested earlier, is owed to the UFC’s veritable monopoly on MMA promotion. While historically a more contested terrain, since its first profitable year in 2005 the UFC has set about taking over its competitors both in America and internationally. In 2006 “World Extreme Cagefighting” was bought, followed by PRIDE

Fighting Championship in Japan the following year. Perhaps the largest takeover came in 2011 with the purchase of long-standing rival Strikeforce (Hunt, 2011).

Consolidation under one brand has only helped further the sports rise. Where MMA had previously operated as isolated groups resembling the under-ground meetings of social outcasts in Brad Pitt’s “Fight Club” (1999), the UFC brought organization and credibility. A premier competition synonymous with the sport itself legitimates MMA as a unified championship. It depicts a clear codified route of assent. The winners in the UFC are depicted as the best in the world at what has widely become normalized and established as a sport.

As a private company Zuffa LLC. is under no legal obligation to publish any of its financial records. Their exact income and expenditure remains somewhat of a mystery. So too does their labor expenditures. However, through information released by the organization, analysis of current and past fighter discussion, and the obligatory publication of pay data by a minority of the athletic commissions, a cursory understanding of the promotion company’s labor structure and practices can be developed.

The Labor Structure in MMA

The buyout of competitors has afforded the UFC a veritable monopoly over U.S. and

global MMA. This is not uncommon in the sporting industry. Indeed the monopoly position has

historically been a critical feature in the growth and financial success of professional sports

leagues over the past century (Quirk & Fort, 1999). A monopolistic league, be it the NFL, MLB,

MLS, NHL or UFC, is able to use its market power to capture the bulk of the rents generated

from gate receipts, media income and other sources. This “rent capture” allows the monopolist

to fortify its position, construct barriers to entry and maintain its labor force control. As the sportsmen and women face a disadvantage of asymmetric information and a lack of employment alternatives incomes are suppressed below their marginal revenue product (Kahn, 2000; Quirk &

Fort, 1999; Rottenberg, 1956),

Of course this position has been weakened in the big four sports since the 1970s with the development of the sports labor unions and collective bargaining agreements. This is in opposition to broader social moves. As Quirk and Fort (1999) assert, the increasing dissemination of free market logic has eroded the union power across global industry. The sport labor market, however, does not display this competitive logic. Sports stars have a unique skill set that means they are not easily replaced, and as such have a negotiating advantage. This advantage has been utilized as a force for exerting countervailing power against that possessed by their employers. The unions aim for bidding between franchises to push up wages to levels at, or equal to, the marginal revenue they generate and open up suppressed wage information through litigation and arbitration. As a result salaries across all unionized sports have been on the increase, and salaries of players with similar records have moved into a more equal range (Fort

& Quirk, 1999; Kahn, 2000).

The UFC has avoided any unionization of note. It is, after all, an individual sport and the

fighters are independently contracted by the institution. A similar structure exists in professional boxing, a sport with a long history of fight manipulation and organizational collusion in the pursuit of greater managerial and organizational profits (e.g., see the civil anti-trust suit between the International Boxing Club of New York, Inc., et al. v. United States of America, 345 U.S. 236,

1955). Addressing this, in 2000 the United States Congress passed the Muhammad Ali Boxing

Reform Act. Recognizing the informational disadvantage of fighters in this sport the Act requires

the disclosure of fight revenues in order to crack down on coercive contracts which could be

constructed by matchmakers who “could refuse to arrange a fight, venue or broadcast deal unless

boxers surrendered a disproportionate share of their proceeds and signed a long-term promotion

agreement” (economist.com, 2011, para. 1). Despite similarities in both the sporting spectacle

and the organizational structure, the Muhammad Ali Boxing Act is worded to apply to boxing

alone, gifting the UFC an illogical exemption.. The result? New York-based boxing promoter

Bob DiBella succinctly sums up the power in monopolistic non-disclosure: “You have one

industry that’s not disclosing and thriving [MMA], and another industry [boxing] that’s

disclosing and dying” (Barr & Gross, 2012).

The Contract

Essential in the construction and maintenance of this asymmetric relationship is the

fighter contract. This contract is based off a standard document which is individualized through a

negotiation process between the UFC, the fighter, and their manager. Typically compensation

occurs in a cumulative, incentive based structure often with a guaranteed initial base pay

supplemented with potential bonus for victory and other discretionary bonuses on top (such as

fight of the night, knockout of the night, submission of the night).10 Fight contracts are however kept under the strictest of confidentiality serving to maintain an asymmetry of information between the fighters and the league and, thus, keep fighter collusion to a minimum.

The confidential nature of the contract was, however, breached this year due to a contract dispute surrounding lightweight fighter Eddie Alvarez. Alvarez is contracted to Bellator, the

largest remaining competitor to the UFC. Alvarez was looking to join the UFC to challenge for

the lightweight title and, as a result, has ended up in a lawsuit between the promotion companies.

Thanks to Bellator submitting the contract as evidence, the UFC’s standard contract has become

a public document, published on BleacherReport.com by lead MMA writer Jonathan Snowden on the 14th of May 2013. The article outlines the entire contract highlighting specific peculiar or unique aspects accompanied by commentary from White, Fertitta, Zuffa LLC. General Council

Lawrence Epstein as well as commentary from a former manager, Juanito Ibarra and Zev Eigen, a labor law professor at Northwestern University. Some of the interesting aspects of the 24-page document are laid out below:

ARTICLES I & II: GRANT OF PROMOTIONAL AND ANCILLIARY RIGHTS:

The UFC controls the right to the “name, sobriquet, image likeness, voice, persona, signature, and biographical material of the fighter and all persons associated with the fighter”.

(Snowden, 2013, p.6). This means the UFC has the right to the use of all fighters in all forms of media and communications “in perpetuity” (forever). This goes beyond the fight contract delineating the fight parameters but extends into all the secondary markets associated with the

UFC. This is unusual in the sport’s industry as it is in this secondary market that a lot of athletes make their money through licensing of their likeness.

10 A handful of elite fighters such as George St-Pierre, whose managers possess a degree of negotiating clout, negotiate into their contracts a share of Pay-Per-View revenue. This occurs only with a significant minority. 15

ARTICLE III: PROMOTION:

As well as fighting in the event the fighter is required to attend, cooperate and assist in

the promotion of their and any other UFC owned bouts, events or broadcasts, and the sale of

merchandise. This article includes mandatory attendance at promotional events and press

conferences. Violations here have been known to come with a hefty fine as was seen earlier this month (June 2013) with reigning middleweight champion Anderson Silva fined $50,000 for his absence from a UFC 162 promotion.

ARTICLE IV TERM:

This section outlines the length of the contract. This can vary from fighter to fighter however, it is noteworthy that it contains a “Champions Clause” (Article 4.2) which extends the contract automatically by one year or three fights, if the fighter becomes champion. As worded in the contract, “If, at the expiration of the term, Fighter is then a UFC champion, the Term shall automatically be extended for the period commencing on the Termination Date and ending on the later of (i) one year from the Termination Date; or (ii) the date on which the fighter has participated in three bouts promoted by Zuffa, regardless of the weight class or title.”

Of this, Eigen commented “I think it’s potentially a violation of the 13th Amendment, the prohibition against slavery or involuntary servitude. You can’t force someone to work for you.”

(Snowden, 2013, p. 12).

ARTICLE VI: PAY

The contract outlines the pay structures of the fighter. This structure includes base pay, and escalations in that pay contingent upon the fighter winning his subsequent fights. In

Alverez’s case his initial pay was $70,000 base. Should he win his first seven bouts his pay will increase to $105,000. Should he lose just one his pay reverts back to its initial level.

ARTICLE VIII: CONDUCT

“Fighter shall conduct himself in accordance with commonly accepted standards of decency, social conventions and morals…Fighter’s conduct shall not be such as to shock, insult, or offend the public or any organized group therein,” this restriction of conduct extends to the type of clothing the fighter or those associated with the fighter, choose to wear or any

“permanent or temporary tattoos o body art”. Zuffa maintains the sole discretion as to what conduct is deemed inappropriate.

ARTICLE IX: INJURY OR RETIREMENT

The UFC has the right to private assessment of any injury and, if any injury incurred that incapacitates the fighter from performing his contractual duties (fighting) the contract is suspended until the fighter recovers. That is the contract extends automatically until all obligations are fulfilled by the fighter.

ARTICLE X: TERMINATION/REMEDIES

Zuffa has the right to terminate any contract following the failure of any fighter to fulfill his contractual duties. That includes the ability to terminate any contract following a loss regardless of how many fights the fighter was signed for. As Eigen states “the contract unilaterally benefits the employer with no reciprocal benefit to the fighter. This completely one- sided, completely unfair” (Snowden, 2013, p. 21).

ARTICLE XII: RIGHT TO MATCH

“During the one year period after the conclusion of the Term for any reason whatsoever

(the “Matching Period”) Zuffa shall have to option to match the financial terms and conditions of any offer made to Fighter for an Other Bout as defined in Section 3.6 of the Agreement”

(Snowden, 2013, p. 22). The section continues that any offer made to the fighter, even when his

17 contract has expired, must supply the terms of that agreement including the identity of the supplier to Zuffa. “Such notice shall constitute an exclusive, irrevocable offer to contract with

Zuffa on the same financial terms and conditions” (Snowden, 2013, p. 22). It is then up to Zuffa to accept or reject these terms.

ARTICLE XXI: COMMERCIAL IDENTIFICATION

Zuffa holds full discretion over any and all sponsorship or endorsement deals entered into by the fighter while under contract with the UFC. The organization has the right to use the fighters’ body and spaces for promotion and sponsorship as it sees fit. “Fighters face the worst case scenario. They are alone, at the mercy of a company that is interested in making money for itself rather than for them. That’s not surprising. That’s how capitalism works.” (Eigen quoted in

Snowden, 2013, p29)

ARTICLE XXII: CONFIDENTIALITY

The fighter has to keep confidential all of the aspects enclosed in the contract, including his pay. As Eigen sees it, “that’s a complete violation of the National Labor Relations Act on its face” (p.30-31). It essentially blocks any opportunity for collective action on the part of the fighter.

Despite the strict constraints of the contract, the UFC has been a lucrative career for many. As Lorenzo Fertitta asserts, “We’ve created, literally, nearly 70 millionaires since we took this thing [the UFC] over” (Snowden, 2013, p. 5). This number is often held up as a counter for claims of poor fighter pay, however, as ex-UFC fighter Jacob Volkmann clarifies, this number simply occludes the reality of the pay of the lower tier fighters. “They always claim that they treat the fighters well- the ones that are on the main card all the time. They don’t treat the rest of

them very well…you’re really not making much money…they claim they’re treating fighters

well but they’re not, realistically” (Holland, 2013).

Displaying this disparity, popular MMA news website ‘mma-manifesto.com’ reported,

the range of salaries for the 265 fighters under contract in 2010 as between $3,000 and

$900,000.11 Forty-nine percent of those fighters earned less than the average American

household ($45,000) while 18% of the fighters made less than $10,000 in the calendar year.

Even the top fighters aren’t paid well. In a 2012 interview with ESPN Fertitta stated that

the company had paid out $250 million total since the company started turning a profit in 2005.

While superficially an impressive number, when put in the context of a company making some

$600 million per year, it quickly becomes evident that the UFC are not matching the standard

50% of revenue paid to the athletes in America’s big four sports (Quirk & Fort, 1999).

Contemporary boxing is even higher. Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao take the number

one and two spots on the ‘Forbes 100-highest paid athletes list’, earning upwards of $30 million for a fight that draws comparable PPV buys to any UFC event. As famed boxing promoter Bob

Arum claims he is paying his fighters around 80% while, “Because of the monopoly that the

UFC has, they pay their fighters maybe 20% of the proceeds that come in on a UFC fight.”

(economist.com, 2011, para. 5).

Paying comparably small amounts concentrated in the top tier of UFC fighters has meant many of the lower ranked fighters have come across tough times. Last month (May 2013), John

Cholish joined the likes of Jacob Volkmann in speaking out against the UFC. Cholish retired from the sport with a pro record of 8-3 but just three fights at the UFC’s top level. His reason for retirement: “continuing to fight didn’t make sense financially” (Erikson & Morgan, 2013, para.

11 Salaries displayed in $USD and include base pay, win bonus and other discretionary bonuses. PPV %’s and external sources of revenue such as sponsorships and endorsements are excluded (http://www.mma- manifesto.com). 19

3). Speaking with BleacherReport’s Damon Martin, Cholish broke down the costs he faced as a fighter, what the UFC covered, and what he received. After paying for his own training camp, pre-fight medicals, the costs of travel and accommodation for his coaches and corner men and

27% in international taxes (the fight was in Brazil), Cholish’s $8,000 show money at ‘UFC on

FX 8’ left him more than $6,000 out of pocket. As Martin (5/23/13) notes, “he doesn’t expect many other to follow suit because of their need for the UFC paycheck” (para. 4) but Cholish is in no way the minority, stating:

I’ve spoken to a vast array of fighters from the top level guys to the mid-tier guys to

lower level guys and I feel at least the guys I’ve spoken with kind of have the same

feeling of maybe their not being fully compensated the way they should be. But guys are

scared. (Martin, 2013, para. 5)

Compounding the low pay to the fighters is the lack of ancillary benefits or support in their contract. As Volkmann outlines:

The healthcare plan is horrible, with a $1,500 deductible per injury – the catastrophic-

injury insurance in not even really good insurance. There’s no retirement fund, there’s no

signing bonus. You start off at six-and-six, you’re really not making that much money

because you’re self employed so…you end up paying twice as much tax. (Holland,

2013).

The fighters become reliant to the organization as they have little other option. As anonymous fighter put it, “They want us hungry. They want us to be poor…so they have more control over us” (quoted in Barr & Gross, 2012, para. 3). In addition to this reliance, the fighters are expendable—as I have shown—to the point that they can be cut from their contract at any

time following a loss. While Cholish was able to go back to Wall Street, Volkman has been

relegated to the less lucrative ‘World Series of Fighting’.

Such expendability helps keep the fighters inline. As noted on ESPN’s ‘Outside the

Lines’, fighters view talking to the media about the UFC organizational structure and pay scale as ‘career suicide’ in which they can face severe sanctions or ejection from the league (Barr &

Gross, 2012). Similarly, the chance of unionized resistance is decreased. As another anonymous fighter suggested, “I would love to (unionize the UFC), but they’ve got me by the balls…

They’ve got half my pay in bonuses” (anonymous fighter, quoted in Zwick, 2012, p, 1).

************

Despite the phenomenal growth in the sport as it transitions from the margin to the mainstream and the growing concern and condemnation of the economic practices of the professional sport, there has been little in the way of academic attention paid to the Ultimate

Fighting Championship. Those who have, tend to deliver sound historical accounts of the sports emergence before moving into analysis of the local or grass-roots practice of MMA and the amateur practitioners involvement in the sporting subculture (Abramson & Modzelewski, 2010;

Downey, 2006; 2007; Green, 2011; Spencer, 2009). Despite borrowing from the methodology of

Loïc Wacquant (1995a; 1995b; 2005), many of these studies typically lack address of the economic environment and individual economic determinants that featured so prominently in

Wacquant’s studies of professional prize fighters training and fighting out of inner city Chicago gym. In Wacquant’s ethnography, many of the boxers’ motivations centered around the myth of fighting their way out of the ghetto, and the individual belief that they will be the one to become

the champion (1995a; 2005).12 Conversely Abramson and Modzelewski (2010) suggest there exists a growing middle class MMA fighter base and their motives revolve around group membership, meritocratic self-improvement and authenticity. There exists a gap in the literature as to which participants pursue professional MMA careers, what this isolated group’s motives are beyond group membership, and how the UFC environment, culture, and public persona influence this movement.

Those that have addressed the UFC directly have attempted to situate the development of the sport as part of broader processes of civilization and codification in sport and society more broadly (van Bottenberg & Helibron, 2006; 2010; Garcia & Malcolm, 2010). As for understandings of the professional sports newly acquired position in the sport-media complex,

Swain (2011) provides analysis of how the mediation of the sport (of UFC 114 and The Ultimate

Fighter Season 10) constructs a specific brand of violent masculinity, and how that masculinity is in turn attached to commodities to facilitate their circulation. To conceptualize this Swain utilizes the work of Guy Debord who, in 1967, published his treatise ‘The Society of the

Spectacle’. Debord proposed that the advances in media technology and their increased proliferation, accompanied by the dominant capitalist economic order, has resulted in a world dominated by spectacles—representations that become the organizing force of all social relations and the driving force of capitalistic economic exchange. Such an understanding put forward in the ‘Society of the Spectacle’ (1967/1994) presents a framework for analysis of media texts by positioning them as central to the their political-economic and cultural economic context.

The incorporation of these factors into an analysis of the UFC and The Ultimate Fighter help to generate a more holistic understanding of this particular sporting spectacle’s position in society and the processes involved in its unique labor economy. Such a study involves working

12 The limitations of Wacquant’s studies will be addressed later in the document. 22

beyond the confines of typical cultural studies and media theory and traditional neoclassical

sports economic theory. It involves the generation of a dialectical conception of the interactions

of the economic and cultural environment and the potential this has for generating a more

holistic view of sport labor.

The UFC is uniquely positioned for such a socio-cultural, socio-economic heurism for a

number of reasons. First, the rise of the UFC has been inextricably linked to the mediation of the

sport. Since the initial production of The Ultimate Fighter in 2004, the UFC’s PPV rates have

exploded, surpassing 1,000,000 buys at least once each year since 2006.13 It is a highly

spectacularized mediation in which the competition, the “fight”, is enhanced with narratives,

cinematographic techniques, secondary mediations and “expert” commentary (from ex- Fear

Factor host Joe Rogan). The Ultimate Fighter helps in this narrative creation as it offers insight into the competition, the organization structure, and personalizes and celebrates the fighters and the organization’s president, Dana White. Such constructions are in need of a critical analysis as they are not constructed by some objective (all be it profit driven) media corporation: the show is paid for, produced and packaged by Zuffa LLC. The corporation is afforded a privileged position

in their ability to construct the discourse about itself, its employees, and the labor environment

they operate in.

Second, the UFC has a unique organizational structure—as a centralized monopoly

concentrating the market power in the organization’s hands at the expense of their employees

(Quirk & Fort, 1999). Adding to this is the promotion company’s private ownership precluding

the requirement to disclose financial information and thus exacerbating the asymmetry of

information between the employees and employer. Furthermore, MMA’s exclusive exemption

13 1,000,000 buys is a big milestone still today with the some of the top boxing matches of the last few years just reaching the number. For example Mayweather vs Marquez (2009) made 1.1 million buys, while Pacquiao vs Margarito (2010) did 1.15 million. 23

from the Muhammad Ali Boxing Act and the inability of fighters to successfully unionize

reduces their ability to combat the UFC organization’s market power.

These two factors place the UFC at the apex in capitalistic sporting evolution. The UFC

is an efficient enterprise that has effectively suppressed labor costs while valorizing the unique

emergent sport of MMA. Such valorization relies on a specific type of labor force and a specific

ideological construction of the sporting spectacle to be created in the minds of the public. The

greatest site for this construction has been the reality show, the Ultimate Fighter, as it provides a

representation of the abstract fighter—a collective identity for the UFC’s ideal fighter—and constructs a sporting and institutional narrative previously lacking from the UFC. As Swain

(2011) notes, “shows like The Ultimate Fighter not only create dramatic intrigue for upcoming fights…they also provide ‘reality’ demonstrations of how the ultimate fighters are supposed to behave, and the types of ‘manhood acts’ that are deemed acceptable, and even valuable, not only by their peers, but Dana White, the man in charge, and the man who ultimately makes the decisions regarding the UFC, and those who are allowed inside the Octagon” (p. 257).

This study aims to follow up on, and add empirical weight to, Swain’s claim. In this project, I seek to map the cultural economy of the UFC and offer a more in-depth understanding of the potential for mediated construction of good economic fighter-citizens. I take the first season of The Ultimate Fighter as my case study—my point of entry into the cultural-economic relations and conditions of the UFC. I believe the reality TV show is an important site of inquiry because it represents the actual meeting of the labor force and the organizational structure under conditions in which both “parties” are further mediated to the public, and subsequently, future potential UFC laborers. Thus The Ultimate Fighter provides a critical site for interrogating the

(re)production of the cultural-economic conditions of the sport. The Ultimate Fighter is a site in

which a handful of laborers are displayed as literally fighting for a contract. A contract that, as I have detailed, is problematic in its own right.

It should be acknowledge that, due to temporal and resource limitations, I have limited this study to a critical discourse analysis of the first season of The Ultimate Fighter reality show.

This season was chosen for its position as the progenitor for the financial and cultural growth of the entire sport of MMA. However due to this aforementioned limitation my study provides only cursory analysis as to the potential for this cultural economic constructionism. My findings need to be put into conversation with analyses of the audience member/potential laborer’s consumption of the spectacle and motives for participation. Similarly, analyses such as this one need to be extended into the other seasons of the realty show (17 at the time of writing) to track the changing nature of the UFC’s cultural-economic projection. Acknowledging these limitations, I attempt to establish the theoretical economic impact of the spectacle of The

Ultimate Fighter through addressing the preliminary research question:

• What are the dominant framings of the (aspirant) UFC fighter, the UFC as a business

institution, and the sport of MMA that emerge though the reality television spectacle The

Ultimate Fighter?

Answering this question provides an understanding for the fighter self as an economic subject and will open the door for discussion as to the role the media spectacle plays in the composition and reproduction of the UFC labor market at large. To this end I present two secondary research questions:

• In what ways does the media spectacle of The Ultimate Fighter hold the potential to

(re)construct, promote, or limit the subject positions of an aspirant fighter audience?

• What are the economic implications of such positioning?

Having outlined the aims and rationale of this study, I will now provide a brief overview

of the rest of this document. In the next chapter I review the relevant literature. This first

involves the establishment of the cultural economic framework. I establish this framework

through a review of sports economic theory and research, as it pertains to explanations of the sports labor market. Such understandings are inherently limited in their abstract reductionism and reliance on concepts such as utilitarianism, which lie in opposition to the cultural elements of social interaction and exchange. In an attempt to bring culture back into the economic conversation I review theorists such as Pierre Bourdieu and Sut Jhally before settling on

Debord’s treatise of The Society of the Spectacle for his dialectic conception of culture and economics. Following this theoretical grounding, I turn to the emerging literature on Mixed

Martial Arts where the focus has tended to be placed on the individual level of lived cultural experience. Finally, I review the relevant literature on reality television before presenting my method where, through the interventionist lens of the critical paradigm, I outline the process of critical discourse analysis (CDA). The key themes and findings are presented under the headings put forward by Rose and Wood (2005), which outline the process of consumption of authenticity in Reality TV. These headings are: “describing the situation;” (exploring the context of the show), “identification;” (describing the mediated contestant identity), and “production” (the perception of authentic reality) (Rose & Woods, 2005).

In the final chapter these results are discussed within the context of the contemporary society of the spectacle, where by the Ultimate Fighter can be conceived both as an isolated spectacle and an apparatus of both, the UFC spectacle, and the broader society of the spectacle.

Through such analysis we can see The Ultimate Fighter functioning to construct a particular fighting culture that influences the UFC economy. It projects social value to fighting in the UFC

26 for a particular type of individual while explicating the MMA human capital necessary for success. In doing so the institution “discourses endlessly on itself in an uninterrupted monologue of self-praise” (Debord, 1994; 24). Such a monologue occludes the reality of the institutional labor practices of the UFC and works toward exacerbating its monopolistic/monopsonistic market power over the sport of MMA.

CHAPTER TWO

REVIEW OF LITERATURE

In this chapter I review the literature relevant to this study and my exploration of the cultural economy of the UFC Spectacle. As such, I begin with an overview of the prevailing sports economics literature—a body largely informed by neoclassical economic theory, whereby market theory of supply and demand informs understandings of price, output and income distributions. Focusing on the sports labor economy, this section reviews the deterministic and formulaic approach to conceptions of the labor market; wage derivation, and economic exploitation. Such a review serves to outline the shortfalls of neoclassical economic theory so as to build into a more comprehensive view of sport labor through positioning the economy and culture interacting in a dialectic flux. This section presents alternative theories to understanding the social interaction of individuals that goes beyond a theory of exchange. Tracing this literature presents an analytic toolbox for the study of cultural economy before culminating in Guy

Debord’s Society of the Spectacle, which presents a particular way of understanding culture economy functioning in a dialectic.

As The Ultimate Fighter provides the vehicle for this exploration of the cultural economic dialectic in the society of the spectacle, I turn my attention to the research situated in the combat sport of MMA. Such research tends to draw from the ethnographic methodology employed by Loïc Wacquant in his exploration of pugilistic culture of the Chicago ghetto. This research presents interesting points of similarity and departure between the two sporting cultures

(i.e. boxing and Mixed Martial Arts).

In this exploration, I turn towards an acknowledgement of the individual fighter within

these subcultures and embark on an exploration the articulation of the individual and the cultural

formation that individual is situated within. This leads directly into the research on reality

television as a self-reflexive identity project for both the contestant and for the audience.

Economics of the Spectacularized Sporting Body

In order to construct the holistic conception of the labor economics of the UFC, we must first explore the prevailing economic logic in its application to the sporting arena. Sport over the last century has continued if not accelerated its evolution as a profit driven business institution.

An economization of sports has emerged both in response to, and in continuation with, a change in the character and motive of sporting contests. Since Rottenberg’s (1956) seminal article “The

Baseball Players Labor Market”, there has been an ever-expanding and self-perpetuating field of study of the unique aspects of sport and the use of sport as a model for economic theory (e.g.

Kahn [2000] “The sport business as a labor market laboratory”). Such conceptions aim to increase the financial reliability of the final product: the sporting competition. Models have been proposed for multiple aspect of the sporting “product” ranging from attendance to player salary.

These vary in their reliability and validity; however, invariably they draw the same conclusion as that of Neale (1964): that professional sports present a peculiar economics.

This section is concerned with the existing literature on the sports labor market and the sport economy more broadly. In line with neoclassical economic theory, this market has tended to be conceptualized by the supply of and demand for labor. Echoing many of their contemporaries, Rosen and Sanderson (2001) explain: “The demand for labor is derived form the demand for the ultimate good or service that labor is used to produce” (p. 48). Therefore, greater

29 demand for the sporting product enhances labor demand. While there exists more restrictions to this relationship with fixed and grandfathered in team leagues, these leagues still expand and contract with enhanced demand for the sport. For a league of individual competitors the labor force is more pliable. Rather than filling specific team rosters the UFC has the power to expand and contract its labor force with the ebbs and flows of market demand. Based on this premise, I will provide a brief review of the economic literature on sport demand to frame the wider driving force or labor demand. I will follow this by studies more specifically focused on the labor market itself.

Demand for the Product of Sports Labor

Initial analysis of the demand for the sporting product requires the explication of what the final product actually is. Sutton and Parrett (1992) suggested that the product of professional sports is the game itself; whatever takes place on the field. These individual events are often a part of a wider league conceptualized as the ‘league product’ (Borland & Macdonald, 2003).‘Fan interest’ (Neale, 1964), or what has alternatively been termed ‘fan equity’, is the essential driving force for demand. Previous research has typically reduced fan interest to two constructs: team/league/sport identification (Borland & Macdonald, 2003; Mason, 1999) and ‘the quality of contest’ (Rottenberg, 2000; Madrigal, 1995). This reductionist approach is problematic as it ignores other potential drivers and the interactions between them. As Smith and Stewart (2007) state, “fandom is complex…it can’t be reduced to simple typologies based on a single factor that drives sport related behavior” (p. 156). However, the bulk of sport economic literature continues to corroborate this reduction in their method of analysis and prescription of interventions aimed at maximizing fan interest and utility.

Team, league or sport identification can be defined as the perceived connectedness of an individual to a team, league or sport, experiencing the internalization of that teams success and failure (Ashforth & Mael, 1989). Fans use their team and individual players as a source to construct their identity and sense of self (Borland & Macdonald, 2003; Chen, 2007). While not a common area of exploration in sport economic literature, the abundance of studies in the fields of marketing and psychology (Bhattacharya, Rao & Guynn, 1995; Chen, 2007; Fisher & Wakefield,

1998; Funk & James, 2001; Gwinner & Swanson, 2003; Hinch & Higham, 2005; Johan & Pham,

1999; Mason, 1999; Wann & Branscombe, 1993) have lead to the widely accepted axiom that fan interest—and therefore consumption and revenue—is enhanced by greater association with a team, sport or its competitors (Borland & Macdonald, 2003).

The second source of demand, the quality of contest, has in the past been conceptualized in two distinct areas: Demonstration of physical and mental ability and uncertainty of outcome

(Borland & Macdonald, 2003). Historically, both of these factors have been seen to be dependent on the individual-sport match-ups (e.g. boxing opponents) or the distribution of talent in team sports. The imperative to enhance uncertainty of outcome has been the subject of empirical enquiry since the seminal sports economic works of Rottenberg (1956) and Neale (1964). The importance of uncertainty in sport is best summed up by Madrigal, (1995), who argues that sport can be seen as

. . . a hedonistic experience in which the event itself elicits ‘a sense of drama’ where the

level of drama will depend on the degree of uncertainty of outcome. (Madrigal, 1995, p.

206)

It has been suggested that a positive relationship exists between demand for sport and the perceived uncertainty of the contest (Borland & MacDonald, 2003). This concept has become a

31 taken for granted doctrine based on neoclassical economic doxa. For example, “the value of a sporting product is almost entirely dissipated once the event ends” (Szymanski, 2003, p. 468) or

“contests among poorly matched competitors are of little interest” (Rosen & Sanderson, 2001, p.

50). The empirical evidence for the effect of competitive balance on sport demand or fan interest, however, displays much greater variation (Borland & Macdonald, 2003). In spite of these findings the theory of competitive balance has had impactful implications on the sport labor industry.

The body of literature can be methodologically divided into three categories based on the time frame over which this uncertainty is quantified. These are: the uncertainty of the match; uncertainty of the season; or, the “long-run.” Due to the structure of the UFC—that of individual fights, the lack of a competitive ‘season,’ and an arbitrary, subjective ranking system—the only relevant time frame for this study is the uncertainty of each match.14

The evidence for an impact of match uncertainty on attendance is tenuous at best.

Typically, uncertainty of outcome has been quantified in one of two ways: Either measuring the difference in winning percentage or league ranking or through probability estimates based on betting odds. Of the eighteen studies reviewed by Borland and Macdonald (2003), only three displayed a significant correlation (e.g. Peel & Thomas, 1997). The majority of the studies produced no significant relation while some even showed a contradictory relationship of increasing attendance with increased home-team win probability (Forrest & Simmons, 2002).

The assumed monotonic relationship in the uncertainty of outcome hypothesis is clearly a gross overgeneralization. Szymanski (2003) suggests a number of instances where it may fall down, for example the increased attention and support generated by a strong teams winning streak or in rooting for an under-dog. Further complicating the relationship is the team

14 For a review of all competitive balance literature, see Borland and Macdonald (2003). 32

identification factor outlined above, which suggests alternatives for demand and subsequent

consumption beyond the aesthetic or visceral rewards.

Despite the muddled evidence, sporting governance has typically acted to maximize

competitive balance through policy and regulation that imposes significant restraint on the

sporting labor market. Major League Baseball’s reverse clause is one of the earliest examples.

The reverse clause allowed teams to retain the option to renew the contract of a player for

another year following their contract expiration. This afforded greater controlling power to the

team management, binding players to the team practically indefinitely (Rottenberg, 1956; Quirk

& Fort, 1999).

MLB defended the need for the reverse rule as it was seen as necessary “to assure an

equal distribution of playing talent among teams,” (Rottenberg, 1956, p. 246) and thus a key to

maintaining a spectacle rich in uncertainty and competitive balance. Rottenberg highlighted the

fallacious nature of such a claim due to sports “co-operative competition.” Unlike business, sports teams or individuals do not prosper from monopolization due to the joint production of the sporting spectacle. Their profit-maximizing goal is realized through putting on greater competitive displays. Rottenberg suggests this unique aspect of the sport economy means no regulation is required. He suggests a free sport labor market will equally distribute talent in line with the Coase Theorem:16 the individual’s value to a team is relative to the team’s existing talent pool. Therefore, players maximize salaries with teams lacking talent and who thus value them more.

16 The ‘Coase Theorem’ suggests that in a perfectly competitive market, with well-defined property rights, parties naturally gravitate toward the most efficient and mutually beneficial outcome through negotiation and bargaining. In sport labor allocation it suggests teams willingness to pay is based on the players abilities relative the current talent pool already under contract. As such, a free and open market reduces the incentive for a team to hoard talent as the next best player has a higher relative value to the teams that lack talent. 33

Despite Rottenberg’s free market argument for competitive balance, sports teams and leagues have continued emplacing regulation under the premise of enhanced competitive balance. Wage ceilings and floors are an example of this. The former reduces the potential for a wealthy team to accrue all the talent while the latter reduces the likelihood of teams of lesser talent ‘free-riding’; accruing revenue through association and competition with teams with greater labor expenditure who put on a better quality display (Rosen & Sanderson, 2001). Major

League Soccer (MLS) in the United States exemplifies another form of organization of labor and regulation of competitive balance. In this league all players are contracted to the single entity ownership. Players are then allocated across the league by the organization itself (Rosen &

Sanderson, 2001).

While the literature on competitive balance has been applied solely to the team labor environment, it highlights unique aspects of, and significant relationships in, the sport labor economy. Such a perspective has implications for our understanding of the UFC. Firstly, that the final product—the sporting spectacle—emerges out of the cooperative competition among the sport laborers. The cooperation occurring on a macro scale under unified rules and structures agreed upon by the league and its constituents within which to engage in the competitive spectacle. These cooperative understandings materialize in labor policies, rules and regulations which clearly then have an impact on the final product. For example reverse rules or salary caps are reflective of and reflected in the sporting spectacle, which in turn influences the labor environment. Higher demand increases revenues and generates league growth and demand for labor (Rosen & Sanderson, 2001). In this vein, the following section is concerned with the unique constraints placed on the sport labor market and the theories and models of player compensation as related to the sporting product. This is typically done through methodologies of

34 quantifying individual contribution to product and revenue and quantifications of equilibriums in the player labor market.

The Sport Labor Market

Simon Rottenberg (1956) produced the first analysis of the sport labor market over 50 years ago. His analysis of professional baseball involved reviewing the contractual agreements and industrial structure unique to professional sports in order to investigate the distribution of

‘talent’ and competitive balance mentioned above. His analysis, however, goes deeper than that, by tying the organizational structure to monopsonistic exploitation. His critique can be seen as the impetus for an entire field of academic enquiry into the economics of sports labor markets and the concept of player/athlete exploitation.

Prior to reviewing the player compensation/exploitation literature a few broader labor economics concepts need to be covered to add context to my specific focus on sport labor economics. These directly relate to quantifying labor, evaluating pay, and calculating the degree of capitalistic valorization. It is not uncommon for the large sums paid to professional sports stars to be questioned by the public at large. Sports blogs and television shows are rife with discussion on the topic. From an economic standpoint, these sums can be justified with reference to economies of scale or even argued (as the majority of this section will) that they are not compensated enough. Economies of scale refer to the cost advantages an industry see’s through expansion (Rosen & Sanderson, 2001). In the field of sport this is clearly exemplified as the cost of producing an event is largely independent of the size of the audience. Increased consumption results in a decreasing average cost. However, this is not the whole story. Scale economies do not guarantee high salaries. Scarcity in top player talent is required. This is common in most

professional sports due to the steep audience quality gradient, while the unit price gradient is relatively flat. Athletes receive economic rents not by providing the most valuable good or service but by attracting the most customers. This is nicely put into context by Rosen and

Sanderson (2001), when they address the popular confusion around sporting social value and player pay in the context of the ‘personal scale of operations’ effect:

The explanation for the salary differences (e.g. between teachers and professional sports-

people) lies in a ‘personal scale of operations’ effect in sports and most other jobs

(Mayer, 1960). A teacher’s income is bounded by the small number of students who can

be taught in one classroom. Though the unit value per student is very high, the possibility

of earning a large income is small because of the scale of a teacher’s personal business is

sharply constrained. In sports, the unit values of each customer are tiny, but that is more

than offset by the huge personal volume of business that a player generates from the scale

economy. (p. 51)

Here we can see that the larger the economy a player or team operates in the greater their aggregate economic value. How then do we work out what level of pay is fair compensation for the sport labor? Neoclassical economics view labor as a market like any other, in that the interaction of supply and demand determine the equilibrium price (wage). In an open and competitive labor market pay will be proportional to the workers marginal productivity. The marginal revenue product (MRP), the extra revenue generated by employing one more unit of labor, determines the workers wage as a profit-maximizing firm will continue to hire new workers until the marginal revenue product equals the wages, at which point hiring a new workers becomes inefficient.

Analysis of this concept typically involves wage regressions to human capital factors that are assumed to relate to personal productivity (IQ, education level, socio-economic status).

Sports on the other hand are unique in that productivity data is readily available. As Khan (2000) noted, “there is no research setting other than sports where we know the name, face, and life history of every production worker and every supervisor in the industry. Total compensation packages and performance statistics are readily available, and we have a complete data set of worker-employer matches over the career” (p. 77). It is because of this translucence of the sport labor market that Khan (2000) postulates that sports provide the perfect ‘labor market laboratory.’

Findings in this sport-labor laboratory are not automatically generalizable, however, due to aspects unique to the sport labor market. In line with the marginal revenue product theory of wages, it would be expected that professional sports people’s wages would be equal to their

MRP. However, this supposes the labor market is open and competitive, two things the sports labor market inherently is not (Rosen & Sanderson, 2001). The following outlines how sport is considered an industrial exception and how this relates to labor market exploitation.

Rottenberg (1956) made example of this in his seminal text in sport economics.

Rottenberg’s critique of Major League Baseball was written at a time when player contracts included a ‘reverse clause’ (mentioned above). This created a situation of monopsony, a buyer’s monopoly whereby one buyer (of labor in this case) has the ability to manipulate the price.

Rottenberg (1956) posits that each player has their supply price or reservation wage

“related to how much they can earn in the next best employment outside of baseball” (p. 252).

This represents the lower limit on their employment while the upper limit is characterized by the player’s value to the team. Profit maximizing teams will never pay more than a player is worth.

In fact they have the incentive to pay players as close to their reservation price as possible – the

least cost while still maintaining the players services. A player’s bargaining power comes from

their ability to, or threat of, withdrawal their services, however, with the enhanced sell side

competition that comes with a monopsonistic market this power is limited. Ultimately the reverse clause served to ensure players were paid in the low end of the continuum (Rottenberg, 1956),

“the result is players pay is held below marginal revenue product” (Khan, 2000, p. 76).

Neale (1964) extends on the monopsonistic analysis of sport leagues17. Neal contends that all leagues are natural monopolies when conceptualized as multi-plant (team) firms. The general lack of competition between sports leagues arises because of the cost and demand characteristics of the market. This tends to produce natural monopolies where one league efficiently services market supply (Neale, 1964).

Empirical evidence for the monopsonistic impact on player wages has come from two primary sources. Firstly, qualitative studies looking at the correlation between income and monopsonistic power that varies over time with changes in contractual governance (Kahn, 2000;

Sanderson & Siegfried, 1997), and changes in inter-league competition (Kahn, 2000). Second, a more abstract quantitative conception of MRP that allows a surplus value to be quantified

(Krautmann, 1999; Scully, 1989; Macdonald & Reynolds, 1994).

Khan (2000) provides empirical data on the impact of this monopoly power through looking at player salaries across time in MLB, NBA, NFL and NHL in the United States. This data suggests an increase in player salaries with the emergence of rival leagues while monopsony conditions of no competition result in depression of player salaries.

Take baseball for example: The ‘National League’ began in 1876. Three years later the aforementioned ‘reverse clause’ was introduced to insure against rival league poaching.

17 Throughout this study, Neal incorrectly employs the term monopoly with reference to monopsony. 38

Subsequent to this increase in monopsony power, player salaries decreased. In 1882 the

American Association emerged as a competitor and existed until its dissolution and partial absorption by the National League in 1891. Over this nine-year period, average nominal salaries increased from $1,375 in 1882 to $3,500 in 1891. While this displays a simple and likely weak correlation, Kahn’s case becomes a lot stronger post 1891. With monopsony restored, player salaries descend much more abruptly than they climbed. By 1892 the average nominal salary was

$2,400, by 1893 it was $1,800. This decline in salary was not reflected in a decline in baseball attendance and, therefore, revenue (Kahn, 2000). The emergence of the ‘American League’ in

1901 and merging in 1903 repeats the trend with a rise and subsequent fall of salaries by around

15% (Kahn, 2000) and again from 1913 to 1915 with the ‘Federal League’.

Khan’s (2000) initial inquiry is limited by lacking a comparative control group. In answer to this critique he repeats the methodology over the 1960s and 1970s, comparing the wage movement of basketball and hockey leagues with emergent rivals with the other of the “big four” sports maintaining monopsony control (a similar analysis has been carried out by Sanderson and

Sigfried [1997]). The credible rival leagues during this period were the American Basketball

Association (ABA) (1967-76) and the World Hockey Association (WHA) (1971-79), which challenged the monopsony power of the NBA and NHL respectively. Both repeat the trend of increasing salary during periods of competition in isolation to the trends in the other sport salaries (Kahn, 2000; Quirk & Fort, 1999; Sanderson & Sigfried, 1997).

The evidence of abrupt shifts in salary occurring in unison with variations in monopsony power presented in Kahn’s (2000) meta-review present a compelling case. However, it is somewhat a superficial explanation. More quantitative (all be it abstract) evidence for monopsonistic exploitation in sport can be seen with the conceptualization of a player’s marginal

revenue product (MRP) and its comparison with salary. The application of this method to the

sport context was pioneered by Scully (1974). It requires an estimate of the player’s contribution

to the final product.

Scully’s (1974) paper was written in response to the first baseball players’ strike in 1972.

The strike directly relates to the aforementioned reverse clause with the players claiming the clause was illegal under United States Antitrust laws and seriously restricts player1’s economic benefits (Scully, 1974). Scully aimed to measure the degree of this restriction through a measure of MRP through a multiple-step method. First, an estimate was gathered for the relationship between team performance and revenue. Second, Scully estimates the impact of individual performance on team performance. Finally, using the estimates from the first two steps, a marginal revenue product estimates is produced for individuals in the team (Scully 1974). Once estimates of MRP and salary were obtained, players were categorized as ‘mediocre’ with an estimated career length of four years, ‘average’ with a career length of seven years, and ‘stars’ with a career length of ten years. Performative increases were also assumed for each player across these career estimates. From this highly theoretical formula, Scully was able to conclude exploitation of the players at an alarming rate. Star players were seen to receive just 15 percent of their MRP. Scully concluded such high player economic rents were a direct result from baseballs anti-trust exemption.

Scully’s formula has been subject of much critique and re-working. For example,

Krautmann (1999) highlights the error of using total revenue as it overstates individual player contributions. A portion of team revenues are derived from centrally shared league revenue that is unaffected by individual team performance. Along with this is the use of estimates of team revenue. The MLB does not openly share this information outside of a few individual team

40 releases and leaks, reducing the validity of any calculation based on unofficial estimates

(Bradbury, 2010). This second limitation is one that plagues economic analysis of professional, privately owned sports (such as the UFC) as they are under no obligation to release salary or revenue data.

In spite of these and other critiques of the theory, Scully’s estimate of MRP has spawned a number of studies aiming to quantifying the MRP, and subsequent levels of exploitation in sport (Bradbury, 2007; Bradbury, 2010; Krautmann, 1999; Sommers & Quinton, 1982;

Zimbalist, 1992). These studies have produced mixed results as to the extent of exploitation both during the pre-1975 ‘reverse clause era’ of baseball, and following it in times of a free(r)-market.

Updating his calculations, Scully (1989) found star players in 1987 to receive 29-45% of their MRP in an era post reverse clause. While this seems to highlight the monopsonistic exploitation inherent in professional baseball beyond contractual irregularities, employment of the MRP methodology by other authors displays its ambiguity in application. For example: Hill

(1985) found exploitation but to a lesser degree than Scully, in those athletes afforded free agency, Sommers and Quinton (1982) found pay to be fair, while Cassing and Douglass (1980) calculated players to be overpaid.

As noted by Scully and authors that follow, his findings must be interpreted cautiously as they do not control “for a player’s effects on revenue other than through his own playing statistics effects on winning” (Kahn, 2000, p. 83). This relationship has been further complicated with the advent of national television broadcasting. While it can be assumed that televised demand for baseball is dependent on the televised product comprised of individual player performances, broadcasting revenue is generated in a lump sum payment to the league and evenly distributed among teams. Therefore, while it will influence the mean player salary,

41 broadcasting revenues have been concluded to have no impact on the individual player salaries

(Oorlog, 1995). While this is a contentious conclusion, broadcasting revenue sharing structures do complicate MRP calculations more than a league such as the UFC that, until this year, derived all of its competitive television revenues from Pay-Per-View coverage. There has yet to be any studies that have addressed MRP in individual sporting competitions.

MRP has been theoretically useful particularly in displaying differences in pay among players of a similar ability, for example in quantifying racial discrimination (Kahn, 2000). Its methodological limitations however have been well documented. Beyond this, reduction of player ability to a set of statistics, while common in most sports (especially baseball), ignores much of their qualitative characteristics that aid in winning percentage, such as their contribution to the team environment. Similarly, making the jump from win percentage to revenue ignores a raft or interacting and interrelated factors at the heart of sporting spectatorship which similarly drives revenue (e.g., fan culture). This will be covered in greater detail in the sections to follow.

While the field of sport labor economics has grown considerably over the last 50 years, limitations still exist. The studies cited above are predominantly from United States or European contexts and they typically have involved analysis of team sports of the US ‘big four’ (NFL,

NHL, NBA, MLB), and baseball in particular. However, the research highlights the concurrent growth in application of neoclassical economic theory to sport, with the growth of sport as a capitalist institution. The drive for growth and financial prosperity has become synonymous with quantification and formulation. The reliance on such abstractions is however, often overly reductionist and ignores much of the contextual elements unique to the institution and the subsequent impact or influence that they have on the labor market. This is especially pertinent in the field of sport because of its cultural position, both historically (in amateur participation) and

42 in contemporary society more generally (in sub-cultures of fandom). As such I propose a departure from the neoclassical status quo in order to address the need for elaboration of sport economic thought to include the cultural, environmental and contextual elements of the labor market and labor relations within a hyper-mediated society and a hyper-mediated sport industry.

Toward a Cultural Economy of the UFC

“The objects of economics are made up by ignoring of forgetting their cultural or social constitution. Doing economics means acting on the assumption of a determinate nature waiting to be described and calculated about by a neutral observation language; doing ‘cultural economy’ means acting on the assumption that economics are performed and enacted by the very discourses of which they are supposedly the cause” (du Gay & Pryke, 2002, p.6)

The neoclassical economic conception presents sporting practice as the result of the hierarchical organization of industrial production, thus reducible to numeric and formulaic abstraction. This has been the overriding logic in the formalization of economic practice since the eighteenth century. “Economics” as we know it today emerged from the broader study of political economy. Shedding the moral and ethical basis for inquiry, neoclassical economics presents itself as an objective study, as the infallible and overriding conception and concern of contemporary society. However, such reductionism and attempted objectivity has weakened the discipline’s explanatory value, it de-contextualizes and de-historicizes its subject matter.

Namely, it rejects cultural influence in the economic process and outcomes and ignores the cultural effect of economic organization and processes. In this section I aim to address these shortfalls by attending to the emergent notion of cultural economy.

A reversal of the cultural-economic dichotomy has begun to materialize in the academic considerations of scholars in cultural studies, sociology, political economy, and some of the more progressive branches of neoclassical economic thought. Indeed the latter twentieth century has been marked by a “culturalization of economics” (Rowe, 1999, p. 70). The meaning of such a statement is, however, inherently ambiguous and has been employed in a number of ways across a diverse array of subject matters. Cultural economics as a research discipline has encompassed such diverse fields of enquiry as religion (Iannaccone, 1991; 1998), social identity (Akerlof &

Kranton, 2000; 2005; 2010), fertility (Fernandez & Fogil, 2006), redistributive justice (Bénabou

& Tirole, 2006), hatred (Glaeser, 2005), terrorism (Krueger, 2008), and trust (Ashraf, Bohnet &

Piankov, 2006; Berg, Dickhaut & McCabe, 1995). These studies have used culture as a socially unifying force to explain behavioral dissemination, the formation of social capital and social evolution. They however privilege the economic in their investigation. Similar to the political economic investigations of Marxism and Neo-Marxism they fall victim to the economic determinism of the base/superstructure metaphor that suggests culture as a superstructural element, is reflective of, and determined by the economic base (Hall, 1980b).

The current study aims to resolve this uni-directionalism by viewing culture and the economy as existing in a dialectic flux in which cultures inform economic practice while the economic process constricts and influences culture. In order to articulate these previously disparate concepts the complexities of the concept of culture needs to be explored. Such a conception is grounded in the cultural studies tradition of Stuart Hall and Raymond Williams in which culture is seen not as a fixed concept but a contested and fluctuating idea that binds and unifies people in their social life.

On Culture

In his reflections on the work of Williams and the early cultural studies academics, Stuart

Hall suggests culture can be defined in two forms relating to explaining ideas, language and communication and explaining behavior. Hall (1980b) states culture is “the sum of the available descriptions through which societies make sense of and reflect their common experiences” (p.

59). It is the making of common meanings through social process, a democratic process of experiential amalgamation and understanding—thus communicating these common understandings is vital in the production and dissemination of culture (Hall, 1980b).

Concurrently culture encompasses “a whole way of life” (Hall, 1980b, p. 60). The study of culture therefore becomes “the study of relationships between elements in the a whole way of life” culture is not a practice but it “informs all social practices, and is the sum of their interrelationship” (1980b, p.60). “Culture is those patterns of organization, those characteristic forms of human energy which can be discovered as revealing themselves…within or underlying all social practices” (Hall, 1980b, p.60).

It becomes plain then to see that cultures are not simply produced by the economic environment in which they are situated. Nor is it that the cultures of a society produce the neoclassical organization. The two concepts interact and interrelate. They each inform and provide the context for the other. Ultimately we will see that culture and economics (especially in the world of sport) do not work in a linear fashion in which one informs the other, but that the two concepts are indelibly linked in a dialectic relationship. Before entering into this discussion however, I see it as useful to embark on a brief tracing of the evolution of neoclassical economic thought at the basis of the prior section as it outlines the impetus for its reductionism in

attempted objectivity and thus highlights its shortcomings while setting up the discussion of

alternative conceptions and attempts at the resolution of the cultural economic dialectic.

On Cultural Economics

Economics has gone through an evolution in its meaning, motive and focus. As such,

deployment of the undefined term can only be read as “concerning material production” with no

elaboration inferred as to its scope of application nor its epistemological and ontological

assumptions (Charusheela, 2011). This study also bridges into the domain of political economy.

The subject matter, the origins and development of both topics are, therefore, in need of

reconciliation.

The study of “wealth” in terms of the conditions and processes of material production

and its allocation or distribution was, in the time of Adam Smith and David Ricardo, considered

economics (Wasco, 2005). Such a topic was concerned with wealth within the social and

political context as well as the moral and ethical implications of its creation and allocation.

Essentially this study, now known as ‘political economy’, has a greater eye to the cultural

implications in production and the cultural ramifications of production in the emerging capitalist system. However, as capitalist logic evolved and saturated European and early American society this macro/contextual perspective was superseded by a micro perspective. As Wasco (2005) has argued, “Emphasis was placed on individual rather than societal concerns, and methods were drawn from the social sciences rather than moral philosophy” (p.26). Here lies the disciplinary change from what is now known as classical economics or political economy, to a new breed of economic analysis. Economics became more a study of what is than what ought to be.

Political economy’s transition to neoclassical economics is marked by a “desocialization and dehistoricisation of the dismal science” (Milonakis & Fine, 2009, p. 1). The schism occurred during the marginalist movement in which Recardo’s abstract deductive method and Bentham’s utilitarianism became orthodox (Milonakis & Fine 2009). In the eyes of the marginalists such as

Walras, Menger and Jevons, they were transforming the political economic art into objecting science, devoid of bias and ‘value-free’ (Milonakis & Fine, 2009). Thus, the study was stripped of its moral and ethical imperatives of growth and distribution to focus instead on price and exchange under conditions of “perfectly free competition” (Milonakis & Fine, 2009, p. 94). The model within which this new “pure economics” operated was devoid of a socio-cultural context, replaced instead with a social organization template based solely on exchange. This too gave way to the rational individualism on which modern neoclassical economics is premised. The marginalists built on Benthamite utilitarianism and adopted the view that “No collective body, such as national economy [or political economic aggregates such as class, race and gender], can be analyzed in its own right without reference to its constituent individual members” (Milonakis

& Fine, 2009, p. 98). The methodological individualism gives way to ‘psychological

individualism’ whereby the “individual is considered a rational agent driven by some

psychological (utilitarian) motive, to maximize its own benefit” (Milonakis & Fine, 2009, p. 98).

Such a conception of reality and a removal of any notion of a collective is a clear rejection of

cultures existence, let alone its role in organizing wealth allocation, directing exchange, or

motivating and mobilizing labor.

What emerged from this prerogative was an increasingly inductive method employing

assumptions of individual utility maximization within the context of social exchange. As such

economic problems were confined to those that could be mapped under logico-mathematical

analysis and formulization (Milonakis & Fine, 2009). Through the twin process of quantification

and formulization this neo-classical economics was able to ride the wave of positivist enquiry

throughout the 19th and 20th centuries to become the primary and infallible conception of contemporary society (Smart, 2003).

The study of political economy, while marginalized by its upstart adjuvant, continues in forms of Marxist and neo-Marxist political economy; the Austrian approach of von Mises,

Friedman, and von Hayek; and, institutional economics of the likes of Veblen and Gailbraith18

(Gandy, 1992). These fields of study are largely based around the critique of the neoclassical capitalistic orthodoxy, which reintroduces the socio-cultural context into the mode and morals of production. As summed up in the famous quote from Marx (1911):

The economic structure of society—the real basis, on which rises a legal and political

superstructure, and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The

mode of production of material life conditions the social, political and intellectual life

process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but,

on the contrary, their social existence that determines their consciousness. (p. 11-12)

It is from this Marxist conception that we can see the greatest call for recognition of a cultural-economic interaction. Authors such as David Harvey (1989) and Fredric Jameson (1971;

1984) have suggested a causal and directional relationship between the economic ordering of society, its mode of production and motives of consumption, and the dominant cultures of that society. Harvey and Jameson contend, for example, that the movement from Fordist mass production to a post-Fordist economy gave “rise to a new set of experiences and sensibilities that are encoded in postmodern culture” (Gartman, 1998, p. 125). This type of economic determinism

18 Institutional economics: Thorstein Veblen, whose book ‘The Theory of the Leisure Class’ (1899) brought into question the efficiency of the market and the rationality of market actors with his conception of conspicuous consumption—publicly consuming to display status. 48

of culture is typical of the political economic and Marxist understanding of the base and

superstructure, which ignores the autonomy of cultures for influencing, resisting and changing

the economic. Culture, as a pattern of ideas and praxis amongst a society, is discrete from the

economy in the sense that individuals are free to construct their own ideas, share them and

behave in ways autonomous from the economy—indeed both the economy and culture are

conceptions of human activity, they are both forms of organization which underlie and overlap

with each other (Hall, 1980b). That is not to say that economics and culture become synonymous

with each other. They inform and explain discrete organizations of human activity while

informing and explaining each other.

While the British cultural studies project has largely rejected the base/superstructure

metaphor of Marxist analysis, Marx’s materialist dialectic19 maintains explanatory power for this cultural-economic conundrum. Marx suggests that social interaction needs to be based within the context of the material reproduction of daily lives. That all conceptions are mere reflections of the material world and thus from the material reproduction social consciousness emerges. Thus, as Marx suggests, the political economic landscape—constructed under the neoclassical economic assumptions and capitalistic accumulation and alienation motives and processes— creates the context in which culture emerges. In doing so it constrains the potentiality of those

19 Marx’s dialectic materialism is an amalgam of Hegel’s dialectic and Feurbach’s materialism. Hegel’s dialectic suggests a process of understanding through transition from thesis—to antithesis—to synthesis in which the thesis might be an idea or historical moment, such a moment is inherently incomplete and thus contains contradiction giving rise to the antithesis. Overcoming this conflict occurs in synthesis, the moment of a realization of truth, a realization which leads again to contradiction thus suggesting the transient state of all being and the evolutionary nature of ideas. While borrowing the philosophical process, Marx and Engels disagreed with Hegel on an ontological level suggesting the world exists not as an idea in the human brain but that the only true existence was matter (materialism) where “the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind and translated into forms of thought” (Marx, Capital, Afterword, Second German Ed., Moscow, 1970, vol. 1, p. 29). 49

cultures. The culture is constrained by its context as it works to produce codes for understanding

by its constituents (Hall, 1980; 1997). This is most effectively summed up in his recurring quote:

Men [sic] make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not

make it under circumstances of their own chosen by themselves, but under circumstances

directly encountered, given, and transmitted from the past (Marx, 1852/1977, p.300).

Simultaneously, the economic system is embedded within the culture of the people that it serves to understand, predict and, more and more often, organize. A political economic system at odds with the culture of the sub-group, group or groups leads to a form social dissonance. What is suggested here is that political economy and culture can only be understood in a dialectic in which their formal understanding is transcended for an understanding of their relation, interconnection and contradiction. Political economy informs/produces/constrains culture in the same way, and at the same time as culture informs/produces/constrains political economy. Such

a dialectic relationship becomes most palpable in the realm of contemporary sport—a realm well

noted for both its economic and cultural significance with its respective academies.

Sport has, since its pre-institutional ludic forms, been a cultural formation (Andrews,

2006; Newman, in press). This very premise requires a relational understanding of sport that

goes beyond its sequestered analysis. As Sage (1998) notes:

Sport is a set of social practices and relations that are structured by the culture in which

they exist, and any adequate account of sport must be rooted in an understanding of its

location within society. The essence of sport is to be found within the nature of its

relationship to the broader stream of societal forces of which it is a part. Thus, a real

understanding of the sociocultural role of sport in American society is to approach sport

relationally. (p. 14)

While alluding to the interconnectedness of sport culture, the above quote fails to address the conflict inherent in Hegelian dialectics. As a dynamic process, dialectics requires opposition and its resolution in their continued interaction. As such we cannot view culture or economics as fixed but both in a state of flux and compromise between the others. Sport, as the site of their conflict, becomes the embodied resolution, it is the product of the historical process while at the same time existing as a pedagogical tool engaged in the continuing composition of its antecedent conditions. “Thus, contemporary American sport culture must be considered as both a product, and producer, of the social formation (contemporary American society) in which it is situated”

(Andrews, 2006, p. 4).

In this section, I present attempts to resolve this dialectical problematic, first through a form of “culturalization of economy” which, along the theorizations of Pierre Bourdieu, suggest culture can be understood as an economic agent imbued with its own form of capital in certain contexts. This is followed by an “economizing of culture” presented by Jhally and Livant (2006) in which we can see how the cultural forms are, through the media, subservient to economic imperatives. As well as looking at how culture is brought into the market by “cultural intermediaries” to inflate exchange values in commodity exchange and possibly in the labor market. Finally, I put these perspectives into context with the self-replicating society of the spectacle first presented by Guy Debord in 1967.

Culturalizing the Economic: Beyond Bourdieu

One way we can see this articulation between culture and economics is by drawing on the work of Pierre Bourdieu and his widely cited work on sociological, philosophical and economic basis of social, cultural and symbolic capital. Bourdieu proposed an interaction of financial and

cultural capital, which allows for elaboration on the sport labor relations in human capital theory.

As he writes “it is impossible to account for the structure and functioning of the social world unless one reintroduces capital in all its forms and not solely in the one form recognized by economic theory” (Bourdieu, 2006, p. 46). From this statement alone we can see Bourdieu too rejected the neoclassical economic project as an incomplete understanding of social life.

Economic theory of capital reduces universal exchange to mercantile exchange

(Bourdieu, 2006). Such a narrow view highlights the limited scope of economic analysis.

Refuting the egoism inherent in classical economics, Bourdieu reintroduces a conception of capital based around social power relations and exchange as it relates to social hierarchies and their distribution. Bourdieu (1984) proposed culture, like money, distinguished between those that possess it and those who lack it. As such, culture can be placed within an economic model of

status: Distributed unequally culture distinguishes the “privileged and the deprived” (Fiske,

1992) This refers to specific cultural traits valued by “high” society, such as knowledge of the

arts and education, which can be converted to money capital through increased job prospects and

status. Indeed, these things can be “invested” in allowing an individual to climb the ranks of

social prestige. Thus, things imbued with cultural value can be termed ‘cultural capital’, “an

asset which embodies, stores or provides cultural value in addition to whatever economic value it

may possess” (Throsby, 2001, p. 46).

Bourdieu further divided cultural capital into three forms: embodied capital (informing

habitus), objectified (transmissible in its materiality), and institutionalized (relating to

educational qualifications). It was in the first category that he put the most weight stating; “Most

of the properties of cultural capital can be deduced from the fact that, in its fundamental state, it

is linked to the body and presupposes embodiment.” Cultural capital is internalized as it reflects

52 group membership and/or the individuals subject position. It therefore, plays a role in the identity of the individual and constructs the habitus—the position specific values, dispositions, and behaviors of the individual relative to their specific field.

This embodied nature of capital relates directly to neo-classical conceptions of human capital. The concept of the individual’s stock of competencies is extended into the cultural realm and put in a social context as opposed to the economic human capital approach of evaluation in domain specific fields. It helps us to understand social stratifications and explains the motives of individuals beyond the financial. In outlining this Bourdieu placed both cultural and economic capital on a duel axis (economics-culture running east to west) to conceptualize an individuals social position (north to south) and subsequent habitus. Those rich in cultural capital but not economic (North-West) attain social status (e.g. a university professor). The center top represents the pinnacle “tasteful capitalists,” individuals rich in both economic and cultural capital.

Here we see Bourdieu’s conception of a class system defined not by distinct geographic, social, or political groupings of individuals but as emerging out of the differing types of capital

(economic, cultural, social, and symbolic) possessed by the individuals which positions them relationally within society (Bourdieu, 1987). As Bourdieu (1987) states in ‘What Makes a Social

Class? On The Theoretical and Practical Existence Of Groups’,

It is in effect quite likely that the product of the relational model of thinking (like the

three-dimensional diagram in factor analysis [mentioned above]) will be interpreted in a

realist and “substantialist” way: “classes” as logical classes—analytical constructs

obtained by theoretically dividing a theoretical space—are then seen as real, objectively

constituted groups. Ironically, the more accurate the theoretical construction of

theoretical classes, the greater the chance they will be seen as real groups. (Bourdieu,

1987, p. 4)

It is not that classes exist as a functional label but that we can conceive of class as the

amalgam of attributes or capital accrued by the individual, which define him or her by their

relative distance to others. However, in taking the above assertion that cultural capital becomes

embodied we can see that such class definition by differentiation results in the construction of

collective social identities relating to social position.

Such a Bourdieuian conception of class implies a macro-level conception of social

positioning of the individual and can aid in the understanding of class operations in sport

participation. For example, social theorists such as Wacquant (1995a; 1995b; 2001) have

predominantly positioned working class sports as diverging form the middle and upper class

based on a distance from necessity. The middle and upper class physical activities have involved distance from other, bodies, risk and exertion. The lower class activity on the other hand is characterized in the antithetical modes. They have been shown to relate to and have greater participation in sports where the body is instrumental. Their participation is seen to be reflective of a need to feel valued and respected in subcultural sanctuaries due to their lack of access to conventional forms of success (Becker, 1963; Macleod, 1987).

As well as on the macro scale the concept of cultural capital can be used to explain social

positioning within sub-cultures and institutional hierarchies. It would certainly be a stretch to

place the UFC as a purveyor of cultural capital in the realm of high art. However, taking an

extension of this model provided by Fiske (1992), we are able to conceptualize cultural capital

not in the “high art” sense (here on referred to as ‘official’ cultural capital), but in a popular

culture sense. Here we are able to draw on the cultural constructs to describe how popular culture

creates its own form of capital flow, creating specific consumer motives and sub-stratifications

among what can be dually labeled the “popular,” or what Bourdieu termed the subordinated or

proletariat.

Fiske (1992) suggests that beyond the upper class conception of official cultural capital

there is a “shadow culture economy” of the subordinated. While neglected as a homogenous

group by Bourdieu, the proletariat too exemplifies complex socially distinguished groups in need

of theoretical analysis. By using a model that resembles the cultural capital distribution outlined above, we can see how individuals in lower class groups may move through the social stratosphere through investment in popular cultural capital—a cultural capital defined by the values, beliefs, practices, behaviors specific to that subculture.

Fiske’s analysis of popular cultural capital is framed in analysis of fandom. He sees those that identify as a ‘fan’ of sports teams, musical groups, comic books and other media, as constructing their own subculture, a subculture which brings with it a social hierarchy based on cultural capital. Such capital, while unable to be converted to economic capital (as is the case with official cultural capital), serves a valuable function to group members: being able to operate efficiently and powerfully within their social world It allows them to build self-esteem and a sense of value within their group. This is a key point as it highlights the functional nature of popular cultural capital (a necessary aspect of cultural capital unique to the subordinated in the eyes of Bourdieu (2006)) and the group specific nature, “cultural capital exists and functions only in relation to a field” (Klein, 2002, p. 54). It highlights the influence of socially constructed norms and how they influence behavior in the drive for attaining, maintaining and maximizing cultural capital.

Fisk (1992) suggested this popular cultural capital economy operates primarily on individuals lacking official cultural capital who utilize it to construct alternate perceptions of social value. This relationship is complicated however when recent analysis of US-based MMA participants by Abramson and Modzelewski (2010) (and corroborated by the findings of Green,

2011) have shown a large proportion of middle class participants—individuals high in economic and cultural capital with access to traditional avenues of success. While this seems to refute the theory of cultural capital, Fiske somewhat addresses this is his explanation of the accrual of unofficial capital by bourgeois fans:

While fandom may be typical of the socially and culturally deprived, it is not confined to

them. Many young fans are successful at school and are steadily accumulating official

cultural capital, but wish to differentiate themselves, along the axis of age at least, from

the social values and cultural tastes (or habituses) of those who currently possess the

cultural and economic capital they are still working to acquire. (Fiske, 1992, p. 33)

It may be that Abranmson and Modzelewski’s (2010) middle class participants are looking for differentiation through sub-cultural membership. However, such questions surrounding the antecedent or impetus for group membership are beyond the scope of the current study. Here I aim only to discover how a group’s culture mobilizes specific understandings and behaviors among its constituents, which have economic imperatives. As such, for cultural capital to be of value, it needs to be ascribed to an ability to mobilize specific behaviors among the cultural constituency.

An example of a specific form of cultural capital being valued in a specific subculture can be seen in Jessie Klein’s (2006) analysis of hierarchies of masculinity in school with relation to violence (in the extreme case of school shootings). She shows how masculinity, and

56 particularly violence, can be conceived as a cultural capital within specific fields (in a

Bourdieuian sense). She asserts that “[c]ultural capital develops when communities define the instruments and goals for achieving social prestige”. In her context these goals for male students involve displays of competitive physicality, and masculinity that serve to deliver cultural capital and signify status. As she explains that “jocks” and “bullies” often occupy the upper stratum of social hierarchy. When placed in the sporting context outlined in the previous section, we can see how certain ideologies of masculinity and violence can be associated with social prestige (both within the sport and external to it in the broader societal context) and thus mobilize behaviors, which, in the realm of professional sport, have highly economic imperatives.

The Economization of Culture: Watching as Working

Cultural capital is important as it can be used to explain the behaviors of individuals, however, as we look further into the concept we can see that there is more economic behavior going on here. Cultural capital like economic or financial capital transitions in a circular model from production to consumption and utilization. While the above section suggests the consumptive behaviors—the utilization of cultural capital—has economic influence, it largely ignores the site of production. Cultural capital is more than the organic amalgam of social values it is a constructible concept with economic use value.

“Cultural intermediaries” is a term employed by Pierre Bourdieu in his book Distinction to denote those workers engaged in occupations of presentation and representation, those that produce symbolic goods (Bourdieu, 1984). It has since been employed with reference to the workers in industries such as advertising, marketing and the media, as they construct cultural or symbolic value around benign commodities, thus inflating their exchange value beyond their use

value through the position as a signifier of social or cultural position. This has been studied at

great length in the sporting apparel and especially sneaker industry where entities like Nike have

been explored for their practices of cultural production (Armstrong, 1999; Denzin 1999; Ind,

1993; Sage, 1999). Grainger and Andrews further develop such a process as they map the brand

identity and symbolic value of PUMA as it addressed varied categorized consumer subjectivities

(Grainger & Andrews, 2003).

This has implications for the sport labor market when the role of cultural intermediaries is

acknowledged to imbue the media subject matter with symbolic value. Such a process results in

the laborer becoming the central commodity, or central to the flow of capital in the media. Such

a political economic conception of sport needs to focus on the centrality in media in the creation

of the sporting economy. Indeed as Jhally (2006) notes, “as soon as we concentrate specifically

on the subject of sport in capitalism, it becomes apparent that we can only talk about a sport- media complex” (p. 136 emphasis in original). The circulation of commodities becomes the primary logic guiding every act of the sport media complex. Sport becomes commodified, reduced to its monetary exchange value. This value is however, only realized when we explore the political economy of the media beyond the simple message disseminator model. The media product is not the message sent, but the audience it captures and dutifully delivers to advertisers.

As Jhally and Livant (2006) suggest, the audience use-value for the media is their watching- power, sold to advertisers for its ability to speed up the commodity exchange and their realization of value. The audience use value occurs at a cost to the broadcaster equal to said watching power’s reproduction. For example, a half hour programming segment is made up of twenty-four minutes of programming bought from the producer, and six minutes of advertising.

The audience use-value is their six minutes of watching time while they are compensated for

their labor by the twenty-four minutes of programming. The value in selling the audience to

advertisers for those six minutes is much greater than the cost of production resulting in surplus

value for the media broadcaster (Jhally & Livant, 2006).

Sport has historically been sought out for its ability to cheaply draw in large audiences,

especially the allusive demographic of young males (McChesney, 1989). That is not to say that

sport is the parasitic victim in the exchange process, but to frame the sporting commodity as

itself a form of cultural capital that corporations seek to associate with to increase their product’s

perceived value. What then happens when we apply this model to the circulation of sport labor as

a commodity imbued with cultural capital? Such an understanding may be beneficial in

explaining the role of the reality-television spectacle plays in perpetuating the labor market.

When a mediation is focused on a specific organization such as a sporting competition— essentially a mediation centered on laborers at work—the audience still has a use-value to advertisers in their consumptive power; however, they too have a use-value to the organization under the spotlight as they present themselves as potential physical laborers. We could argue, in this instance, that audience members embody two forms of potential use value, as watchers—in

Jhally and Livant’s sense—and, as laborers and therefore, as potential propagators of the industry and the spectacle.

Resolving the Dialectic in the Society of the Spectacle

The above sections of “culturalization of the economics” (Rowe, 1999, p.70) and

“economization of culture” are not disparate or antithetical but alternative and incomplete conversations within the cultural and economic dialectic. They both address the broader cultural context within which economic relations are situated and the influence of the economic context

59 on, and utilization of, culture, but fail to present the concepts in full interaction, conflict and synthesis. Therefore, I will turn to Debord’s Society of the Spectacle in order to provide a more nuanced articulation of the economic and the cultural. Debord saw society as subsumed by media technologies to the extent where the spectacle took on a new plane of existence beyond a mediated event or live mega-event. He argued the spectacle has become the primary organizing structure of post-modern and late modern cultural economy. The Debordian thesis is therefore only on the most superficial level a critique of the visual: which is the critique that is most commonly employed when we think of something as “spectacle”. It is in fact a deep socio- cultural, psychoanalytic and essentially economic conception of society. “[T]he modern spectacle was already in essence: the autocratic reign of the market economy which had acceded to an irresponsible sovereignty, and the totality of new techniques of governments which accompanied this reign” (Debord, 1998, p. 2).

For Debord the spectacle was the representation of social decline under the duel forces of capitalism and technological advancement. The result being authentic human social life replaced with its own representation. As he wrote; the history of society can be understood as the decline

“from being into having…and having into appearing (Debord, 1994; 17). This condition is “the moment at which the commodity has attained total occupation of social life” (Debord, 1994; 42).

Culture therefore, becomes more than the patterns of behavior, understandings, and knowledge among groups. It is brought into the market. The spectacle is a product of the economic system— the advent of advanced capitalism whereby commodity relations supplant relations of real people. “the spectacle is not a collection of images… rather, it is the social relationship between people that is mediated by images”. Therefore, this economic entity that is the spectacle informs and constructs culture. Culture, like the individual, is separated from everyday life and replaced

by representation and mediation. It becomes culture in its commodity form, presented as a stream

of marketable images.

As a fundamentally economic agent the spectacle propagates the hierarchical power

distribution of society—it is a “portrait of power” (1994; 24), “the existing order’s uninterrupted

discourse about itself, a laudatory monologue” (1994; 24) to which there is no rebuttal due to the

spectacles monopoly of appearance. This hierarchical or class organization has its base in the

writings of Karl Marx which saw the alienation of the worker and their commodity fetishism

born out of the industrial revolution in which the laborer was effectively separated from the

means of production and the product. Debord re-situated and re-articulated this idea into his late-

modernist/post-modernist historical moment in which he saw the capitalist production advancing

beyond the physical and material forms of production into the realm of the spectacle. With

reference to this separation Debord stated:

Separation is the alpha and omega of the spectacle…it shows what it is: separate power

developing in itself, in the growth of productivity by means of the incessant refinement of

the division of labor into a parcellization of gestures which are then dominated by the

independent movement of machines; and working for an ever expanding market. All

community and all critical sense are dissolved during this movement in which the forces

that could grow by separating are not yet reunited (Debord, 1994; 25).

To draw from the foundation of Debord’s work—as primarily a neomarxist theorist—in

Capital, Marx suggested the production process, organized by class hierarchy, removed the proletariat worker from both the means of production and the final product. Essentially the worker is alienated from their humanity as they are reduced to a mechanistic bundle of labor power. They lose their determination in economic action while also losing-out in the transition of

their labor power to exchange value (wages) as the capitalist extracts surplus value. They are

thusly alienated from their value in its entirety, from their human potential. They are alienated from their species-essence (Gattungswesen) (Marx, 2012).

This description of the capitalist condition leads Marx into dialogue with the proletariat

understanding of their subjective self in relation to the thing produced and the cooperative

situation of their survival; their inter-subjectivity. This identity project in relation to production

and consumption is elaborated on in the Debordian treatise and directly relates to the

Foucaludian and Hallian construction of identity through the subjects successful articulation into

discourse (Hall, 1996).

Debord extends on this alienating process beyond the metaphorical bourgeois-proletariat

factory to suggest that capitalism’s expansion and permeation of all institutions throughout late

and postmodern society results in a life of separation of the individual from their essence. As he

writes in opening: “in societies modern conditions of production prevail, all life presets itself as

an immense accumulation of spectacles” (1994; 1) where this “spectacle is capital to such a

degree of accumulation that it becomes image” (Debord, 1994; 34). As life devolves from being

to having and having to appearing, all life becomes representation. In such a society of the

spectacle, we become viewers of the world, uneasy in our unavoidable separation:

Separated from his product, man [sic] himself produces all the details of his world with

ever increasing power, and thus finds himself ever more separated from his world. The

more his life is now his product, the more he is separated from his life. (Debord, 1994;

33)

It is such separation through with the spectacle enacts its one true purpose, of self-

perpetuation. In the spectacle, an expression of the ruling economy, “the goal is nothing,

development is everything. The spectacle aims at nothing other than itself” (Debord, 1994; 14).

This is essentially an economic process, however it is a process that requires cultural

understanding in its initiation. It is this cultural-economic articulation that provides the impetus,

the antecedence for spectacular reproduction.

I would like to develop this proposition with a brief diversion back through the work of

Stuart Hall, building on Foucauldian concepts to outline the subjective construction of identity

(Hall, 1996; 2001). Foucault saw discourse as a system of representation in which images,

language and text become meaningful through their articulation to broader historical, social and

cultural environments. Thus, discourse limits the way things are understood, conceived, and

become meaningful (Hall, 2001). As such, we can see that in the world of representation that is

the society of the spectacle, discursive rules dictate the ordering and structuring of society. This

becomes highly relevant to the way spectators interpret their subject position relative to the

discursive representation. It is this interpretation, the articulation of the self into discourse, that

Hall proposed comprises identity. An unstable, inessential quality of the individual who gains

self reference or understanding through the suturing of themselves into the collective

understandings, the discursive rules thus positioning themselves relative to others, their shared

history, their culture (Hall, 1997).

Such an understanding has been applied to the watching of media (Hall, 1980) in which through the act of decoding the audience refers to wider discursive formations in their understanding. As Hall (1980b) writes,

Reality exists outside language, but it is constantly mediated by and through language:

and what we can know and say has to be produced in and through discourse. Discursive

‘knowledge’ is the product not of the transplantation of the ‘real’ in language but of the

articulation of language on real relations and conditions. (1980b, p. 131)

Cultural-specific codes are employed in the understanding of this articulation. The decoding process is informed by the audiences’ socio-cultural context. In such a way the identity is not fixed, but a fluid and negotiated “point of attachment to the subject position which discursive practices construct for us” (Hall, 2000, p. 19). Subject position here refers to the ways in which the audience is positioned to view a particular text (Kinkema & Harris, 1998). Media texts invite us to adopt dominant positions so as to elicit the dominant reading. As Davies and

Harre (1990) write:

Once having taken up a particular position as one’s own, a person inevitably sees the

world from the vantage point of that position and in terms of the particular images,

metaphors, storylines and concepts which are made relevant within the particular

discursive practice in which they are positioned. (p. 46)

Reintegrating such an understanding into the society of the spectacle we can see that the world of representation is a world dominated by the discourses of capitalism in which the commodity represents more than its use value but a symbolic value that informs and represents the individuals identity though conspicuous consumption. Thus commodity fetishism and consumption becomes a cyclical identity project, one initiated by separation and which acts to reinforce the same separation, thus perpetuating the spectacles domination and abstraction of social life.

The more man [sic] contemplates the less he lives; the more he accepts recognizing

himself in the dominant images of need, the less he understands his own existence and his

own desires The externality of the spectacle in relation to the active man appears in the

fact that his own gestures are no longer his but the act of another who represents them to

him. This is why the spectator feels at home nowhere, because the spectacle is

everywhere (Debord, 1994; 30).

As the separation of the worker from his or her products, their alienation, reinforces the social separation and class based oppression through removal of achievement and increased reliance on the spectacular for gratification and a sense of self: “the worker does not produce himself: he produces an independent power. The success of his production, its abundance, returns to the producer as an abundance of dispossession. All the time and space of the world become foreign to him with the accumulation of his alienated products” (1994; 31). Here Debord is building on the commodity fetishism of Marx to suggest the act of consumption, while an economic imperative and perpetuator of the spectacle, becomes an identity project in which the subject seeks articulation to the discursive commodity. For Marx this commodity fetishism was the belief that an inanimate object will yield its character to gratify the worshiper-consumer. In the Debordian sense however, the commodity takes on the virtual or representative quality. The spectacles separation produces a desire for further spectacular consumption. Thus the objective becomes the further dissemination or intrusion of the spectacle on social life.

This cultural economy of the spectacle acts to set the basis for the current study as it unites the dialectic of the cultural and the economic. In the spectacle they become synonymous forces while simultaneously existing as discrete concepts. The spectacle produces cultures of consumption (demand fueled by ‘pseudo need’ [Debord, 1994]), which enhance separation, and thus the reproduction of the spectacle. However, there is something more going on here in which specific cultural mediations within the spectacle motivate supply side economic action. The spectacle reduces the individual to a representation of self—individual collections of cultural

capital that represent the spectacular self. As such, I suggest the spectacle produces a commodity

value in that representation, a commodity value that motivates economic action in spectacular

labor supply. This directly combats the economic determinism central to the society of the spectacle. I assert the spectacle determines the broader social, economic and cultural structure of

society, however individual actors have autonomy in their movement within and negotiation of

the spectacle and its reproduction.

The audience recreates their understanding of the outside world with reference to the

spectacle. Meaning in our lives becomes dependent upon the spectacular field of reference as

what is represented becomes the only reality, a reality that can only be interpreted as good: “that

which appears is good, that which is good appears.” The attitude which it demands in principle is

passive acceptance which in fact it already obtained by its manner of appearance without reply,

its monopoly of appearance” (Debord, 1994; 12). We seek out specific opportunities in which to

(re)create these representations. Thus, topical/spectacular content is determined by the actions

and mobilizations of individual decoders of the spectacle.

One such way the spectacle is reproduced (and which ties directly to contextual and

spectacular determinants of cultural capital) is through celebrity culture, the projection of a

market identity; to become “the spectacular representation of a living human being” (Debord,

1994; 60). Debord asserts the role of the celebrity as

to act out various styles of living and viewing society—unfettered free access to

themselves globally. They embody the inaccessible result of social labor by dramatizing

its byproducts magically projected above it as its goal: power and vacations, decisions

and consumption, which are the beginning and the end of its undiscussed process.

(Debord, 1994; 60)

The celebrity lifestyle becomes that of fulfilled desire, a life marked by consumption

rather than alienation, when in fact it is exactly the process of mediation that alienates. The

media power of abstraction removes the individual from the product of their labor. In the case of

sport, the sporting body is removed from the spectacular product (Beamish, 2009). This

alienation and abstraction removes them from their self-determination as they are redirected to

activities and operations, which maintain their domination. They are alienated from their final product, and the process, which together works to alienate the individual from their “human potential, their ‘Being’ as humans” (Beamish, 2009, p. 93).

Situating the Fighter in the Spectacle of Combat Sports

Literature on the spectacle of UFC specifically, and MMA more generally, is sparse. Of the existing studies the vast majority have been conducted through ethnographic analysis at the local club level. Such studies generally draw from the pioneering work of Loïc Wacquant who generated a large body of work on the pugilistic identity through ethnographic situation in a boxing gym on Chicago’s South Side from August 1988 to October 1991 (Wacquant, 1995a;

1995b; 2001). Through this research Wacquant made known the economic realities—both at the level of the individual and societal—for the ghetto pugilist. His direct address of the exploitative nature of the boxing institution (prior to the passing of the Muhammad Ali Act) presents a relevant staging point for the exploration of the recent MMA based literature.

Wacquant aimed to present the “pugilistic point of view” by “analyzing specific forms- words, images, institutions, behaviors—in terms of which [boxers] actually represent themselves to themselves and to one another” (1995a, p. 491). Wacquant’s subsequent articles have been met with critique in the academy for its anthropological positivism—assuming a singular truth

67 emerging from the researcher perspective, exposed through immersion and interaction. However, when examined as a representative examination of a reality amongst many others, his work provides insight into the internal motives and external forces operating on the ghetto pugilist.

It should be first noted that both the boxing and MMA research dispel the axiomatic belief of the combat sports as deregulated violence, which produces or induces violent individuals. Such positions also contest the notion that attraction is due to an inherent desire for violent acts by males (trying to assert their masculine dominance). Wacquant (1995a) paints a picture of an inevitability of violence in the urban ghetto and, as such, situates the boxing gym as a sanctuary or safe haven removing the fighters from such transgressive situations by appropriating the time and energy of the pugilist, teaching them obedience (suggesting the gym environment acts like “a small scale civilizing machine in Elias’s sense of the term” (1995a, p.

499)), and imbuing the fighter with a position of honor and an air of professionalism.

Similarly, Abramson and Modzelewski (2010), in their ethnographic exploration of the moral world of the middle-class cage-fighter, dispel the notions of involvement by these members driven by a desire for the exertion of gender dominance or an expression, or release, of violence. They found the MMA gyms of their study to be equitable environments of mutual respect and meritocratic status, regardless of gender. Abramson and Modzelewski (2010) also conclude it is “impossible to sustain the argument that the subcultural world of the cage fighter is about celebrating and supporting violence. To the contrary, fighters downplay the violence and highlight the difficulty, competition, challenge of fighting” (p. 158).

Wacquant gives account of the process of becoming a boxer and developing the boxer habitus through the development of bodily capital and its conversion, through training, to pugilistic capital (Wacquant, 1995b). Such a process requires tireless work, sacrifice and the

acceptance of risk, all of which contribute to the construction of a boxer identity that becomes

indistinguishable from any other notion of self. Similar processes have been noted in the MMA

literature as developing the embodied knowledge of ‘the fighter’ through the televisual media

(Downey, 2006) and through the training practices or body callousing (Spencer, 2009) which

allows the practitioner to deal with and deliver pain (Green, 2011; Spencer, 2009).

Such a relationship to pain requires sacrifice. As Wacquant (1995b) notes, “Sacrifice

stands at the core of the occupational belief system of professional pugilism” (p.75). Sacrifice in

the form of stewardship of the bodily functions of nutrition and sexual activity and the

diminishment of social interaction beyond the gym (the trinity of pugilistic sacrifice). The pursuit of bodily capital accumulation so absorbs the boxer that they lose much of their personal and domestic life. Boxing becomes more than a game—“its not something you do, its who you are”

(Wacquant, 1995a, p. 492). Similarly, spencer notes that the act of body callusing becomes and integral part of the identity project as fighters’ bodies are molded to both reflect and symbolize their group membership (Spencer, 2009).

The risk of injury too becomes a social adhesive. Both boxing and MMA are noted for their overt physical nature and the risk of injury. The acceptance of such risk is part of the right of passage to group membership (Abramson & Modzelewski, 2010; Green, 2011; Wacquant,

1995a; 1995b). Injuries themselves become a signifier of membership and the ability to withstand them, push through them, and bounce back from them is assigned cultural value

(Abramson & Modzelewski, 2010; Green, 2011; Wacquant, 1995a; 1995b).

While the MMA (sub-)culture elaborated in these ethnographic studies shows many similarities with the boxing cultures already detailed, MMA research also presents stark contrasts. These contrasts primarily emerge out of the socio-economic situating of the

69 practitioner. From the outset, Wacquant positions his pugilist as a member of the blue-collar labor class. Many of the fighters had current or former employment in unskilled labor jobs and still more talk of the economic necessity to box due to a lack of alternative forms of capital generation. Such positioning grants the boxer an occupational relationship with their sport, viewing boxing as “a job before anything else” (1995a, p. 502).

In direct opposition, the research looking into MMA training and practice has noted a number, if not majority, of middle-class practitioners (Abramson & Modzelewski, 2010; Green,

2011). Indeed, in Green’s (2011) ethnography into the role of pain in attraction to MMA he notes that the majority of his practitioners are white men aged between 20 and 30 with the largest occupational representations being lawyers, doctors and bankers. Such difference in the economic position of the fighters creates many differences in the motives for participation between those noted by Wacquant.

With regard to the differential motives Wacquant (1995a) suggest that the ‘ghetto pugs’ are drawn to the sport for a number of reasons. First, as members of the labor class the occupations available to these individuals require submission to, and surveillance by, authority.

However, with boxing, the fighters are able to win back their autonomy, in a sense “become their own boss” (1995a). Despite the paternalistic submission to the coach or manager, the fighters have a sense of entrepreneurship and self-determination, which may not otherwise be available.

No one is forcing them to fight, but they perceive that they can, of their own volition

Prizefighting is tailor-made for the personalized construction and public validation of a

heroic manly self because it is a distinctively individualistic form of masculine endeavor

whose rules are unequivocal and seemingly place contestants in a transparent situation of

radical self-determination. (Wacquant, 1995a, p. 514).

Second, the fighters perceive boxing to be a route to social and financial ascent despite

overbearing evidence to the contrary. That is they see the hierarchic ordering of the sport

proffering a rout of ascent pandering to the worn cliché of fighting their way out of the ghetto—

or as Wacquant more eloquently puts it “escaping once and for all the life of the urban serf”

(1995a, p. 504). In fact some 85% fighters believe, at least in the outset, that they would make it

to the top and be champion. Despite the fact that few make it, there is the inert suggestion that

the simple prospect of status attainment is more than would be available to these individuals in

any other occupation (Wacquant, 1995a).

Similarly the fighters hold a current status or celebrity identity within their own

community simply by nature of their involvement in what is perceived a glamorous trade. As a black welterweight confides, “Its like [I’m] a Idol, I got a lotta peoples in my neighborhood, know I’m a good fighter, they wanna idolize me” (Wacquant, 1995a, p. 506). Such celebrity status becomes intermeshed with mediation as a sign of status when one fighter explained how he boxed for the glory, “to be seen, the limelight…I made it right there in the center of the ring on television, you know, Who can tell you they’ve been on television like me?” (Anonymous fighter in Wacquant, 1995a, p. 514).

Conversely the MMA literature outlines participatory motives well removed from an economic focus. This is perhaps reflective of the lack of differentiation in the MMA research between the recreational and the professional (or aspirant professional) MMA fighter.

Specifically, Abramson and Modzelewski (2010) suggest three motives for participation in the subculture of MMA: self-improvement, authenticity, and voluntary involvement and community engagement. These are reflective of the findings of Green (2011) with reference to the role of pain and as such, I will present them together.

While many of the middle class participants felt their occupational life limited and restricted by forces beyond their control, they viewed the MMA subculture as inherently meritocratic. It is a space where hard work pays-off and where the onus on self-improvement belongs to the individual. Similarly the lack of commitment or laziness (especially in the fight) reflects an individual fault and evokes disappointment from the community. “When fighters are perceived as lazy rather than industrious, their position in the subculture suffers even if they win.

Fighters are acknowledged for their hard work and “heart” even if they lose” (Abramson &

Modzeleweski, 2010, p. 165).

The authors suggest that fighting reveals the true character of the individual—the true self that emerges under pressure. This is not simply a self-revelation but the public display of the self as they reaffirm virtues of heart, courage, athleticism, and determination. Green (2011), too makes this point with reference to the moment of pain as it denotes the moment “real” and provides access to a moment of clearness which presents “an avenue to encounter the body as a united self” (p.377). This self-revelation is enhanced by the lack of rules and equipment in

MMA; the individual is essentially bare for all to see. Again this isn’t reflected in a desire to win but in the desire to “put on a good show”, “give it all” and “learn something about one’s self” (p.

166). On the flip side, the fighters that placed too much value on winning and fought to “score points” were looked down on (Abramson & Modzeleweski, 2010).

Finally, the voluntary nature of the sub-cultural formation was seen as vital in underwriting the participation of the middle-class athletes. This leads to a feeling of difference through involvement. As one fighter notes, “when I walk into a room I think I am better than everybody else because I do this. If you fight, you’re a different kind of person. You have challenged yourself in a way that most people can’t” (quoted in Abramson & Modzeleweski,

2010, p. 175). This is a stark contrast the Wacquant’s pugilist, many of who were compelled to

box out of economic necessity. This necessity provides the context for the overtly exploitative

nature of professional boxing (Wacquant, 2001). Wacquant presents the boxers knowledge of

exploitative relationship between them and their promoters and managers through three idioms:

the relationship of a whore and a pimp; the relationship of a slave to the plantation owner; and,

the relationship of a prized animal or stallion to his owner. Despite this observed knowledge the

fighters are shown to negotiate such a state through vocabularies reflective of their motives to

fight presented above. First, “exploitation is an inescapable fact of life” (Wacquant, 2001, p.

186). That is to say exploitation is an inescapable fact of life for any member of the proletariat class and in any alternative form of employment open to the fighters. Second, the vocabulary of

“entrepreneurship” and the lone warrior status perpetuates such relationships by denying the economic role of the manager/promoter. Third, the fighters have a prevailing notion that they will be “the individual exception to the collective rule” (Wacquant, 2001, p. 189).

Comparative literature on the nature and knowledge of exploitation in MMA is not available which, again, is likely a function of the lack of professional fighters included in the aforementioned ethnographies. Indeed the only empirical analysis of the professional sport applies to the macro-level understanding of the sport itself. Van Bottenberg and Heilbron (2006) trace the growth and evolution of the sport of MMA through reference to the sportization and civilizing processes put forward by Norbert Elias. Through explication of such processes they note the privileging of the viewer (media audience) in such events, over that of the practitioner.

As they note it was “the media companies that wielded the dominant influence in the organization of NHB [No-Holds-Barred] events. Their main concern was to attract as large a viewing audience as possible, and they modified their rules accordingly…technique and style

73 were subordinated to the sensation that the fights had to offer as spectacles” (van Bottenberg &

Heilbron, 2006, p. 268, emphasis in original).

The authors suggest such a process lead to the hyped-violence in the UFC as it became a visceral entertainment form, attractive for its generation of ‘transgressive tension’. This ultimately led to the political, social and eventual media rejection of the sport in 1995-1997. In concluding the authors suggest four routs for addressing the backlash the sport met: 1.

“Abolition and Demise”; 2. “Move Underground”; 3. “Re-sportization”; and 4.

“Spectacularization” (van Bottenberg & Heilbron, 2006, p. 276-277). The latter three of these routes can each be seen to have occurred. First, the sport was pushed underground to forms of new-media and the hosting of overseas contests. Second, the sport was reformatted, weight classes introduced and the ‘Unified Rules of Mixed Martial Arts’ established. Finally,

‘spectacularization’ defined by the authors as “a shift of attention away from fighting skills to show the spectacle surrounding the event” (van Bottenberg & Heilbron, 2006, p. 277), can be seen with the focus on the shows increased production values, the increased development and presentation of celebrity fighters, and the couching of fights within specific narratives. This has largely been done through the 2005 introduction of the reality television show The Ultimate

Fighter.

Stephen Swain (2011) explored the role of The Ultimate Fighter as a tool of spectacularization in his Doctoral thesis titled “MMAsculinities: Spectacular Narratives of

Masculinity in Mixed Martial Arts”. Focusing on the UFC 114 main event between Quinton

‘Rampage’ Jackson and “Suga’ Rashad Evans, Swain explores the construction of a particular branded masculinity primarily done through the two fighters appearance as competing coaches in

The Ultimate Fighter season 10. Utilizing the Debordian treatise Swain took the UFC to be a

spectacle of masculinity. As Swain notes the spectacular violence in the UFC is presented in a

specific way through its mediations. This includes exploration of the allegorical trope of the roman gladiator mobilized in the opening sequence of many UFC events21. Through this imagery the UFC invokes an image of the UFC fighter as a modern day gladiator. Through a diversity of mediations the gladiatorial image has come to represent strength and stoicism. Swain suggests the deployment of such an image is to create a specific identity for the UFC fighter by mobilizing (historically questionable) attributes of the gladiator while diminishing others. For example he sees the gladiator as a symbol of fame and status as opposed to infamia (infamy and stigmatization) typical of the gladiator class. Similarly the symbol is used to connote the idea of fighting for honor as opposed to material gain (Swain, 2011). 23 Swain extends the allegory of the cage and coliseum in a suggestion that the UFC makes an appeal “not to history, but to particular representations of history” as specific (re)constructions are seen to hide the commodification of the fighter in favor of an image of men fighting for an essential quality, “men who fight for an instinctual desire, not because of money” (Swain, 2011, p. 77) thus reproducing the paradox of common gladiatorial discourse—gladiators were not men of honor or status who had a instinct for battle, they were slaves with no civil rights (Swain, 2011).

This fighter-gladiator, a man of honor and virtue, provides the basis for Swain’s exploration of the performance of masculinity in the UFC. To this end Swain’s analysis involves the interpretation of the actions of the 10th season of the UFC to correspond with the 10 factors outlined in Messiner, Dunbar and Hunt’s (2000) “Televised Sports Manhood Formula” as well the specific brand of masculinity outlined in Majors and Billson’s (1993) book “Cool Pose: The

21 This includes the finale of The Ultimate Fighter season 1. 23 As Swain notes, this is a clear re-writing of history as specific ideologies of the gladiator are mobilized while the fact of their slavery, their occasional material reward, or the use of the feats in the coliseum as an ancient spectacle to entertain and opiate (Swain, 2011). 75

Dilemma of Black Manhood in America” in which the hyper-masculine, aggressive and confrontational actions of Rampage Jackson and Rashad Evans (both of whom are African

American) are interpreted as a coping mechanism “ingrained in the black males psyche as he adopts a façade to ward off the anxiety of second class status” (Swain, 2011, p. 105)

In concluding, Swain suggests the UFC spectacle reflects and reinforces the aspects of

Messiner et al.’s (2000) sport manhood formula and presents a form of violent masculinity that reinforces male dominance. However, he finds this image of masculinity to ultimately be out of reach for the audience member due to social norms that prevent overt violent confrontation.

Instead, the male audience is relegated to aligning their violent identity through buying UFC related, advertised or sponsored products so as to put on outward displays of their masculine identity (Swain, 2011).

Swain accepts the Debordian treatise on its most superficial level as a propagator of conspicuous consumption. This is however, an incomplete conception of the spectacle of The

Ultimate Fighter, as the show presents more than the typical sporting spectacle. It is the spectacularization of the labor process and therefore the commodification of the laboring individual. As such, in the next section I turn to a review of literature on reality television. This development is designed to address the issues I have identified in previous, superficial understandings of the spectacle and to conceptualize the development of the Spectacle from fictional or symbolic representations of social action (movies, WWF, even sports), to representations claiming authenticity in their display of “reality”. This review builds a position from which to embark on my media analysis of the spectacle of The Ultimate Fighter.

A Spectacle of Reality

In their book ‘Reality TV: Remaking Television Culture’ Ouellette & Murray (2004) define the genre as “an unabashedly commercial genre united less by aesthetic rules or certainties than by the fusion of popular entertainment with a self-conscious claim to discourse of the real”

(p. 2). Reality TV promises access to real people in ordinary and extraordinary situations. We see this with the likes of the gamedoc or docudrama24 such as Survivor, Big Brother and Fear

Factor. Increasingly this genre has disseminated into the world of sport where it serves an alternate function of normalizing the spectacular and sepectacularizing the normal. First, the scrutiny of the celebrity in perceivably normal situations allows access to their lives and constructs the celebrity discourse. We see this with the likes of The Michael Vick Project, Hard

Knocks, Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders Making the Team, Baseball Wives, Shaq vs. and to some extent the 24/7 series which covers a number of sports. Alternatively, there has been a growth in the number of “sporting” reality television shows in which the participants are “normal”, non- celebrity individuals and the sporting environment provides an informative context for the audience to learn about the individual along with the human endeavor involved in the specific sport. This type of reality television has featured shows like, The Contender (Boxing), Tough

Enough (Professional Wrestling), Two-A-Days (High School Football), The Big Break (Golf), and of course The Ultimate Fighter (UFC produced MMA). This section aims at reviewing the relevant literature on reality TV so as to inform the research on the role of The Ultimate Fighter mobilizing certain discourses and the impact that those mobilizations may have on the sports labor economy. It outlines the way in which reality television (re)constructs realities in a specific way for the audience and invites self-reflection. In doing so we can see the effectiveness in the

24 Reality shows which place “real people” in a game or competition context, for example Survivor or Big Brother (Murry & Ouellette, 2004). 77 mediated portrayal of reality in constructing subject positions and imbuing them with social (and often economic) value.

Through his exploration of individual and cultural identity in realty TV, specifically

Survivor, Patkin (2003) offers insight into the constructed nature of the show through selective casting and selective editing. While the shows themselves are for the most part (assumed to be) unscripted, this does not belie construction. Participants are cast based on their exemplification of traits that will best drive content in a desired direction. In Survivor, physical and psychological tests are employed to potential survivor cast members to provide “clues as to compelling plot twists, and ensure high ratings” (Patkin, 2003, p.14). Typically, these contestants conform to specific demographic ideals such as diverse ethnic and racial representation to avoid alienating consumer groups; the equal representation of males and females, and; the physical attractiveness and youth of the selected participants. The overriding system of selection is as a representation of a specific form of “normalcy”. The selected casts exhibit an anti-intellectualism so as not to betray any idea of egalitarianism ingrained within the shows. “In an eerie echo of the secondary school culture, the social order constructed by the reality shows emphasizes physical prowess and social skills over intellectual capabilities” (Patkin, 2003, p. 16).

Along with selective casting, editing by the producers grants them privilege in framing cast members in specific lights. This is especially evident in the presentation of occupations.

Minorities and women are typically stereotypically portrayed while the male representations

“reflect the “program” end far more that the “reality” (Patkin, 2003, p. 17). For example in

Survivor: The Australian Outback (2003) the character of Rodger is introduced as a farmer and high school shop teacher while his most recent employment as a business owner and CEO of a bank is downplayed (Patkin, 2003, p.17).

As well as a (re)constructed cast Patkin (2003) offers insight into the framing and

selective editing used to heighten the perceptions of risk and increase the perceptions of

intergroup conflict. Many of the gamedoc shows offer virtual risk outside the realms of

normality for the audience, such as independent survival in the Australian Outback. This

heightens the perceived tension and drama despite the “reality” of safety just outside the purview of the cameras. Indeed, unscripted risk is edited out of the final product—such as a run in with armed pirates in Sea Quest III or the loss of two crew members when they were swept out to

sea—presenting a sanitized Disneyfied but still perceptually risky and engaging product (Patkin,

2003, Couldry, 2004).

Similarly intergroup conflicts are written into the story as specific attributes or actions are

highlighted that differentiate and alienate individuals. As Patkin notes, “hidden beneath the

surface, the latent message of the programs is conformity and subjugation…first to go is anyone

who plain doesn’t fit in, no matter what the reason” (Patkin, 2003, p.18). Similar assertions are

made by Ouellette & Hay (2008) as they explore the role of reality television in constructing

social, group, and institutional norms.

Finally Patkin refers to the “play frame” of the gamedoc stating, “Play is unique in that is

stands apart form ordinary life by virtue of its being “not serious” (i.e. non-instrumental in

nature) but at the same time absorbing the player utterly and intensely” (2003, p. 21). The game

element of the reality experience absorbs the contestants. Its continual maintenance is required in

the creation of the consensual mediated reality. The players are (often contractually) required to

preserve the illusion to “convince the audience of the reality of the show” (Patkin, 2003, p. 22).

However, as Patkin asserts, play is a fragile activity that is constantly under threat of intrusion

from reality. We, as an audience want to believe in and engage with the mediated play. By virtue

79 of this engagement we feel uncomfortable even cheated, when the frame breaks down. We as audiences become personally invested in the particular reality displayed.

We watch because reality shows promise a window to the soul. We symbolically

construct our own identities—both as individuals and culturally—through watching these

select few compete. Culture, as an intersubjectively produced and publicly held

phenomenon, relies on the media to create a false sense of community through vicarious

experience (Patkin, 2003, p. 13).

As Patkin alludes to in the above quote, the audience is drawn into the reality mediation through self-referential consumption. This becomes problematic when the play frame or the

(re)constructed reality breaks down. The audience negotiation of the paradoxical presentation of a constructed reality is explored by Rose & Wood (2005) who, through audience based research propose reflexive negotiation of three paradoxes relating to (1) the situation, (2) identification, and (3) production as driving the consumption of reality television.

The exotic environments of the gamedoc enhance the viewer appreciation of the context where fantasy turns into a real possibility. Alternatively, many viewers rejected the benign setting of Big Brother as too real. Entertainment value resides in the ability of the show to transcend the lived reality of the individual. The authors posit the value in the viewing of reality television to be derived from the role the show has in facilitating the construction of goals and

“daydreams” in the audience. The situations are “novel enough to be stimulating yet familiar enough to facilitate an imaginary participation in them by the viewer” (Rose & Woods, 2005, p.

290).

Identification relates to the perceived authenticity of the participants.

The appeal of reality television has been attributed to the audiences desire to observe real

people...yet the data suggest that some people may be more or less authentic as

representations of everyman. A paradox is revealed in which viewers negotiate the

existence of both “people like me” and storybook “characters” (Rose & Wood, 2005, p.

290).

As this quote illustrates the assessment of the authentic character is a self-referential process in which the audience concurrently builds a notion of themselves in relation to the

(re)constructed notion of the contestant. Authentic identification requires (1) possession of cultural roots, (2) a network of goals, and (3) participation in a socially recognized role. Thus the cast becomes authentic as time passes and the culture of the group is formed and reinforced” (p.

290).

Finally and directly related to the work of Patkin (2003) referenced above, the authors posit a paradox of production. Rose and Wood (2005) assert that viewers—rather than deceiving themselves into assuming the show to be life un-produced—find value in the confluence of the spontaneous and the planned as they seek “balance between the natural narrative and the manipulated narrative” (Rose & Wood, 2005, p. 292). Respondents exemplify this in valuing the authenticity promised by reality TV but also acknowledging the added drama through the constructed challenges and the provision of rewards. Importantly while the structural manipulations of the game context are accepted or valued, perceived production in the misrepresentation of characters violates the required authenticity in identification.

Ultimately the findings of this study stress the self-referential lens applied in the consumption of reality television. This is an engaged and interactive process as the viewer deconstructs the text and interacts with the discursive threads presented. Along with this is the

81 inherent paradox in the presentation in which authenticity is not the primary goal but lies in concert with spectacular or fantastic elements. These elements inspire self-referent imagination and can be seen to play a role in the formation of individual goals and dreams—ultimately, having an influence on individual behavior. Here we can see the reality TV literature reflecting the propositions of Debord in which the spectacle presents what is good and as such directs the behavior of the spectators, consumptive of otherwise (Debord, 1994; Swain, 2011).

Building on this framework we can see the audience and contestants social positioning as having implications for authentic consumption. Allen and Mendick (2012) investigated the role that social class (in the audience and cast) had on the consumption of authenticity and how reality TV can contribute to the process of class making among the audience. The authors do not clarify or define their terms “working class” or “middle class” during their study; however, such positioning can be interpreted through Bourdieu’s (1987) assertion of relational distance in personal capital accumulation (in its multitude of forms). This is alluded to when the authors suggest the middle class contestants to be individuals with “access to the resources through which to maximize existence” (Allen & Mendick, 2012, p. 3).

Previous findings have suggested the authentic “reality TV self” is a representation of this middle class individual, thus positioning the working class as those deficit in capital and resources and therefore outside the constructed reality TV norm. Indeed working class individuals can achieve celebrity status through participation in such programming; however, the percieved “ordinariness” of the working class contestant was seen to inhibit their acquisition of symbolic value without undergoing an identity transition bringing them into line with the middle class identity norms (Bressi & Nunn, 2004; Holmes, 2005; Tyler & Bennet, 2010). Allen and

Mendick (2012) extend these findings further to analyze how such class perceptions articulate into the identity work of young people (aged 14-19).

As opposed to the previous work they found some participants valued the working class contestant who remained authentic to their “true” selves against the odds. These results were concentrated amongst the working class respondents. Similarly these same respondents negatively viewed working class participants who divert from or try to hide their working class roots—particularly when revealed in the common “going home” trope, which builds narrative and backstory around the contestants (Allen & Mendick, 2012).

Ouellette and Hay (2008) argue, in the advanced neoliberal state—a state featuring small government and promoting the benefits of a free market—television becomes a central mode of disseminating norms and facilitating regulation of the self. First they suggest that television, “as a cultural technology . . . working outside “public powers,” regulates by presenting individuals and populations as objects of assessment and interventions, and by soliciting their participation in the cultivation of particular habits, ethics, behaviors, and skills” (p.9) while later defining the use of the term cultural technology to “underscore the extent to which television culture is an object of regulation, policy, and programs designed to nurture citizenship and civil society, and an instrument for educating, improving, and shaping subjects” (p.14). The deployment here evokes a the duel meaning of the word culture as both a homogeneity of values, norms and beliefs among a group, and the process of cultivation—facilitating the growth and organization of life to ensure maximum productivity and achievement in line with accepted social goals. In this sense Ouellette and Hay (2008) conceive of television as a “new form of social service, social welfare, and social management involving turning attention toward specific networks

83 between TV, the State, and the private (volunteer and corporate) entities, which act upon each other and which citizens must rely upon and navigate” (p. 18).

The increased willingness of “ordinary” individuals to appear on camera plays a role in normalizing the surveillance society of many western cultures (Ouellette & Murray, 2004). As

Couldry (2004) notes there is a prevailing myth across all gamedocs that “surveillance is a natural way through which to observe the social world.” The surveillance culture is cloaked in ritual and becomes quite ordinary. Couldry (2004) goes further than that to suggest that the simple act of mediation implies value, propagating the myth that “mediated reality is somehow

“higher” or more significant than non-mediated reality” (2004, p. 61) terming the transition from ordinary to celebrity a “celebrification process” (p.61).

This process can be related to the sport reality TV genre through the work of Hearn

(2006; 2008). Hearn moves past the passive notion of “celebrification” to suggest that reality television programs present narratives about how to become a celebrity or a notable self (Hearn,

2006; 2008). As she argues, the shows create actors out of the individual perpetuating the politics and ideology of the spectacle within which they partake. Therefore the site of production of media spectacle is two fold and self-perpetuating: first, the individual auditioning for a reality role presents an outward depiction of what they believe the producers are looking for; aligning with the prevailing media discourses of the industry. And second, the production crew then constructs their intended product; often exacerbating that which is has already been hyped. This then informs potential recruits of the external representations of a culture or embodied ideologies that are read as essential to produce success in the “industry.”

Hearn suggests these spectacular individuals are far from “authentic” or “normal,” they are actively positioned “as a site for the extraction of value” either consciously by the actor, or

externally by the production context and use of the individual (Hearn, 2006, p. 199). The self

becomes branded and commodified and serves the capital accumulatory function: “In the case of

self-branders, however, we see a highly self-conscious process of self-exploitation, performed in

the interests of material gain or cultural status” (Hearn, 2006, p. 204).

A later article by Couldry (2008) builds on this notion of self-branding or self-

spectacularization to suggest that the forced performance of a spectacular self in reality

television becomes a normalizer for the neoliberal organization of society. In his paper “Realty

TV, or The Secret Theatre of Neoliberalism” Couldry explores the change in employee- employer relations that have emerged in the economic shift toward a pure market driven economy (Harvey, 2005). During this shift he posits a two part change, first in the increase in work hours demanded and subsequent need for permanent availability in the workforce, and second, the increases in employer flexibility to terminate an employment relationship (Couldry,

2008). The result of these forces being increased individualism in the competition for scarce jobs and the resulting acceptance of the employer’s appropriation of the worker’s time. This “free”- time appropriation is done in the form of a gift in return for affirmation of a position of employment, however, as Couldry (2008) notes,

Willing submission to the total appropriation of one’s living-time by an employer is

impossible without self-denial, so its impossibility must itself be denied through the

public expression—for others to see and hear—of “passion”: the performance of

expressive attachment to whatever are the goals of one’s employer (p.6).

Work has taken on an extra role as not just the place of labor for production but the active labor to producing a specific self. Couldry extends this conception to the Realty TV format asserting that the constant surveillance requires constant work on self-presentation to meet the

85 shows specific values. For Big Brother contestants, self-presentation is seen to reflect five core values of the corporate service industry. Firstly, the shows format necessitates an unquestioning submission to authority. Second, despite the individual nature of the competition the programs require acceptance and team conformity. Dissent of this norm is perceived negatively and invariably results in the removal of the dissenter—by public vote in the case of Big Brother.

Third, the audience demands authenticity, something perceived as natural under prolonged exposure and thus a neutralizer of the perceived production and performance. Fourth, the contestants retain a positive demeanor, excluding any doubt in the benefit of the show—despite the unlikelihood of this feeling’s authenticity. Finally, individualization is promoted; despite forced teamwork and socialization, it is as individuals that the contestants are judged and evicted.

Conclusion: Fighting the Cultural Economy

Through this literature review I have outlined the incomplete and abstractionist tendencies within the main sports economic literatures, and called for a need to understand sports labor flows as a function of both culture and the economy. I propose the best resolution for this coming in Debord’s conception of the society of the spectacle as a self reproducing dialectic of culture and economy which has, at its core, the separation of producers from each other, their products, and their daily lives (1994). This led to a discussion of the role of the celebrity in the propagation of the spectacle. Taking this I then sought to review how social scientists have located the individual fighter within the social and economic formations of the fighting spectacle

(Abramson & Modzelewski, 2010; Green, 2011; Spencer; 2009). Swain’s (2011) analysis of the performative masculinity of the UFC celebrity places the UFC within the society of the spectacle, a position I aim to build from.

Reality television provides the context for this analysis, thus diverging my study from the

previous work of Wacquant, Green & Abramson and Modzelewki. As such I move to situate the

reality television medium as a unique apparatus of the spectacle. This research has looked at the

multitude of ways that reality television acts to reproduce the spectacle through inviting self-

reflexive consumption (Patkin, 2003; Rose & Woods, 2005) and as an identity project by which

we, as audience members, articulate into the presented discourse (Allen & Mendick. 2012; Bressi

& Nunn, 2004; Holmes, 2005; Tyler & Bennet, 2010). This is followed with the literature

exploring self-presentation through reality television, and the ways that reality television can become a self-perpetuating labor project through self branding and the “spectacular self” proposed by Hearn (2006; 2008). Ultimately the presentation of “authentic” spectacular selves through reality television can be related back, and articulated onto the dominant market organization of society (Couldry, 2008).

The Ultimate Fighter presents a unique site of analysis as it is a product of the convergence of the spectacle and reality in as a media representation of the labor process. This representation creates a specific cultural formation and constructs ideas around the fighter identity, the UFC organization, and in the sport of MMA. Such formations hold economic imperatives in their ability to mobilize a specific type of labor force and a specific type of labor.

The opportunity for an institution to discourse on itself and construct its own culture opens the door for manipulation geared toward maximization of profit for the institution. As such the current study works within the confluence of sport economic, cultural and reality television research situated within the broader theoretical framework outlined in the “Society of the

Spectacle” (Debord, 1994) to explore this cultural formation and its potential implications for the cultural economy of the UFC.

CHAPTER THREE

METHOD

In the previous chapter, I worked toward a cultural economic conceptualization of the UFC as a contemporary sporting spectacle; functioning as an apparatus within the broader society of the spectacle.25 I suggested that—in such a spectacular society—there is a particular cultural- economic dialectic occurring in which cultural and economic domains, roles and functions blur.

This dialectic, as presented in the reading of the Debordian treatise, suggests the cultural and the economic cannot be understood in isolation but as (in)forming each other. Indeed, the economic conception of society is a cultural factor and product in that it constrains and is constrained by the patterns of understanding within the society. These cultural patterns of knowledge and behavior become economic inputs. They inform the economic conception and serve to promote and propagate specific economic activities while suppressing or dismissing others. Beyond this we see the economic organization of free-market capitalism has cultural imperatives as we become separated from our vitality, our lives, our agency—cultural imperatives that serve to perpetuate the capitalist spectacular invasion of socio-cultural life.

I aim to investigate this proposition within the profit-driven sport industry, as it presents a unique and clearly recognizable site of both cultural and economic activity centered on the mediation of sports. Indeed, sports have become dependent on the media for their financial survival. They become increasingly spectacularized as they are actively constructed as cultural products for the greatest audience capture and economic return (Andrews, 2006; Jhally, 2006;

Jhally & Livant, 2006; McChesney, 1989; Rowe, 2011). Thus these media spectacles provide

25 The society outlined by Debord: a hyper-mediated society of free market capitalism. 88 insight into the cultural and economic interaction within the society of the spectacle. The UFC is a prime site for such an inquiry because of its spectacularization of the labor process itself presenting the fighter-laborer centered within the economic and cultural structures of the sporting institution. The reality show mobilizes a specific discourse around the MMA labor force, its labor conditions, and the institutions that construct them. Furthermore the show can be seen to present a more affective, consumable and alluring media product. Competition central to sport

(and sport economic analysis) provides the sports context, its meaning, and its objective. And yet visible representations of this competition make up a minimal portion of any sport mediation, the

UFC is no exception. As such, The Ultimate Fighter—the reality television show depicted as an entry into the UFC; a literal labor competition—is heavy with constructed narrative and enhancement beyond a presentation of reality as the encoders work to bridge from one piece of action to the other.

Such mediation processes present a particular view of the sporting organization, a discourse around the fighter laborer and creates subject positions that may inform participation in the sport of MMA and goals to fight in the UFC. It is, however, a one sided narrative (as all spectacles are in the Debordian sense). As producer of the show, the UFC is gifted the privileged position as creating the discourse about itself. It is able to construct particular ideologies that enhance its corporate agenda of capital accumulation.

In this section I will outline the methodology I will employ in the attempt to draw out the meaningful cultural economic discourses of the show. Such a project is situated I the critical paradigm as I aim to problematize the current system of sport-reality mediation and commodification on the societal level while simultaneously explicating the unique process and structures of the UFC—a sport promotion company already under the spotlight for what many

fighters have argued are exploitative practices. Through critical discourse analysis of the show I

aim to outline the discursive constructions and present their potential influence on the aspirant fighter labor force.

However, we cannot infer a direct, behaviorist adoption of the dominant subject position.

The audience has autonomy in their readings and the ability to negotiate the text. From this perspective, I acknowledge the Hallian encoding/decoding model in my analysis (Hall, 1980;

1997). Hall suggests that media messages travel in a circuit (similar to Marx’s circuit of capital), in which the message passes through discrete but connected forms or conditions of existence. As he suggest each moment in the circuit (production, circulation, distribution, consumption and reproduction) exists in isolation, but is only given meaning and purpose through is position and relation with the other aspects of the circuit. As Hall states:

It is possible (and useful) to think of this process in terms of a structure produced and

sustained through the articulation of linked but distinctive moments- production,

circulation, distribution/consumption, reproduction. This would be to think of the process

as a ‘complex structure of dominance’, sustained through the articulation of connected

practices, each of which, retains its distinctiveness and has its own specific modality

(Hall, 1997, p. 128).

The model presents encoding and decoding as determinate aspects of the circuit, which operate under discursive rules to convey a message. Foucault conceptualized discourse as

“practices that systematically form the objects with which they speak” (Foucault, 1972, p. 49).

They are systems of representation, informed by our socio-cultural context. The message is packaged in the ‘encoding’ stage based on the discursive rules of the cultural context, while conforming to the production culture, its rules, norms, practices and assumptions. The message

only realizes its use value through decoding by the audience again through a reliance on the

dominant cultural discourses. As Hall (1997) notes: “Before a message can have an ‘effect’

(however defined), satisfy a ‘need’ or be put to a ‘use’, it must first be appropriated as

meaningful discourse and be meaningfully decoded” (p. 130). Through a structure of feedbacks

these interpretations are adopted within the cultural discursive framework, thus informing future

mediation. In such a way the audience becomes both “the ‘source’ and the ‘receiver’ of the

television message” (Hall, 1997, p. 130).

This Hallian understanding of the media process has spawned sport-media research

focused on three discrete moments in the circuit: 1. Moments of encoding looking to the

contextual motives and constraints and how they inform production practices (Duncan, 1993a;

Gruneau, 1989; MacNeill, 1995; 1996; Stoddart, 1994 Whannel, 1993); 2. Textual analysis

looking at the dominant or privileged discursive readings of the sporting text (Jhally, 2006;

Kinkema & Harris, 1998), especially with reference to themes such as heterosexuality,

masculinity and violence26 (Dubbert, 1979; Duncan, 1990, 1993b; Duncan & Messner, 1998;

Hall, 1993; Hargreaves, 1994; Kinkema & Harris, 1992, 1998; Messner, 1990; 1995; Messner,

Dunbar & Hunt, 2000; Messner, Duncan & Jensen, 1993; Putney, 2003; Sabo & Jansen, 1992), and promotion of specific forms of economic organization and the labor process (Andrews,

2006; Brohm, 1978; Duncan & Brummett, 1987; Hargreaves, 1982; Jhally, 1989, 2006; Lipsky,

1983; Silk & Falcous, 2005; White, Silk & Andrews, 2012); and 3. Decoding or audience based research in which the audience is afforded autonomy in their negotiation of their subject position and thus need to be studied for the interaction between their cultural memberships, consumption

26 For review see Messner, Dunbar and Hunt’s (2000) Televised Sport Manhood Formula where it is suggested that sport is portrayed as a mans domain presenting a narrow conception of masculinity in which where women are sidelined or sexualized, violence and aggression is promoted, valued and normalized, and pain and injury is valued as a masculine signifier. 91 of the text, and their subsequent subjective identity construction (Davies & Harre, 1990; Hall,

1980; 1997; 2000; Kinkema & Harris, 1998).

Such approach to media analysis has specific implications for this study when re- articulating or re-situating the Debordian theory within the current historic context and, particularly articulating the society of the spectacle back to the individual media-sport spectacle.

This research aims to work toward the delineation of the process by which the fighter-laborer becomes a re-producer of the spectacle through the specific mediated text and its subjective decoding at the audience level. However, as research situated in the stage of textual analysis only, I must acknowledge the limitations of any findings. As textual analysis this is an inherently interpretive piece of research, whereby I have to negotiate my position as both researcher and research subject as it is I who will be decoding the text. As such, the interpretation of such findings is intended to be preliminary in calling for future research into how the text is decoded by the potential-laborer audience members themselves.

Questions such as: ‘Are the laborers cultural/economic subjects?’ and ‘To what degree can they negotiate or resist the mediated cultural economy of the spectacular society and the cultural economy of the spectacular institution?’ cannot be addressed without empirical analysis at the level of the audience. While research at the phase of the producer and knowledge of their decisions, constraints and motives for specific cultural or discursive constructions would provide information as to the effectiveness of a mediated cultural economy. Essentially each moment of the communicative circuit need to be researched in order for definitive conclusions to be reached as to the role of reality media in constructing a specific sporting cultural economy.

As an analysis of just the first season of The Ultimate Fighter my findings cannot simply be taken as a ridged, infallible conception of the cultural economy of the sport of MMA or the

employment institution of the UFC. Indeed, as is outlined in chapter two, any understanding of a

cultural economy has to be understood as a malleable product of dialectics. It is a constant state

of flux not a prevailing fixed and governing logic. This becomes further evident when I

acknowledge the sixteen proceeding seasons of The Ultimate Fighter, each of which presumably

presents an evolving conception of the UFC culture and economic practices. Outside the

institution the US and global political economic context has undergone significant change since

2005 too.

Instead of tackling this longitudinal evolution—an immense task if done in any way

beyond cursory inference—I have attempted to isolate the first season. Such isolation allows a

more in-depth investigation of the text itself and its broader context. This degree of attention to

detail is vital due to the position of the show as the progenitor to, or catalyst for, the growth in

international popularity of MMA and the UFC. As the first time either the sport or the

organization have been visible ‘behind the cage’ and free to air, the show holds the key for

tracing the intermediarial genesis of the show and the sport. It demarks a significant change in

the UFC’s relation and approach to the media and has spawned significant change in the sports

internal economy.

That said, I acknowledge that this will be just a partial view in my omission of analysis at

the site of production and how a potential fighter audience decodes the text and the multitude of

free-to-air UFC texts that have followed. As such my findings can only be considered a partial reading. I hope to present this as a starting point for future inquiry into the role of spectacle and the cultural economy of the UFC in their labor market.

Paradigmatic Foundations

The current project attempts to move beyond the positivistic reductionism of sporting

economics by articulating the economic conceptions of the labor force with a broader cultural

studies project. While the field of cultural studies is a dynamic, interdisciplinary one, Denzin and

Lincoln assert, “[e]ach version of cultural studies is joined by a three-fold concern with cultural

texts, lived experience, and the articulated relationship between texts and everyday life” (2011,

p. 93). As such, this study attempts to investigate The Ultimate Fighter spectacle as text, while looking towards the potentialities this text holds in influencing cultural and economic activity in the professional sport. In this way the current study draws from the critical paradigm. Markula and Silk define the aim of this paradigm as to “locate individual actions within relations of dominance and subordination that…characterize the world we live in” (2011, p. 39). Such a theory draws on the theories of Karl Marx, and directly relates to the social conception offered by Debord. We can see this in the ontological position of the paradigm of historical realism offered by Lincoln, Lynham and Guba (2011) which sees “virtual reality shaped by social, political, cultural, economic, ethnic, and gender values; crystallized over time” (p. 98).

Such a paradigmatic approach is inherently transformative in that it aims for re-conception of the lived reality in the hopes of delineating structures of domination and exploitation while advocating activism against such systems (Lincoln, Lynham & Guba, 2011). This is again exemplified in the counter capitalist conceptions in Marxism and neo-Marxism and the active praxis of Debord through the Situationist International.27 In this vein my adoption of the critical research paradigm requires me to convey research findings in an advocate/activist voice, seeking to examine the UFC sporting spectacle as a means to critique the current cultural economy of

27 The Situationist International was a revolutionary organization to which Debord belonged at the time of writing The Society of the Spectacle. The Situationists’ aim was the subversion of the spectacle. 94

professional sport. Hence I seek to convey an intent for social change in the way people think

about the professional sporting phenomenon and the UFC in particular (Lincoln, Lynham &

Guba, 2011).

The critical paradigm not only directs my political motivations but also importantly

provides the methodological grounding for this study. I will therefore elaborate on the critical

paradigm while outlining the methodology proposed for the study of the TUF spectacle at both the textual and audience level.

Studying the Spectacle

This study operates under the assumed articulation between the stages of encoding and decoding and their wider socio-cultural and historical environments as proposed by Stuart Hall

(1980a). The model suggests that texts are encoded and decoded under discursive rules, which allow signs to adopt their denotative and connotative meanings (Hall, 1980a). Again a brief detour through Foucault’s discourse is in order for an understanding of the role of The Ultimate

Fighter text in creating subject positions and constructing cultures, thus legitimating the need for study both at the level of text—the already encoded message—and the audience—the decoders.

Discourse refers to a system of representation. Going beyond language and semiology,

Foucault saw discourse as the way in which language and other texts become meaningful through their articulation with the broader historical, social and cultural environment. It constructs a topic through both its explication of connected ideas and concepts, and its ruling out of that which is unrelated. Discourse “limits and restricts other ways of talking, of conducting ourselves in relation to the topic or constructing knowledge around it” (Hall, 2001, p. 72).

“Meaning and meaningful practice is therefore constructed within discourse” (Hall, 2001, p. 73).

Discourse constructs knowledge held by those within the same socio-cultural and historical

context in a way that Foucault saw “nothing meaningful existing outside discourse” (Hall, 2001,

p. 73) as everything meaningful is a social configuration and, therefore, is discourse.

Foucault’s conception of discourse is beneficial in its exemplification of the production

of contextual knowledge and thus the social and cultural environment within which it operates.

However the Foucault’s conception has been criticized for his over absorption of discourse (Hall,

2001). By viewing everything as discourse and discourse as the only producer or enforcer of

power and knowledge Foucault’s followers effectively “neglect the influence of the material, economic and structural factors in the operation of power/knowledge” (Hall, 2001, p.78), while simultaneously reducing the autonomy and self determination of the individual operating within discourse (Hall, 1980a; 1997; 2001). Nonetheless Foucault offers a major foundation for which

Hall theory of representation and meaning, and the evolution of the following methodology of textual analysis, which I aim to employ.

Through the textual analysis, I hope to outline the discourses portrayed through the TUF spectacle to outline and negotiate how this discourse creates subject positions for the audience.

As Hall writes “all individuals in a particular period will become the subjects of a particular discourse” (2001, p80); subjects who portray or embody the forms of knowledge produced in the discourse, and subjects who adopt a particular place with respect to the discourse from which the discourse is most easily and correctly decoded—where it makes the most sense. This is not a passive event but a positioning within the audience members. The adoption of the position that makes most sense, “thus becoming [the discourses] ‘subjects by ‘subjecting’ ourselves to its meaning, power and regulation. All discourses, then, construct subject-positions” (Hall, 2001, p.

80). In the next section I explore Critical Discourse Analysis as a tool for revealing,

understanding and analyzing such constructs and their potential influence on the

receiver/audience/spectator.

Critical Discourse Analysis: Reading the TUF Text

As outlined in the previous literature, media presentation is not a reflection of reality but

an active (re)construction of it as a spectacle (Gruneau, 1989; Tomlinson, 2002). Such a

reconstruction creates a political text that presents the ideological viewpoint of the intermediary,

as a reality or norm (Jhally, 2006). It is packaged at the stage of encoding under the culture of the

mediating institution and is constrained by their structure, politics and organizational practices

(Gruneau, 1989; Kinkema & Harris, 1998). The mediation aims to create specific subject

positions for its audience based on their assumptions about the audience to ensure the text is read

in its dominant or preferred reading to engage the audience; to create affiliation and opiation in

order for a good audience to be delivered to advertisers (Jhally, 2006). Access to this encoding

practice is not available for the study of The Ultimate Fighters production and mediation.

However, the text itself can be subject to analysis in order to understand the discursive working of the text. Through employing critical discourse analysis (CDA) I hope to be able to outline the way the TUF text works to construct a specific subject position for the fighter culture. This can be put into conversation with the politics and structure of the UFC organization to delineate how such discursive formations operate to legitimize and normalize fighter subordination. As

Markula and Silk assert “dominant groups hold the power in society and work to maintain their position of power through distributing belief systems [specific discourses] that, while they support the dominance, appear natural, justified and beneficial” (2011, p.118-119).

CDA was designed by Norman Fairclough to disclose how this dominance occurs

through specific texts (Blommaert & Bulcaen, 2000; Fairclough, 2001; 2011; Markula & Silk,

2011). As a methodological technique it has since been employed in a number of contexts to

explicate the “discursive dimensions of power abuse and the injustice and inequality that results

from it” (Van Dijk, 1993, p. 252). Here we can see such an approach closely articulated to the

critical paradigm—operating with the specific purpose of addressing social issues and toward

specific sociopolitical goals (Van Dijk, 1993). As Van Dijk (1993) asserts CDA extends beyond

activism relative to the individual issue:

Critical discourse analysts go beyond the immediate, serious or pressing issues of the

day. Their structural understanding presupposes more general insights, and sometimes

indirect and long-term analyses of fundamental causes, conditions and consequences of

such issues…to make a more specific contribution, namely to get more insight into the

crucial role of discourse in the reproduction of dominance and inequality. (Van Dijk,

1993, p. 253)

CDA requires the articulation of the issue and the text into the wider sociopolitical context

within which it is situated and, as such, provides not only commentary and critique of the issue

but of sociocultural sociopolitical constructs and systems at large (Blommaert & Bulcaen, 2000).

Markula and Silk (2011) suggest this process of analysis passes through four stages:

denotative description of the text; analysis of its connection to existing narratives; connection to

ideology; and, connection to power. This will be explicated in more depth through the proposed

application of CDA in my study.

The primary text that will be analyzed is The Ultimate Fighter reality television show.

Spawning from the UFC, the reality series first began in 2005 on Spike TV. It has since run each

98 year in the United States as well as expanding into the British (TUF: USA vs. UK), Australian

(TUF: Australia vs. UK) and Brazilian markets (TUF: Brazil). The first season aired each week at 11pm and ran for thirteen episodes from its premier on January 17, to its Finale on April 9.

The show featured sixteen un-contracted fighters competing in two divisions of eight Light

Heavyweights (Bobby Southworth, Sam Hoger, Forrest Griffin, Alex Schoenauer, Stephen

Bonnar, Mike Swick, Lodune Sincaid, and Jason Thacker) and eight Middleweights (Josh

Koscheck, Diego Sanchez, Kenny Florian, Josh Rafferty, Nathan Quarry, Chris Leben, Alex

Karalexis, and Chris Sanford). In each division the fighters competed individually for a six- figure contract in the UFC. For the first round of fights, fighters were split into two teams to be trained by two future UFC Hall of Famers; Chuck Liddell and Randy Couture. Each week’s show features the fighters living in the same Nevada estate, training together with their teams, and competing in physical challenges to determine fight selection. The hour long episodes culminated with a single fight consisting of two five-minute rounds unless stopped by knockout or submission, with the possibility of a third round in the advent of a draw. Following the first round of fights the team structure dissolves as fighters are placed against whoever is left in a randomly picked semi-finale.

This first season has been seen by many as the impetus for the rise of the UFC’s popularity. It was the first time the UFC was broadcast free-to-air and, as figure 1 and Figure 2 show, it demarked the turning point in the sports Pay-Per-View buy rates. The final between

Griffin and Bonnar is especially reverent as it is still considered by many the greatest fight in

‘the Octagon’ (Wertheim, 2009). Since this season the show has changed little save for the removal of the physical challenges and duel weight classes in favor of sixteen fighters all

competing together, but still in the initial team format, in the fifth season. I chose The Ultimate

Fighter’s thirteen episodes as the site for textual analysis because of its progenitor status.

In order to critically understand The Ultimate Fighter discourse, I employed Markula and

Silk’s (2011) four-stage analysis in interrogating each show. Firstly, the text was analyzed for its denotative meaning—I outlined what is seen in each episode. This included the use of narrative language, common signs and images and production techniques. Particular emphasis was placed on the coverage of people; what they were wearing, how they were positioned, camera angles, what their expressions were like, how they behaved etc. From there I looked for the emergence of consistent narrative and how the denotation related to (signified) connotation (Kennedy &

Hills, 2009). Through establishment of a narrative, or patterns of connotation, I inferred ideological value. For example, I attached specific narrative to ideologies of the economic structure and labor subordination. These ideologies relate directly to power relations in broader society which work in binaries—the discursive constructs both serve and subordinate simultaneously. This is the final stage of the CDA approach (Markula & Silk, 2009). The episodes were viewed in chronological order in order to pick up on the “intertextuality” of the media text: the accumulated meaning of each season (Kennedy & Hills, 2009).

Each episode was interpreted and analyzed based on “significant events.” These are events that I saw as relating to the construction of the text. Ultimately, through this process I aimed to see how the show depicts the fighter’s position within the competition and organization.

I looked to see how the shows contestants—unpaid laborer’s—were portrayed in the show and how the show relates the reality TV context to the fighters’ wider existence in the sport of MMA, in the UFC institution and society at large?

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These “significant events” were then transcribed onto a computer document. This

document included the episode and time of the event, a description of the event and relevant

production techniques. Following such a connotative description the events were be interpreted

denotatively and categorized by their ideological implications. The accumulation of data

revealed patterns from which the construction of specific subject positions was inferred.

Self-Reflexivity

As I have alluded to, this media analysis is an interpretive process involving negotiation of my own subjectivities as a researcher. My role as a spectator/consumer and practitioner of

MMA for a number of years allows me to make inference to the potential laborer subject position, however, this is not to assume an objective reality merely to make educated inference through problematizing the texts potentiality. Over a decade ago while in high school I began boxing for fitness. At the time I had no knowledge of Mixed Martial Arts. As my skills developed sparring became a regular occurrence. During my undergraduate studies I was introduced to a local MMA gym in New Zealand that specialized in Muai Thai kickboxing.

Through immersion in the club culture I became well versed in the sport and attended a number of amateur-level events. My involvement with the sport also served entrée to the UFC events.

The Ultimate Fighter seasons 7 (coached by Season one winner Forrest Griffin and at the time light-heavy weight champion Quinton Jackson) become a weekly ritual between my roommates and I. Despite geographic changes I have continued my involvement in the MMA community participation in both MMA and Jiu Jitsu training centers. At the time of writing I am a member of a local Mixed Martial Arts gym.

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I present this information by way of acknowledging my position as a part of this

spectacular cycle. From such a position I feel I will take away different aspects of the mediation

than someone less involved and attuned to the sport. I bring something different to the study by

virtue of being a member of the MMA community, having experienced first hand the training

mediated in the show; having hit and been hit; having injured and been injured. I do not propose

this makes me better person for the study, but see this as an integral aspect of the study in need

of address. As Hall suggests, decoding as meaning making process requires use of the socio-

cultural discursive formations (1980a), therefore I need to be aware of my own subjectivity and

utilize my position as a MMA practitioner/UFC media consumer to deconstruct The Ultimate

Fighter as a discursive event. This researcher subjectivity will become evident during the member checking stage in which a colleague trained in qualitative methods will choose three of my coded episodes and check the transcription against the episode to ensure validity of inference and allow for comparison of my induction of the dominant narratives and connotative meanings presented in the text.

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CHAPTER FOUR

RESULTS

Through critical analysis of the show, key events were thematized to help understand the construction process. The way the contestants, events and the organization were framed influences the reading of the text and relates to the shows perceived authenticity. As such these themed key moments are presented below under the headings of identification, production and situation—the three paradoxes of authenticity outlined by Rose and Woods (2005). Following the presentation of these themes I move to explore the way they contribute to a constructed understanding of the cultural economy of the UFC.

Identification

The paradox of identification relates to the viewers’ negotiation of the people presented in reality television shows. This has typically revolved around the conception of the participants as “people like me” versus storybook characters. This is typically seen in other reality shows, in the way that atypically smart or attractive characters are rejected by viewers (Rose & Woods,

2005). However, this rejection is an inherently self-reflexive act requiring the identification of traits or characteristics (cognitive, behavioral, and physical) valued and present in the self.

Identifying such self-reflexive watching typically involves the selection of members of a diverse reality television cast as preferred or disliked fro specific reasons (Allen & Mendick, 2012; Rose

& Woods, 2005). The contestants from season one of The Ultimate Fighter, however, do not exhibit the diversity of characters often chosen for reality shows to engender the broadest level of audience engagement—essentially presenting someone for everyone (Patkin, 2003). Instead a

103 specific collective and homogenous identity, what I have termed the “abstract fighter identity”, emerges for all the contestants.

The contestants are not introduced in the first episode beyond a picture and first name during the credits. This marks a departure from many reality show formats. Instead, the contestant dialogue is used to drip-feed information about each characters history, social position and motives. The richest form of such dialogue comes by way of the “confession camera” narrative in which contestants address the camera directly. This usually occurs in a presumably isolated but undefined location in which the contestant is seated in a darkened room and filmed with a mid shot, medium close up, or close up. The illuminated wall behind the fighter is a colored light projecting through a chain-link fence (emblematic of the octagon) onto some indistinguishable boxes and/or industrial equipment. The narration provided during these scenes is typically overlaid with the action—or experience—to which the character is referring, in order to give the impression of ‘narrative thought,’ and increase the perceived “reality” or unconstructed nature of the show. Used throughout the show in the place of a narrator, the confession camera becomes the lens through which the fighters reveal their backstory. Such gradual fleshing out of the character becomes more overt in the build up to an elimination bout when, after the announcement of the fight matchup, the remainder of the episode is devoted to the construction of narrative around the bout. These narratives tend to produce a similar discourse with regard to the fighter’s affinity for fighting, their motivation, or their history.

In this section I will outline the dominant themes of these narratives, as they tend to coalesce around two topics: a history of adversity and sacrifice. The depth and breadth of these stories vary across the sixteen contestants with some offering nothing by way of a personal history, or background.

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The first to offer any form of backstory is Chris Sanford, one of the two African

American contestants. During the first episode, following the introduction from Dana White, the fighters orient themselves around the house. “Where’s the liquor cabinet, lets see what we’ve got in here,” Chris Leben is filmed saying as he begins dishing out drinks. The camera cuts to

Sanford in confession camera stating, “I was kinda shocked that they provided us with alcohol, a full bar!” Sanford participates in the socializing that follows, however, becomes absent as Leben dominates the scenes with loud and obnoxious behavior picking on the only Canadian cast member, Jason Thacker, labeling him “Strange Brew” based on his “Ripe Stench”.

Leben proclaims: “Who’s tough? Who do you think?”

Griffin replies: “We’re all tough.”

Leben: “No bullshit we’re all tough. There’s a couple people here suck shit,” he yells

from the couch to the laughter of all in room. He slurs, “I’m the toughest guy here.”

To contrast this, Sanford is pictured alone upstairs lying on his bed writing in a diary. While the scene cuts from different angles of this activity his narrative begins,

My parents are pacifists you know, and growing up I always seemed to be getting into

trouble. I’m adopted, my family is primarily Caucasian, we lived in a predominantly

Latino area and so I had a pretty rough time of it. I always wanted to do martial arts, I’ve

wanted to do martial arts since I saw my first Kung Fu movie and when I saw the first

UFC I was like ‘I want to do that.’

This is the only piece of backstory offered by Sanford, however, it is informative in suggesting that he has had experienced some form of rupture to the family unit as an adopted child. His race is implied as a source of conflict while he suggests he was drawn to Mixed Martial Arts, and the

UFC especially, through some innate, instinctual desire.

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Diego Sanchez gives a very similar backstory. Sanchez also excludes himself from the drinking in the first episode as we see him instead isolating himself and practicing yoga poses. “I came to win,” he says, “I’m not going to be drinking, I’m going to have a clear mind, clear body, clear spirit… “I’m not going to talk with my mouth. I talk in the ring, in the cage, on the mat.”

Diego becomes known as a fierce competitor on the show, and somewhat of a tough guy to live with due to selfish acts, such as jumping from a hot bath to a cold shower following training— monopolizing the bathroom and wetting the carpet—and eating all the asparagus heads, which leads to a verbal confrontation with Stephan Bonnar. As Sanchez recalls it in a confession camera, “He’s like, your gunna listen to me, and I’m like you know I’m not listening, and I was like you gunna make me listen, you know what’s up?” Despite Sanchez’s prominence in the opening episodes it is not until he calls out Alex Karalexis in the fourth episode that we receive any information on Sanchez’s history. The scene cuts between the two fighters confessionals.

Karalexis:

I knew I was going to be called. I’m the least experienced guy. I’ve only been training a

year and a half. I didn’t dream of being a professional fighter when I was growing up.

Fighting just kind of found me. Umm I didn’t start fighting until I was 25 years old.

Sanchez:

I was always an aggressive kid from an aggressive family. I grew up in a part of town

where there was a lot of gang activity. I wasn’t fed with a silver spoon, you know, I had

to struggle. Five thousand dollars is a lot of money. I have a baby on the way, five

months pregnant girlfriend; you know, I’m going to have to put food on the table for that

baby. I need this win

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Karalexis’s dialogue is positioned more in the present—he goes on to explain his ritualistic shaving of his arms and legs accompanied with footage—offering just brief and uninformative mention of his introduction to fighting. Sanchez’s however, is thick with description of his life of

“struggle”. Financial hardship is raised with reference to the fights prize money. Such a narrative repeats itself in the lead up to the fight when Sanchez reveals a repetitive injury he could not afford to have addressed. “I’ve had this problem with my hip for about two years and it comes and goes… I’ve never had the money or insurance to go and get an MRI.”

Chris Leben, the man perceived as the instigator of much of the houses mischief and alcohol induced antics, offers the most in-depth backstory. Leben dominates the confession camera, featuring more than any other fighter while he is in the house. He is outspoken about the other fighters, primarily talking down to, and about, them, elevating himself through their degradation. This is most obvious in his treatment of Jason “Strange Brew” Thacker. The standard was set during the first episode’s drinking session. After teasing Thacker for his smell,

Thacker resorts to going for a late night shower. While he is out of the room, Leben jumps from his bunk and urinates on Thacker’s bed.

Following Thacker’s elimination Leben comments, “Someone gets in a car accident, you feel bad. Someone has a stroke, you feel bad. Somebody has a heart attack, you feel bad.

Somebody gets kicked off a TV show they had no place being on? How bad can you feel?” and follows it up by saying, “Am I a bully because I tell someone they suck shit and need to bounce?

No that’s not a bully, those are the facts of life.”

Leben loses his first fight and is eliminated, however, he is brought back thanks to an injury to his teammate Nate Quarry. As the backstories are offered to give context for the forthcoming fights, this allows Leben’s story of his upbringing to become more detailed than

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most. His first bout is one of the most significant in the show as it is the resolution to a conflict

between Leben, Josh Koscheck and Bobby Southworth that came to a head following a night out

drinking at the Hard Rock as Dana White’s entourage.

The fighters returned to the house obviously intoxicated and continue to drink. As Josh

Rafferty recalled to the confession camera, “Pretty much everyone was drunk. I don’t think there

was a sober guy in the house. Everybody kept drinking and drinking and drinking until there

wasn’t any more alcohol left in the house.” Diego Sanchez is so drunk that he loses

consciousness and has to be dragged by three other contestants first to the bathroom to purge and

then to his bed—much to the amusement of his housemates.

Bobby Southworth brings up the subject of Diego’s condition telling the fighters not to

speak a word of it to Dana of the coaches. To this Leben replies, “I’m not going to talk about it

because it doesn’t matter to me.” This begins a back and forth as the fighters square off:

Southworth: “I don’t care if you don’t give a shit. You don’t give a shit about anything

Chris.”

Leben: “Fuck you. Fuck you, why don’t you knock me out your so bad.”

Southworth: “I’ll fucking knock you out so bad.”

Leben: “My hands are behind my back Bobby, fucking knock me out.”

As the fight breaks up Bobby turns, arms outstretched and shouting, “…your sorry fucking

existence…Don’t talk shit you fatherless bastard!”

Such a statement rocks Leben who becomes sullen and depressed. The fighters crowd him and try to comfort him saying, “Liebman, you’re a fucking warrior bro. Everyone knows that.” To which Leben replies “Ill break my own fucking (inaudible)” as he lifts up his beer bottle and tries to smash it before he is grabbed by one of the topless fighters next to him. Nate

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Quarry takes on the role of comforting Leben. Pictured lying in the front driveway of the house

Leben sobs to Quarry, “I’m trying my hardest not to do what I want to do right now. I want to kill him. You don’t understand. I’m serious. This is me. He called me a fatherless bastard, I want to kill him Nate!” This is followed by the deployment of a confession camera featuring Leben explaining his situation.

Maybe I don’t have the best relationship with my father considering the first time I met

him since I was 2 years old was just a couple of weeks ago here in Vegas. Obviously

some stuff went bad between him and my mother. But for some odd reason he just wasn’t

there in my life growing up.

Bobby had obviously heard me telling the story of how I met my dad. Bobby knew

exactly what he was doing when he called me a fatherless bastard. He hurt me. He hurt

me bad.

This paternal neglect is linked with a life of poverty in another confessional segment in the tenth episode following Leben’s return to the show. Prior to his fight with Kenny Florian

Nate Quarry reminds us, “Chris has a horrible past. His father decided to leave when he was a young boy.” This brief introduction leads in a longer narrative from Leben:

I live in South East Portland with my mom…there is no power some times, no water, no

food…I’m the only one in my family ever to graduate high school and then… fighting

with kids because I was a skater and I went to a high school full of gangsters and stuff.

But at the same time I had the best childhood and the best growing up ever because of the

freedom my mother gave me because she never watched me…I think that’s what made

me grow up into the blossoming flower that I am.

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Leben’s prominence in the show and the source of many of his issues with many of the housemate’s stems largely from his alcohol induced behavior. This issue is raised when coach

Couture addresses his team prior to the commencement of training and following a night of drinking that ended with Leben jumping the estate walls in search of a pay phone.

Couture: “You all come into the gym under a swarm of negative energy, and a lot of that

negative energy is coming from you Chris; You giving your own teammates a hard time.

That shit is not going to fly. You guys are supposed to be a team.”

Nate Quarry follows this up by saying: “Chris especially you, you need to start thinking

about your actions. I don’t care if you were drunk or what. You offended Mike and you

offended me and the rest of this team”

Leben hollowly promises to quit drinking stating, “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize we were

being so sensitive about it. I wont do it again…and I won’t drink for the rest of the

show.”

Lodune Sincaid is another fighter who is singled out for his excessive alcohol consumption. However, despite being eliminated in just the third episode, Sincaid is able to appear to turn his addiction around and dry up. In doing so he continues to add to the narrative of fighting out of poverty and social adversity. “Lodune is a goof ball, he’s in his own personal

Disneyland and he wants to live it up,” comments Nate Quarry over the top of footage of Sincaid shuffling through the house with whiskey in hand. When he reaches the kitchen he is confronted by Forrest Griffin who asks Sincaid, “You ever think about not being a lush?”

“I thought about it” Sincaid slurs in reply, still gripping his whiskey bottle, “several times…It doesn’t work.” In spite of this statement Sincaid is able to confront his drinking in the proceeding episode. Following the team address by Couture noted above, Lodune is featured on

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a confession camera as he states, “I’ve been partying, I’ve been doing my thing, what changes is

uh, alcoholics like to call it a moment of clarity. Something came into my head last night and I

realized I don’t have anywhere to go after this. I have no job, I have no apartment, no car, why

am I shooting myself in the foot when someone wants to do that for me anyway?”

Lodune is making reference to the opportunity in front of him on the show and the

generosity of the UFC in putting them up in the estate. He continues in a later confessional,

wearing a black dress shirt and black top (an outfit he is never seen in during the shows primary

footage), “Drinking is the cowards way out. I’m a warrior, I ain’t a coward.” The footage cuts

away from Sincaid in the confessional to him in his team tank top walking in the garden, a 40-

ounce of beer in hand. “Strange Brew, this one’s for you brother,” he says as he symbolically

pours the beer out. The footage cuts back on the confession set. Sincaid continues,

I’m sick of just killing myself. I’m sick of letting fear run thought my head and kicking

my brain stem around and saying ‘hey you don’t deserve this’. If I’m a warrior in the ring

I can be a warrior in life and that’s what I plan on doing.

Again Sincaid is addressing his socio-economic position outside of the show (he has no

job, no home, no car). This is put in comparison to the opportunity offered through the UFC and

his “warrior identity” as an MMA fighter. This is reinforced immediately prior to his fight with

Bobby Southworth when, in a conversation with his coach, Lodune repeats, “I didn’t come here to lose, I came here to change my life really. I ain’t got no house, no job no car, I needa make something happen.” To this Randy replies, “This is a good opportunity, we’ll have some fun.”

The above narratives position the fighters as members of a (sub)proletariat labor class with little access to traditional forms of employment. The fighter’s discourse about themselves is not far removed from the associated ghetto pugilist discourse (such as identified by Wacquant,

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1995a; 2001). The fighters talk of a life prior to the show punctuated by poverty, (racial) conflict, and neglect. As mentioned these narratives are often deployed prior to the fight. This adds context for the fight but also serves to present such a discourse as an asset for the fighter. The broken home becomes a training ground for the fighter, gifting them motivation and desensitizing them to violence. As Lodune Sincaid notes in the build up to his bout with Bobby

Southworth,

Am I intimidated? No. I have had much more intimidating experiences in my life,

growing up was intimidating. Living with the family I grew up with was very

intimidating. Who’s going to be drunk? Who’s going to be pissed off ready to put a boot

in your ass? That’s very intimidating. There’s no intimidation in my life anymore.

It would be unwise to assume all of the fighter’s backstories reflected this degree of hardship. However, despite the fact that many of the fighters do indeed come from comfortable backgrounds28, the show presents no counter narratives. The histories of the fighters who do not come from broken homes or do not have a history of violence are not offered in the narratives.

Instead, their confession camera narratives revolve around their love of the sport of MMA and the sacrifice that this has entailed. For example Kenny Florian states in his pre-finale monologue,

I’ve sacrificed so much in my life. I’ve sacrificed a high paying job; I’ve sacrificed my

face just to train and to fight, just to do what I want to do, just to follow a dream. I’m here

because I love fighting, I love the challenge of it and I want to see what I’m made of, you

know. That’s the, that’s why I’m here.

Such a singular narrative presentation has the effect of constructing an abstract collective fighter identity in which all fighters on the show are, by way of association, assumed to have come from

28 As addressed in the following production setting many of the fighters had college degrees and came from stable middleclass employment. 112

a similar background. As the next section outlines, this construction is the direct result of

selective editing aided by semiotic work by the producers. As such this presentation reveals

some of the construction motives of the UFC in the presentation of The Ultimate Fighter.

Production

The paradox of production refers to the desire in the audience to see a dramatic product that necessitates manipulation, and the desire for authentic reality. Production is highly relative

to the construction of these specific fighter narratives as—in what follows—I provide evidence

for selective editing and casting which has aided in (re)constructing the above fighter discourse.

Similarly the show’s format and the content of the physical challenges symbolically add to the

“reality” presented in the show (Rose & Woods, 2005).

The show presents the fighters as “the 16 top unknown professional Light-Heavyweights and Middleweights in the country.” Such a statement implies some form of meritocratic selection process in which the fighters were selected based on their fighting skill, ability and experience.

Table 1 shows the extreme variation in the fighters experience and ability.

The number of professional fights prior to the show ranges from 11 fights by Diego

Sanchez and Chris Leben, and zero fights by Jason Thacker. In fact to this day Jason Thacker has had only one professional bout.29 Conversely John Fitch, a well established fighter and Purdue

University Physical Education and History graduate, was cast for the show’s first season, however, minutes from boarding the plane to Las Vegas he received a call from a UFC producer

29 Upon watching the shows footage and discovering Leben urinated in his bed during the first episode Thacker challenged Leben. They fought on the undercard for the finale. Leben won by KO/TKO 1:35 into the first round. 113 who informed him that the show had been “reformatted” and he was no longer needed. This is despite Fitch’s comparable record of 6-1 accrued since 2002.30

Table 1: The Ultimate Fighter Season 1 Contestant Pre-Show Fight Data Fighter Record (pre-TUF) First Pro-Fight Light -Heavyweight Forrest Griffin* 9-2 Oct 27 2001 Bobby Southworth 6-3 May 28 1999 Stephan Bonnar** 7-1 Nov 10 2001 Alex Schoenauer 7-0 May 19 2001 Mike Swick 5-1 Nov 7 1998 Lodune Sincaid 6-0 January 5, 2001 Sam Hoger 4-0 June 1, 2003 Jason Thacker 0-0 None Middleweights Diego Sanchez* 11 -0 June 21, 2002 Chris Leben 10-1 Novemebr 9 2002 Josh Rafferty 5-4 June 19 1999 Nathan Quarry 5-1 September 1, 2001 Alex Karalexis 4-0 Jan 25 2003 Chris Sanford 4-0 June 30 2001 Kenny Florian** 2-1 January 25, 2003 Josh Koscheck 2-0 Jan 3 2004 * Winner **Runner Up

While casting helped to present a specific image there is greater evidence for the selective editing process in the presentation of the fighter backstory. Firstly, Forrest Griffin highlights the temporal manipulation in the deployment of the confession camera narratives. By systematically

30 In the same interview with Kris Tinkle at a Steele Cage Comedy Night Fitch went on to explain that getting cut from the show actually worked out better as “After about three of four more fights I was making a lot more than Swick and Kostcheck, who were on the show, because they had signed these extensive contracts for being on the show”. Fitch entered the UFC in October of 2005 with a fight record of 10-2-0. He had a successful career until he was unexpectedly included in a list of 16 fighters cut from the UFC in February 2013. Fitch was by far in a way the highest ranked fighter released, leaving the competition as the 9th ranked welterweight with the third most successful UFC record at the time of 14-3- 1. 114

shaving portions of his head it becomes apparent which of the “live” narrations have been filmed

after the fact.

As well as temporal manipulation, the show displays evidence of selective presentation in

the creation of drama and the positioning of specific fighters as valued, or positioned as a

“villain” due to difference. One such fighter is Sam Hoger. Hoger graduated from Louisiana

State University with two degrees in Political Science. The first we learn about Hoger’s

backstory is from a sarcastic impression of him from one of his teammates in episode seven.

“I’m going for my MBA, and then I’m going to Harvard Law and I don’t know how to turn on a propane grill.” Multiple confession camera narratives frame this comment. First Kenny Florian who comments, “He pretty much knows that no one on team Chuck Liddell like’s him.”

Followed by Forrest Griffin who states, “everybody gets around and we all talk about how evil and smelly he is, and what nice sausage tit’s he has.”.

Hoger is being ostracized for his difference. He has aspirations at further education and his body type ever so slightly does not conform to the norms of those on the show. His political background becomes the site for further ridicule when it emerges that Sam is “playing the game” and utilizing a strategy in an attempt to win the competition. As Hoger notes prior to his fight against Griffin “I’ve had a game plan that has got me here”. However, such a Machiavellian effort, promoted in shows like Survivor, is shunned in The Ultimate Fighter. He is seen as untrustworthy and becomes labeled a politician, “Senator Sam”, and is further pushed out of the group. This builds a dichotomous view between the strategic and thoughtful and the compliant and physical. It presents Hoger as different or removed from the group and so doesn’t challenge the dominant discourse of the working-class fighter.

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Interestingly the winner of the Light-Heavyweight division, Forrest Griffin, holds the same degree from the University of Georgia. This is not mentioned during the show. In fact little is mentioned of Forrest’s background until the finale when the cameras follow him home.

Adam and Rory Singer, there my coaches. So I’d like to thank them because with out

them I probably would have actually gone to law school, you know become a police

lieutenant somewhere, have a beautiful wife, kid, white picket fence.

Here is the first we hear of any qualifications or potential employment for Griffin outside of the UFC. The quote is framed as a potential future that is no longer in reach. It belies Griffin’s former employment as a law enforcement officer for the Georgia County Sheriff’s office in

Augusta. The quote suggests that Forrest would pursue those things had he not chosen fighting, however, following a number of low level professional fights Griffin was thinking about hanging up his gloves and continuing his ascent of the ranks in the police force, before UFC President

Dana White convinced him to participate in the show (Iole, 2008).

Similar contextual and historical omissions are seen with Josh Koschek, Mike Swick and

Kenny Florian. Josh Koscheck earned a bachelors degree in criminal justice and was employed as the wrestling coach at the University of Buffalo. Mike Swick was the owner of his own pressure washing business. Kenny Florian made it to the finals; however, throughout the prior 12 episodes no backstory is given on Florian. He is a relative unknown. For the finale, the cameras follow him home to film his fighter life exposé. Florian is pictured at a family meal as his own voice over explains the back-story of his father, himself a judo black belt. “He’s always cheered for the underdog,” Florian says, “as I grew older I realized why; he’s an underdog himself. He came from a different country and was able to be successful and for that I respect him.” A definite narrative of overcoming adversity is developed here, however, it is adversity on the side

116 of Florian’s father. Little information is given on Kenny aside from his love of the sport of

MMA. Omitted is the fact that he played varsity soccer (were he achieved All-State status), basketball and tennis at Boston College while simultaneously making the dean’s list. Florian speaks five languages and prior taking up professional fighting was employed in a high paying job working at a translation agency.

The omission of these counter narratives strengthens the perception of the entire cast as members of a labor class. This is reinforced through the production decisions regarding the physical challenges on the show and the fighters dress, which both attribute the working-class fighter identity. During these tasks the contestants dress resembles the outfit of a manual laborer.

In six of the seven challenges every participant is seen in an outfit of workman’s boots, baggy jeans, their team’s tank top, and workman’s gloves with the occasional addition of knee and elbow pads.

The first challenge requires the fighters to carry their coach, who is seated in a thrown- like armchair, through an obstacle course that includes walking in their boots and jean, through a waist deep lake. Other challenges use more explicit symbolism. In the second challenge, the

“pole haul”, the contestants were to hoist a telephone pylon onto their shoulders and jog it up a hill to the next station. At this station they receive handsaws, which were then used to saw the pole into segments. These segments are then run to the third station where they find nuts and bolts. They are required to bolt their pole back together before jogging the now re-connected pole to the finish line. The use of the pole and hand tools and the task itself is strongly emblematic of characteristics of employment as physical laborers.

Similarly episode nine features the light-heavyweight fighter challenge. In this challenge the fighters start on a buildings roof. The challenge is for the fighters to run down a service

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stairwell, pick up a slab of UFC branded water and run it back up the stairs. At the top the water

is stacked on a pallet and the next person goes. The relay continues until all the water bottles are brought up the stairs and stacked in the loading doc. In this challenge the light-heavyweight fighters become delivery boys for the UFC. It positions them as the lower ranked employee in the industry, useful for their physicality.

Situation

Rose and Woods (2005) suggest an interrogation of reality television should begin with a sensitivity toward the programming context. As they note, “One of the more important and appealing aspects of reality television programming is the genuine nature of the program context” (Rose & Woods, 2005, p. 288). As such understanding this context requires negotiation of many paradoxical elements of the situation with reference to factors normalized or encountered in the past and more fantastic elements of fantasy that are turned into authentic experiences. Such understanding typically refers to the location of shows like Survivor, the

Amazing Race and The Mole in which the audience accepts the reality of the deserted island,

exotic travel spots, and Spanish and French hotels respectively while noting the added

entertainment value of the spectacular elements of the situation (Rose & Wood, 2005). Similarly,

contextual analysis must pay attention to how the increased reality in the situations or tasks

encountered on the show produce self-relevant authenticity.

The Ultimate Fighter presents a vast departure from these situations noted above,

situations that tend to be consumed by the majority as “exotic.” The situation of the UFC can be divided into four contexts which, when interpreted in isolation, permit inference as to the degree of consumed authenticity and entertaining fantasy. These contextual divisions are: the physical

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location of the show, the sporting context, the corporate context, and the context of the UFC

spectacle. Such divisions were chosen for the degree to which they contribute to reading

different characters in the UFC discourse. While I present these contexts in isolation below, I

acknowledge they are not discrete but represent overlapping features that together constitute the

situation displayed in The Ultimate Fighter.

Physical Location

The show is situated almost exclusively between an upmarket estate and a suburban training center, with only brief excursions to the Nevada dessert to compete in physical challenges and a trip to The Hard Rock Hotel & Casino (assumedly as a product placement exercise). These spaces are signs of the wealth of the organization and often have their implied value hyped through narrative and cinematic techniques. The gym becomes “phenomenal” while the house is interpreted as “fancy” and “posh,” connoting a class divide between the contestant and the UFC.

The first episode opens with shots of the “UFC National Training Centre”. The center is immense, featuring full set of weights equipment, cardio equipment, a large matted area for

“rolling” (practicing grappling and the ground game), a full sized boxing ring, a full sized octagonal cage, and a plethora of speed bags and heavy bags. The camera flashes quickly between each of these aspects of the gym, splicing in shots of the multitude of flat screen TV’s bearing The Ultimate Fighter logo and larger than life UFC emblems that cast their gaze over the entire space.

The fighters enter and quickly disperse, trying out all the equipment. “The gym is awesome…I can’t believe how cool the Ultimate Training Center is… Its freaking rad”

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comments contestant Chris Leben. While contestant Josh Koscheck repeats the praise saying, “I

was stunned looking around like Jesus this place is phenomenal…its one of the best facilities I

have ever seen.”

While the gym is framed as the place of work—where the fighters train, compete in and are eliminated from—the house takes on the counter position as the site of play and down time. It is the site on the show where the contestants are not under explicit surveillance or training directive. Indeed, White and the coaches seldom enter the house throughout the entire show and when they do they become the guests. The estate is filmed in such a way that emphasizes its size and grandeur. Every locational transition into the house is connoted with a wide-angle shot from outside the estate walls. Such a shot captures the expanse of the house and its postmodern architectural features—the confluence of curved lines and sharp angles, metal, cement and glass.

While inside, the transitional shots are often taken from high angles, surveying the open spaces, and pronouncing the high ceilings. Many scene transitions feature a speedy montage of shots of the house’s different features.

Such situations are open for interpretation by the audience. They are presented as both

norms of an affluent corporate class and as fantastic drivers of hedonic experience in the lower-

class contestants (Allen & Mendick, 2012). However, such presentation does not seem to breach

the boundary of “stupidly rich” outlined by Allen and Mendick (2012) as leading to a perceived

inauthenticity. Indeed, the locations become more normalized and more familiar through their

repeated exposure and near total domination of the shows physical location. A similar, but

perhaps more important normalization through exposure process can seen in relation to the sport

of MMA. This is discussed in the following section.

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Sporting Context

The sport of MMA is a vital aspect of the situation presented in The Ultimate Fighter.

The entire environment is saturated with the sport. The fighters are not allowed any external contact or any television or magazines. All they do, the audience member is told, is train and rest. And even during these rest periods the contestants are surrounded by signifiers of fighting— from posters to the gym-constructed bodies occupying the house. As contestant Nate Quarry notes,

It’s very stressful in the house. You’re thinking about fighting 24 hours a day. You’re

talking to fighters who are talking about fighting. When you dream, you dream about

fighting. It would be nice to get an escape and think about something else. To disappear

into a movie for a few hours would be a great release.

The context of the sport is unique as this is the first time Mixed Martial Arts has been displayed on television beyond the primary, Pay-Per-View fight spectacle. It is presented as a highly codified sport through the show by way of displaying structured workout regimens and a running narrative from the contestants, coaches and Dana White. The positioning of these workouts in the gym—utilizing many common workout techniques and technologies—further normalizes the sport context and invites comparison of the UFC to any other sport. This is made explicit numerous times during the narrative, for example when White comments, “they have to do their conditioning and cardio work and weight training. These guys workout for 6 to 8 hours a day! Nobody trains as hard as these guys do. And that’s a fact.”

The situation becomes unusual, however, through the displays of overt violence within the Training Center and the negotiation of the risk of injury. This is the transgressive tension that van Bottenberg & Heilborn (2009) suggest drives the sports consumption but also lead to its

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marginalization in the early 2000s. The sport and training are very physical and fundamentally

risky. This is made clear in the quote from coach Randy Couture33 following an injury sustained to one of his contestants:

I think the injuries most of these guys sustain are just through training hard. But

sometimes accidents just happen. There’s no way we’re getting through this two-month

process without some more injuries. It’s not going to happen.

This violence is actively normalized during the show through the deployment of counter narratives that tone down the aggression, suggesting serious injury is never the intention. This is seen following the shows second injury, a cut to Stephan Bonnar’s face following a head clash with Forrest Griffin. As a Griffin notes to the camera, “It really was unintentional. I like fighting and I like hitting people but I don’t like hurting people, especially in training.” A confession camera narrative from Bobby Southworth directly following Griffin reinforces this. “No one is here trying to hurt anybody. That’s what people don’t understand about Mixed Martial Arts, I’m not here trying to hurt people. I don’t like fighting, and I don’t like hurting people. I like competing!” This paradoxical placement in the competition draw on discourses of the inherent risk of injury in all sports and further reinforces the identity of the UFC as ‘more sport than spectacle’.

Following Chris Leben’s loss due to a doctor’s stoppage on account of a cut to his brow,

Dana White explains, “At the end of the day we were more concerned about fighter safety. In the ten year history of the UFC there has never been a serious injury or death in the UFC. So Chris will come back and fight another day. Tough kid; unfortunate thing, but safety first.” This begs the question as to what White considers a serious injury considering the 13 episodes of the show

33 Randy Couture is presented as a “Legend of the UFC.” His first appearance in the UFC was at UFC 13 in 1997, so he had been fighting on the PPV for eight years. At the time of filming he was the current Heavyweight champion of the UFC. 122

alone featured a fractured ankle; a dislocated elbow; the four instances of facial suturing and the

two hospital visits via ambulance. Yet we still see the deployment of a normalization or

acceptance of violence.

Along with the dialogue expressly addressing the violent or risky nature of the sport, the

fighters’ reaction to their bodies, their injuries, and their aches and pains lessens the perceived

severity of the injury. As Couture’s quote exemplifies, injury is an expected and accepted part of

the sport to be dealt with and managed—all be it with a significant amount of anger and

frustration. Nate Quarry displays this best as he is injured twice during the season, first requiring

stitches in his chin and later sustaining a sprained and fractured ankle which ultimately rules him out of the competition. In the first instance, Quarry is pictured in the changing room, blood dripping onto his bare chest as he addresses the camera,

so now I’m bleeding pretty good, they want to put a couple stiches in it. I don’t think it’s

that bad; I would rather stay and finish the workout. But they don’t want me to train

grappling because they’re afraid my cut will open again, then I’m going to miss weeks of

world class training which pisses me off, makes me want to hit the other guy back harder.

Similarly following his ankle injury he says:

If my ankle doesn’t heal in time, that takes me out of contention, you play the cards that

were dealt to you and there is nothing I can do about my ankle injury at this point. Just

100% accident…all I can do is go to the gym and do the workouts I can do and support

my team. Hopefully this will get better and I can get into the ring and take care of

business by myself.

Forrest Griffin further exemplifies such an objectification of the body and apathy to injury in the ninth and tenth episodes. During Griffins first fight on the show—a violent TKO

123 victory against Alex Schoenauer—he sustains a cut to the length of his eyebrow. The injury calls his participation in the semi-finals into question as the Athletic Commission has the final say as to whether it is safe for a fighter who recently received stitches to compete. Despite the danger to

Forrest’s health and his future in the sport, the discourse offered by the other fighters is in support of his participation. As Chris Leben says in a confessional narrative played during

Forrest’s return to the house, “Do I think he should be allowed to fight? YES. With a cut like that? YES. Is it going to ruin his career if a cut like that opens again? NO.” As Forrest and the contestants left in the house start reminiscing over the fight Forrest lifts his shirt off his right arm to reveal heavy strapping, “My fucking elbow snapped!” As he and Leben laugh hysterically his own confessional begins explaining the injury, “I hyperextended my right elbow during the fight trying to throw a big haymaker and missing. They ah, said that it’s probably alright. They said I just needed to quit being a big baby and winging about it and tough it out.”

Through repetition of these narratives and the constant depiction of the fighters sustaining injuries that are ignored, the violence and injury inherent in the show becomes normalized and common—a day in the life of the fighter. Furthermore the process of dealing with the injury invites self-reflection in the audience as to their own relationship with their bodies and injury.

Unlike most “sports” which emphasize the requirement of skill and experience the show seems to down play these attributes in the fighter in favor of an innate drive for violence and a perceived determination labeled frequently “grit,” “heart,” and “warrior spirit.” Such a departure from the typical sporting discourse presents an interesting paradox for negotiation by the audience—both athlete and sedentary, skilled and unskilled—in their self-reflexive understanding of the sport.

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The “warrior spirit” can be seen to directly relate to the normalization of violence and injury depicted above. Indeed it is displayed when individuals push through pain and fight through injury. For example, Mike Goldberg, the commentator along side Joe Rogan for the shows finale, introduced Griffin as follows, “Who will rein supreme at 205 pounds? Carlson

Gracie-trained Stephan Bonnar, The American Psycho, or the true warrior who truly survived a cut he is know to us as Forrest Griffin.” Here he is explicitly associating Griffin’s “survival of a cut” with his status as “warrior.” Similarly, the Warrior narrative is raised in instances where a fighters behavior suggests a callous disregard for their safety. In Griffin’s first fight on the show against Alex Schoenauer both fighters stayed on their feet trading punches over a minute with little regard for defense. Following Griffin’s victory through tap-out-due to strikes, Nate Quarry comments, “They showed the determination that these two warriors have in their hearts to meet in the ring and leave it all on the line so that one person will walk away with a victory.” After a similarly open fight by Chris Leben, Griffin noted, “I like the way Chris fights. He comes out aggressive and he doesn’t mind trading with you.”

This value becomes specifically ascribed to the sport through the two non-fight eliminations on the show. After his team loses both the Light-Middleweight and Heavyweight challenges, Randy Couture has to chose a fighter from his team to go home without having fought on the show. Such a decision makes explicit the evaluation process in the sport by one of

“the legends of the sport.” To the Light-Heavyweight’s Couture addresses them in turn:

Mike Swick, although I don’t think you’re a bonafied 205 pounder, I don’t think there is

anyone in this room with more heart than you. That’s why I’m keeping you on this team.

Jason Tacker, you’ve have struggled technically and physically since day one. That being

said, my team has rallied behind you and rallied around you, you’ve almost become a

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mascot for the team and brought out the true character of what I believe being a mixed

martial artist is all about. Lodune Sincaid, you’ve been a bit of a free spirit not terribly

focused. But you have a lot of physical gifts, a tenacity and some speed and strength. I

think if we focus that spirit that you contain, that warrior spirit, you could be an ultimate

fighter… that’s why I choose you to remain on this team

The “heart” of Swick and “tenacity” and warrior spirit of Sincaid are both mentioned as valued attributes. Their position as of greater value than skill or experience becomes overt during the Middleweight elimination.

Chris Sanford I think you possess a lot of good traits you have ability in your hand you

have ability on the ground. You have the things it takes to be a good fighter. Chris

Liebman, we have obvious issues but as far as a fighter I don’t believe that a coach could

wish for anything more, you have a grit you cant teach, a determination and a desire

inside of you that a lot of people don’t possess. My goal is to put the best fighter on the

mat. For that reason I chose to keep you on the team.

The sport becomes a testing ground for the innate characteristics attached to the fighters as they present their cultural capital.

The sport of MMA provides an interesting context for the reality show. It is one that many audience members at the time would have been unfamiliar with, considering the show provided the impetus for the growth in popularity of the sport and is still the second largest driver of UFC consumption after word of mouth (Kim, Andrews & Greenwell, 2009). As such it was likely perceived as unfamiliar or even inauthentic in its derivation from sporting and reality television norms. However, through continual mobilization of the narratives detailed above, a specific understanding of the sport emerges as a site of masculine, physical competition

126 emphasizing conditioning and heart over skill and experience. The athletes conduct and the sporting contest is just one aspect of MMA. As laid out in the introduction, the sporting product is near inseparable from its corporate backing. It is the representation of this corporatism of the sport that the next section deals with. Specifically looking at the role of the UFC and its embodied representation, Dana White, play in constructing the shows context.

Corporate Context

The show depicts an explicit corporate hierarchy in the show in which President Dana

White sits at the top—separated from the contestants by the coaches who perform the managerial function. This is highlighted throughout the show with meetings in White’s office in which he issues directives to the coaches on how the fighters need to be managed. This is seen in the opening of the third episode as White is instructing his coaches to manage their fighters’ weight.

White: “We got some issues. These guys are gunna have to start fighting soon. Your guys

[points to Liddell] are seriously over weight…Alright guys, you light heavyweights are

fighting first, if they don’t make the 205 [pound] weight limit they won’t be fighting and

they will be eliminated. I don’t know what they’re eating over at the house there but it

doesn’t look like anyone on Chuck’s team has skipped a meal in a long, long time”

Liddell: “That’s messed up, why have you got to pick on the fat kids” he jokes.

White: “So Seriously, seriously though, you need to start getting on them about cutting,

and you know these guys might not know how to cut the right way, so you need to show

these guys. Don’t forget they are not getting paid for these fights so there is no purse.

Cool?”

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Here we see White managing the fighters from a distance by informing them what needs to be done. Ultimately this allows White to act as the middleman between the fighters; the facilitator of the fights. He is not responsible to any one fighter but aims to put on the best show; fare to both fighters. In the same episode we see this separation and facilitation come to light when

Bobby Southworth loses the physical challenge and as a result draws the first fight in the show.

Southworth is one of the fighters White was referring to in the opening weighing in more than 30 pounds over the required fight weight of 205 pounds. A large portion of the episode is devoted to the ordeal Southworth’s coach Chuck Liddell and teammate Josh Koscheck go through in trying to help Southworth cut the weight required to fight in less than 24 hours. With time running out until the weigh in and White informed that Southworth is still some 3 to 4 pounds over, it becomes White’s jobs to come to some sort of compromise. Initially approaching Couture, the coach of Southworth’s opponent Lodune:

White: “here’s the deal: when they get on the scale… hey, come in here Lodune… when

they go on the scale Southworth is going to be 3-4 over (camera zooms on an

unimpressed Couture headshot as he folds arms). Just like in a real fight the referee

would ask if you guys would spot him the weight, otherwise he has two hours to, to ah

make weight. (Couture shifts his weight uneasily as he puts thoughtful hand on his chin.)

So… it’s your call (white says to Couture not Lodune) he wants to talk to you anyway, I

was just telling you what’s going on”

RC: “ok alright”

White leaves while camera stays in front of Lodune and Couture as they walk down the

hallway

Lodune: (Subtitled) “They’re gonna ask me if I would spot him a couple of pounds?”

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Couture: “What do you think of that” as they stop walking and camera zooms in for head

shots of an uneasy looking Lodune swinging his arms he says “ahh.. I just ah.. I know

that they wouldn’t do that for us.”

We see White here remaining impartial, not directing the fighter in what is required of him but asking the fighter’s coach (stand in manager) Couture. Similarly this separation pervades into the fight selection, which is decided throughout the show by the team who wins the team challenge.34 White and the UFC provide the venue and set out the rules of the game thus facilitating the fights, but are displayed as having no bearing over who the selected fights feature.

This separation is also highlighted in the result of the fight. The MMA bout is highlighted as pure competition, mano e mano, in which one man tests his metal against another with a definitive result. However, a definitive result is not always reached. Four of the twelve fights featured on the show ended in a “judges decision” in which neither fighter is knocked out, submits, or has the fight stopped by the referee. In these instances judges brought in from the

Nevada State Athletic Commission score the fights. This is presented as a highly subjective, and at times, inaccurate process, but one ultimately out of the hands of Dana White and the UFC.

White explains his separation from the process following a close spilt decision victory to

Stephan Bonnar against Bobby Southworth:

When the commissioner gave me the scorecard and I saw that Stephan had won the

fight… I thought it was a draw and there should have been a ‘sudden victory’ but the

bottom line is my opinion doesn’t matter. It’s the judges that matter, they’re there to score

34 The first two challenges resulted in the direct elimination of a fighter of the losing coaches choosing from his own team. The third challenge was the first to be implicated in fight selection however it was outlined that the fighter that lost the challenge (Bobby Southworth) would chose his opponent and fight. Assumingly based on the disadvantage this gave the winning team this was reversed for the latter four challenges. 129

the fight and when you looked at the score cards two judges had Stephan winning the

fight two-to-nothing and one had Bobby winning the fight two-to-nothing.

Such positioning allows White to talk frankly with the fighters post-fight, situating the loss and subsequent elimination from the show on the shoulders of the fighter as opposed to owning any of the blame. As White tells Southworth,

You left that fight in the judges’ hands and you can’t ever do that, you know? Do I

fucking agree with it? No I don’t. If anything I think that it was a fucking draw and

should have gone to a third round but guess what, it doesn’t matter what I think. The

three guys that sat around the octagon, that’s what matters, not me. We don’t ever make

these decisions, the judges do.

The role of the fight promoter and impartial facilitator is enhanced through the creation of narrative around the fight by White and enhanced by the utilization of counter narratives from opposing teammates and opposing coaches. For example, in the lead up to the “resolution fight” between Koscheck and Leben, White’s voice provides narration at the weigh in, during which he states,

I think that Chris Liebman seems more confident that Josh Kostcheck does, but I have a

hard time reading Kostcheck. He’s hard to read. I think if Chis comes out and fights with

his head, he could win. If he comes out and fights with his heart, he could lose. If he

comes out swinging like a mad man he will give Kostcheck an easy takedown. It’s a very,

very interesting fight.

Rather than pick a side or even a favorite White is careful to promote the fight itself and the chance element. In continuing the promotion of the fight White draws parallels between

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Koscheck and Leben’s feud and past grudge matches of the UFC through narrative and the use of

flashback footage:

Some of the best fights in the UFC have been between guys that don’t like each other.

Tito Ortiz, Chuck Liddell, Phil Baroni and Matt Lindland, Ken Shamrock, Tito Ortiz, ah

Chris Liebman and Josh Kostcheck has all the makings of one of those fights. These guys

haven’t liked each other since day one and there is a lot of energy and anticipation for

this fight

This fight offers another example of White’s ability to place the responsibility out of his

hands. He doesn’t make the decisions in the ring. The Koscheck vs. Leben fight was decidedly

boring by the standards established by the show. It featured few powerful punches or “bombs” or

spectacular instances of any form of impact. Instead Koscheck was able to take Leben down with his wrestling and keep him on the mat for the full two rounds winning on points. A furious

Leben storms from the cage following the announcement of the decision.

Leben: “Fucking Bitch, next time why don’t you hold me on the mat. You didn’t hurt me

at all.”

Koscheck: “Hey, It’s a win, it’s a win.”

Leben: “It’s a win, I wish I had 5 rounds so I could knock you out sooner or later.”

Kosheck: “Take your bus ticket home.”

Leben: “You know what they don’t want to see in the UFC, someone that lays and rolls

around on the ground. You’re a really fucking exciting fighter, just hold me down you

little fucking bitch”

Koscheck: “It’s a win, GO HOME!”

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Outside we see Leben sitting on the grass still in his fight gear, head bowed as he weeps.

White approaches from behind captured from a low angle [somehow he has changed

from his fight host suit into jeans and a t-shirt]. Arriving at Leben’s side he stands over

him.

White: “Cheer up dude, you had a good showing here. You know, it didn’t go the way

you wanted to.”

Leben: “I guess that’s the kind of fighter you want in the UFC? One that just lays on top

of you?”

White: “Relax bro, he won the fight, that’s the way the UFC is, that’s the way fights are,

you can’t leave it in the hands of the judges, you know what I mean? It’s the way it goes.

Don’t worry about it.”

While these scenarios in the show present the UFC and White in particular as separated from the

fighters, the relationship becomes more complex when we begin to explore the processes of

control employed by the UFC throughout the show and the presentation of the ‘UFC spectacle’

the verbalized goal or dream of many of the competitors to which White and the UFC

organization hold the key. Leben’s above quote raises an interesting question as to the type of

fighter or the kind of fight the UFC wants. This provides the basis for the following discussion of

the UFC’s processes of control.

Through some unexplained misinformation the fighters are, until the third episode, under

the impression they will be getting paid for their participation in the competition. The fighters are

shown in various states of relaxation around the house discussing the subject.35

35 It has since emerged that the true reason for the fighters discontent was not just the lack of pay but the discovery that boxers on the rival reality show ‘The Contender’ were earning $25,000 per fight. 132

Leben: “I have a problem with not getting paid to fight when I said ‘I’ll never fight for

free again’”

Bonnar in confession camera: “today we were told, you guys are going to be fighting

FOR FREE (Laughs) you know, I’m used to being paid a few g’s for a fight”

Alex Karalexis in confession camera: “15 seconds into the round, bang (gestures strike to

the head) your split open. You go home—For what? You got no money in you pocket no

nothing. You’re done... I never do anything for nothing.”

Karalexis continues: “This is a business, we risk our health, a lot of things, every time we

get in there. You break a hand; you break an arm, an ankle, and you’re not getting paid

for it. That’s an issue.”

Dana White calls all the fighters back into the gym at 10pm36. The fighters are all confused as to the reason for their summons. That is until Dana White, dressed in jeans and t-shirt storms through the fighters to a central position on the mat. With his hands on his hips and the fighters circling around while maintaining a safe distance, White begins:

“I’m not happy right now. I haven’t been happy all day. I have the feeling that there are

some guys here that don’t want to fight. I don’t know if that is true or not true or

whatever, but I don’t know what the fuck everyone thought they were coming here for.

“Does anybody here not want to fight? (Pause)

“Did anybody come here thinking that they would not fight? (Pause)

“No? (Pause)

“Speak up. Anybody who, who came here thinking they weren’t going to fight, speak up.

Lemme hear it.”

36 Again it has been since revealed that White found out about the dissent after hearing one fighter complaining about pay to one of the shows producers. 133

Bobby Southworth: “Some of us thought we weren’t going to fight until the finals.”

[Nods behind him] “That was my understanding too,” someone adds.

Bobby again: “None of us have a problem with the fighting Dana, nobody here has a

problem with that.”

White continues: “Let me explain something to everybody, this is a very, and when I say

very, I can’t explain to you what a unique opportunity this is. You have nothing to

fucking worry about everyday, except coming in and getting better at what, supposedly

you want to do for a living. Big deal the guy sleeping next to you fucking stinks, he’s

drunk all night making noise and you can’t sleep… you got fucking roommates.”

“We picked who we believe are the best guys in this country right now. We did. And you

guys are it! Fucking act like it man.”

“DO you want to be a fighter? That the question!”

“Its not about cutting weight, its not about living in a fucking house, its about do you

want to be a fighter?”

“Its not all fucking signing autographs and banging broads when you get out of here. It’s

not. It’s no fucking fun man. It’s a job, just like any other job. So the question is, not did

you think you had to make weight, did you think you had to do this, DO YOU WANT

TO BE A FUCKING FIGHTER? That is my question, and only you know that. Anybody

that says they don’t, I don’t fucking want you here. And I’ll throw you the fuck out of

this fucking gym so fucking fast your head will spin. Its up to you. I don’t care. COOL?

I love y’all that’s why you’re here. Have a good night gentlemen.”

In what has since been infamously referred to as “the fucking fighter speech” White is able to convince the fighters to fight for free without so much as a mention of money. Instead

134 this speech appeals directly to the fighter’s sense of masculine “fighter” identity. It is made clear that the fighters are here at Dana White’s discretion—they are expendable. It obvious that, despite a created distance between White and the fighters during the fight’s themselves, he is in control over their current situation, he is the boss, and he holds the keys to what many fighters dream of doing—fighting in the UFC. This is made more explicit by White in the continuation of his interaction with Bobby Southworth following his loss to Stephan Bonnar. As White recounts in the eighth episode, “Bobby was obviously very upset about the decision so I went in to talk to him about it.” The camera cuts to Bobby in his dressing room recounting the poor decision made by the judges when White enters and orders the room cleared. Again White recalls through the confession camera, “when I went in there after the fight I was just going in there to talk to him and then he starts mouthing off to me about you know “I don’t need a pep talk.”

Bobby: “Dana I don’t really want a pep talk right now.”

White: “Too bad…too bad… Will you quit acting like a fucking psycho Bobby, that’s

what you need to stop doing.”

Bobby: “I’m acting like a psycho?”

White: “yeah”

Bobby: “I’m not acting like a psycho, I’m mad, I’m acting like I’m angry that’s how I’m

acting. A psycho is how Leben acted.”

White: “No, a psycho says shit like “No Dana I don’t need a fucking pep talk…”

Bobby: “I don’t need one, I don’t need a fucking pep talk.”

White: “I’m not here to give you a fucking pep talk.”

Bobby: “Then why are you yelling at me?”

White: “You know what Bobby, then I don’t want to talk to ya!”

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The camera cuts back to White’s confession camera in his office where he goes on to say,

I’m not one of his buddies he’s been hanging out with in the house. He ain’t gonna talk to

me like that ‘cause, at the end of the day, when this whole thing is over, if this is really

what Bobby wants to do for a living, I’m the Boss. I’m the Boss and it’s my way and no

other way. End of story.

Financial incentivization is another way the management manipulates or controls their fighters and it provides great insight into the type of fighter, or more importantly, the type of fight that Dana White wants in the UFC. In spite of White’s assertion that “they are not getting paid for these fights so there is no purse” prior to the first fight between Southworth and Sincaid,

Dana White dressed in his fight-host finest enters the changing room of each fighter starting with

Southworth.

White: “You know you’re not getting paid for this, right?”

Southworth: “I know.”

(the camera cuts to White’s office based confession camera.)

White: “We told the fighters they were not getting paid for these fights,” he reminds the

audience, “but we had a surprise for em.”)

White: “If you knock him out, or you win by submission, you will get $5,000.”

The coaxing is repeated in Lodune Sincaid’s Locker room.

Here we see the repeated use of financial incentive for the fighters to produce the fight that

White and by default, the UFC want: An aggressive fight with two opponents trying to end it as opposed to winning by points. It seems to work in the case of Southworth as he catches Lodune

Sincaid with a strong left, right combination that knocks Sincaid from the competition.

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The ritualistic explanation of the financial incentive is given prior to every fight with White progressively stressing its importance. In the second fight between Diego Sanchez from team

Liddell and team Couture’s Alex Karalexis, following the match up announcement, White adds,

“The most important part, If this fight ends by knock out, John McCarthy stopping the fight or by submission, The winner wins $5000. If it goes to the judges scorecards, you get nothing.”

While White may be separate from the fight and indifferent to the result it would seem he has some influence over how the fight is fought. The importance of the $5,000 carrot is echoed by the fighters throughout the show. As Koscheck reflects on Bobby Southworth’s performance against Lodune Sincaid, he states, “he got the knock out and ah, I heard he got a little bonus for the knockout too; $5000, so ah, he’s pretty stoked about that.”

It becomes a seemingly obligatory mention prior to each fight. Prior to the second fight on the show, Sanchez is recorded stating, “Five thousand dollars is a lot of money. I have a baby on the way, five months pregnant girlfriend; you know I’m going to have to put food on the table for that baby. I need this win.” Stephan Bonnar brings it up in the teams decision on who to choose to fight. As the team weighs up Bonnar fighting either Bobby Southworth or Sam Hogar from team Liddell Bonnar adds, “My only thing is ah, two rounds I know it’ll be hard to stop him [Southworth], It’d be possible…And ah, If I fought Sam [Hogar] I know I could stop him…Because if you stop the guy you get money!” To which coach Couture replied with a chuckle, “That’s a good point, that’s a valid point.” Sanchez repeats the value in the prize money and its motivating force for him following his second victory by rear-naked choke submission.

“It’s a business and there was $5 G’s on the line and I wasn’t going to let it go the distance. I wasn’t even going to let it go to the second round.” Again, Alex Schoenhouer mentions it in the ninth episode. “I’m going to do what ever it takes, you know, $5 grand is $5 grand.” While his

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opponent echoes the sentiment. As Forrest Griffin stated, “This fight I need to win, preferably in

less than 10 minutes (two rounds) to get the $5,000 and get the surgery on my arm, you know,

make up for my last fight.” In Griffin’s last fight, 13 months prior to appearing on the show he

had his arm broken by his opponent. Griffin went on to win the fight by knock out with his good

arm however never had his broken arm re-set.

In sum, the first season of The Ultimate Fighter presents the fighters as the laborers under an impartial governance structure. It is reflective of the structured corporate environment that has become the norm in contemporary society. Indeed, as opposed to a entertaining aspect of fantasy

(Rose & Wood, 2005), the normality in this structure could be informative to the audience in much the way the Apprentice informs the audience on a specific conduct or navigation in the corporate world (Ouellette & Hay, 2008). Much of the above results reflect a normalization process in the specific situation, that is The Ultimate Fighter. That said, the show contains on constant spectacular element that increases in its symbolic value over the course of the season.

That is the fantasy of the UFC main event.

The UFC Spectacle

The contestants are all on the show competing for one thing: a “six-figure contract with the UFC.” Such positioning presents the contract as imbued with symbolic value as it can be derived as the core motivator behind every contestants actions. As Chris Leben exclaims in a drunken conversation with Diego Sanchez in the first episode, “We’re about one thing. We’re about that contract, let’s not lie. You want what I want and you know what, you ain’t gunna get it.” The contract becomes an “opportunity” for the fighters. Something repeated by Dana White

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ad nausium, his catchphrase being “this is a very, and when I say very, I cant explain to you what

a unique opportunity this is…”

While this opportunity is not qualified, it becomes associated with the mediated

presentations of the UFC events throughout the show. It is an aspect of the situation that

becomes the “dream” of the contestants in a more literal sense than implied by Rose and Wood

(2005). As White says in his opening address to the contestants, “many fighters dream of

fighting in the UFC. Two of you actually will.” In this section, I aim to present the results as to

what this “dream” equates to.

Fighting in the UFC is implied to give the fighter “legendary” status. The official title of

Chuck Liddell and Randy Couture are “Legendary Coaches” while the walls of the Training

Center are populated with larger-than-life depictions of past fighters who have succeeded in the

UFC. They too are referred to by Dana White as “pictures of legends, hall of famers, and the greatest fighters in the world.” The UFC is positioned as granting them legendary status through their exploits in the octagon. They are positioned as a “warriors” displaying their exploits in front of “millions”. The UFC becomes equated with a rout to celebrity status and it reinforces the importance in being seen to fight.

The primary spectacle is introduced briefly in the first two episodes with the introduction of the coaches (twice). In these sequences the crowed plays a significant role in creating the context. Fans are depicted reaching out to touch the fighters as they walk to the octagon. The camera does frequent pans across the immense and tightly packed crowd and zooms in on them as they cheer and jump in shared celebration of Couture and Liddell’s victories.

Episode nine features another explicit address to the UFC spectacle when the fighters, who have been deprived of television for over a month and a half, are gifted the opportunity to

139 watch UFC 50 live on a television that rises out of the ground in the house. Joining them to watch the fight are coaches Liddell and Couture. Here we see the linkages between the contestant’s aspirations and their coaches’ iconicity.

During the fight night, the camera spends the majority of the time above the television looking back at the contestant/coach audience. The sequence is dominated by cries of joy and excitement by the fighters as they squirm in their seats, jump to their feat, and reenact the fights.

Close-ups are given of Chuck Liddell and Randy Couture sitting with the fighters, having the same affective experience as them. Liddell especially is writhing in his seat with his eyes glued to the screen. Forrest Griffin provides the voice over commentary:

Watching UFC 50 with ah, Chuck and Randy, you hear like their critiques, and their

coaching, and them celebrating and getting excited…It’s just like the rest of us when they

watch fights. [footage cuts to a submission victory on the television followed by the

contestants cheering. Liddell is featured jumping up and down, swinging his fists and

yelling “yeah baby, yeah baby, yeah baby”] It’s pretty neat because, you’ve gotta think,

they know these guys [on TV] they’ve fought these guys.

The camera cuts back to filming the house TV as UFC commentator Mike Goldberg, begins an interview with Dana White. Rather than playing the interview, the television sound is drowned out by White’s own narration.

At UFC 50, we were there doing the show and ah, in the middle of the show the guys

called in and I talked to Josh Koscheck and Chris Leben and we basically just talked

about the fights…I would like to think that watching the fights that night inspired them, I

mean that’s really why they’re here…that’s where they want to be, and they want to be

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fighting on the Pay-Per-View and be marquee guys, guys that are ah on the poster and

sellin’ tickets and sellin’ Pay-Per-Views. It’s definitely the goal.

This goal of being on television and being seen is reinforced with fighter dialogue. They make constant positive reference to the access to a wide audience the UFC offers them. For example, following his victory over Forrest Griffin, Kenny Florian states, “I’m so grateful and so thankful for the opportunity that I’ve had on this show…It really hasn’t hit me that I’ve fought in front of, potentially in front of millions of people and, you know, its an amazing feeling this whole process has been incredible.” The access to “millions” is continually emphasized and becomes more explicit in the build up to the finale—the UFC’s first ever free-to-air event. White makes mention of this during the overt promotions for the pre-event weigh in, and promotions of the finale that feature in the eleventh and twelfth episodes.

In the 11th episode White is pictured pulling up at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino to meet with their head of marketing as he looks for a venue to hold the weigh in’s for the finale.

While the audience sees video of White and Phil Salala (VP of Marketing, Hard Rock), White’s narration plugs the event: “They’ll take place April 9th at 9pm which is going to be live on

SPIKE TV.” Camera cuts to show the main event venue, “The fight’s actually going to be at the

COX Pavilion which is right across the street.” White continues, “The UFC weigh-in’s are an event in of themselves. What we’re looking for is a place big enough to hold all the fans that are going to show up and ah, all out weigh-in’s break Nevada history of attendance.” A flash back begins of Chuck Liddell climbing onto the scales flanked by two bikini-clad women. “There’ll be a lot of big UFC stars there, we have our ring card girls…” the camera zooms to a close up of the ring girls. Shot from a low angle the frame begins with a thigh-to-chest shot and pans up lingering over her meagerly covered breasts. “And like I said, its an event in itself and its free,

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open to the public, all the fans are welcome to come out, plus the guys from the show and now

we’ve got a place [in the Hard Rock] where we can pack in as many people as we want.”

At the end of the meeting Shalala, positioned facing White while being shot from over his

shoulder, says, “You know the Hard Rock is known for its memorabilia. Why couldn’t we, um,

give the winner a case? You know what I mean? Give him a memorabilia case”. The camera cuts

to White standing in the parking lot, the “Hard Rock Café” guitar clearly visible over his right

shoulder. “You know the Hard Rock is known for all their great memorabilia,” White repeats,

“And what they’re talking about doing is talking the two finalists and putting their trunks and

gloves and everything they wore into the ring that night into the cases.”

The Hard Rock promotion continues as White explains that the finalists along with Rich

Franklin and Ken Shamrock (professional UFC fighters headlining the event) will be staying

there. Because of their need to work out White and Shalala’s tour diverts to “The Rock Spa”,

“this is dynamite” White repeats. In bringing the four-minute promotional video (for the hard

rock and the UFC event) to a close, White adds, “For the finalists this will be the first time they

have ever been a part of a big event like this. These guys are really going to feel like they’ve hit

the big time… there’s no better place to hang than the Hard Rock.”

The uncommon nature of the UFC event as presented in the show is derived from the celebrity or legendary status that such a position imbues. The fighters apparently become instantaneous celebrities. The event continues to stand alone and spectacular despite the normalization of the sport outlined above. This is largely done through the juxtaposition of the

UFC event with the training center event, with which the audience is likely familiar. Unlike the

UFC bouts, the elimination fights are a closed event attended only by the contestants, members of the athletic commission, paramedics and UFC personnel (and camera men). The fights take on

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the air of a schoolyard fight in which both teams yell audible instruction and encouragement at

nowhere near the decibels of the featured events. The announcement of the winner is even anti-

climactic as after the arm is raised the fighters typically exit the octagon quickly or the spotlight

is stolen by the disgruntled loser (such a Chris Leben after both losses or Bobby Southworth after

his loss).

Forrest Griffin wins his semifinal over Sam Hogar and as such takes the first spot in the

finals. At this point a Dana White narration makes this juxtaposition explicit—and in doing so

strengthens the UFC’s position of fantasy. Every fight that these guys have fought so far has

been in the UFC training center.” Footage of the training center octagon fades out to be replaced

by a UFC event arena under multi-colored flashing spotlights. It is a shot from much further away, at a wide angle, to capture the entirety of its crowd, all standing and facing in at the octagonal center point. The footage cuts to a more active pan across a similarly packed stadium before displaying the classic birds eye view of a fighter walking out thorough the throngs of fans, flanked on all sides by his entourage. “On April 9th when Forrest walks into that arena, he will be fighting in front of millions of fans on television, a packed house,” the camera cuts to close up shots of exclusively white, frequently tattooed fans yelling toward the octagon. White continues,

“In front of family members, fans. To add to the pressure he’s sharing the stage with fellow light heavy weight’s Ken Shamrock and Rich Franklin, and I tell you what, win or lose, its going to be the most exciting, exhilarating experience of his life.”

Clearly The UFC presents a complex situation into which the reality game show’s contestants enter. The authentic consumption of this situation and the derived entertainment in its fantasy cannot be realized without audience specific research. It undoubtedly relates to the social strata (Allen & Mendick, 2012), identity, and past experience of the audience (Rose & Wood,

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2005). However, I found that attempts were being made to normalize the sport and the corporate context in the show’s production techniques, while—at the same time—the physical location and

UFC spectacle were presented as uncommon, fantastic, elements. This was largely achieved through the (re)construction of the contestant identity, and their positioning—both socially and in relation to the UFC institution. While such positioning seems to happen naturally, the nature of its construction suggests a deeply political orchestration that can be interpreted as serving the economic well being of Dana White and the UFC institution. Exploring this interpretation is the basis of the following chapter.

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CHAPTER FIVE

DISCUSSION

In my attempts to conceive of The Ultimate Fighter as a media spectacle it quickly became apparent that any singular conception of the show would be incomplete. The show morphed from an isolated text into a multidimensional entity with multifarious potentialities and functions in regard to the internal processes of the UFC and in an articulatory function with the broader society of the spectacle. As such, I present two of The Ultimate Fighter’s constitutions: as a singular spectacle through which the UFC is granted the ability to discourse “upon itself in an uninterrupted monologue of self praise” (Debord, 1994; 24); and, as an apparatus of the spectacle—in the sense of its position as an ancillary to the UFC Spectacle and the broader society of the spectacle—in which “the goal is nothing, development is everything. The spectacle aims at nothing other than itself” (Debord, 1994; 14).

I concede that such a reading only scrapes the surface of the complexity involved in conceptualizing the cultural economy of the reality television spectacle, particularly when labor becomes the primary commodity in circulation (as opposed to the circulation of inanimate commodities based on symbolic value exchange, such was explored by Swain (2011)).

Nonetheless, through this final chapter I aim to make sense of my results by drawing on the past literature on reality television and articulating it to the processes and features of the spectacle of

The Ultimate Fighter. In acknowledgement of this study’s limitation in depicting a ‘cultural economy,’ I close by proposing extensions on this line of inquiry.

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TUF Spectacle

By means of the spectacle the ruling order discourses endlessly upon itself in an

uninterrupted monologue of self-praise. The spectacle is the self-portrait of power in the

age of power’s totalitarian rule over the conditions of existence. The fetishistic

appearance of pure objectivity in spectacular relationships between human beings and

between classes. (Debord, 1994; 24)

As the first (seemingly authentic) look “behind the Cage” the spectacle of The Ultimate

Fighter can be seen to construct three “characters” in the UFC story; characters whose identities emerge out of the explicit mediating practices employed through selective editing, casting and semiotics. Adding to such positioning is the interrelation of these characters as each one’s identity emerges in relation to the others. These entities are: the abstract fighter contestant; the fighter under contract (or the contract itself); and the UFC as an organization (and Dana White as embodiment of the corporation). In what follows, I utilize the allegory of “characters in a story” to highlight the manufactured nature of these embodiments of fight-labor, particularly as I aim to position the UFC organization as the author of such as story. Below I outline these characters and the function they serve in creating a public discourse around the “UFC” as an entity subsuming all three characters. Such an entity belies the reality of the UFC and as such holds the potential to play a subversive role in the sports labor economy.

The Fighter Contestant

Through selective casting and editing, the contestants as a collective group take on a specific class identity. The discourse develops like a pastiche through repetitive narratives of a history of violence, abuse, alcoholism and neglect to a point where the contestants resemble

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Wacquant’s ghetto pugs, individuals possessing no human capital beyond their physicality— their body capital (Wacquant, 1995b). Such presentation belies the true positioning of individual contestants such as Kenny Florian, who chose MMA in spite of alternative, lucrative sources of capital accumulation (“I’ve sacrificed a high paying job; I’ve sacrificed my face just to train and to fight”). Through the continual repetition of such a narrative and the piecemeal fashion of its delivery without contradiction, this subject positioning transcends the individual to become the discourse of the abstract collective fighter-contestant. It becomes a reference point for understanding the collective motives and behaviors of the group. While acknowledging each piece of narrative and each moment of the text’s polysemic nature, the presentation of this abstract identity in the context of the show drives specific dominant readings which in turn

(re)construct and (re)enforce the contestant-fighters positioning as a member of the labor-class.

Such positioning suggests desperation in the fighters through allusion that they have little alternative opportunity for financial survival in the free-market system. Indeed, this is directly addressed by a number of fighters in the show who suggest their only valorizable quality is their ability to inflict and withstand violence37. For example, Diego Sanchez’s first comment upon arriving in the Training Centre, “This is my life, fighting and becoming the ultimate fighter. Ever since I was a little kid, it’s been my dream.” Chris Leben makes it more explicit during his closure-giving eviction confessional when he says; “This isn’t even close to the end of it for me.

I wasn’t too good in school and I really can’t dance so ah, I’m here to stay.”

37 To valorize refers to the process of value assignment, enhancement in price, or in the Marxist sense, utilization or application of a resource. In this sense I am employing the term to connote the process by which the contestants identity and relationship with violence is ascribed exchange value in the specific and unique context of the UFC. 147

The UFC Contract(ed fighter)

Juxtaposing the lower-class contestants is the presentation of the “UFC contracted

fighter.” This emerges through the reference to fighters already in the UFC such as the show’s

“Legendary Coaches” Chuck Liddell and Randy Couture. More so we see the appreciation in

value of “contracted” status by virtue of the games structure: 16 men sacrificing life and limb in

competition for two contracts. The life offered by the UFC becomes equated with the life lived

on the show. A life of conspicuous consumption—living in an upmarket estate, eating out with

an entourage at the Hard Rock Casino & Hotel, driving rented cars, and training in a state of the

art facility—as both the contestant and “contracted” fighter’s lives are defined by everything

being paid for by the UFC (either directly or indirectly), the only thing the fighter has to do is to

get up every morning and train.

Simultaneously, the value in the life of the “contracted fighter” becomes inflated beyond

the financial security and ability to consume it (apparently) offers, as it becomes equated with the

life of celebrity—the life of “legend.” The show presents such a position as deriving symbolic or

cultural value by nature of being seen. The act of being viewed equates to a life of social or cultural worth. As White affirms, “they want to be fighting on the Pay-Per-View and be marquee guys, guys that are ah on the poster and sellin’ tickets and sellin’ Pay-Per-Views. Its definitely the goal.” This belies any intrinsic value in the “sport’s” recreational participation suggesting the primary goal is to be seen fighting.

The contract itself is for six fights or three years (whichever is longer). It just scrapes into the six-figure category38 (depending on the fight outcomes). However, through the show the

38 Of Forrest Griffin’s first six fights only three were held in states that declare the fighter purse (California and Nevada). He lost two and won one. His base for each was $16,000 and his win bonus for the one was $16,000. Assuming the same structure for all six (which is common) in his first six fights between June 2005 and September 2007, Griffin would have made $192,000. 148

contract is imbued with symbolic value as a route to the aforementioned “fighter life.” It is worth

sacrificing for. These sacrifices can be grouped into the sacrifices made internal and external to

the show. Internal sacrifices include the fighter’s approach to their training, fighting, and to the

risk of injury. The workouts on the show are grueling, however, the drive of the fighters to push

through them implies a significant worth in the end goal: the contracted fighter identity (as Diego

Sanchez states during a workout, “I would rather die than quit”). Similarly, the perception of

bodily injury as nothing more than an obstacle in the journey, places the contract ahead of their

bodily health in their personal and cultural hierarchy of needs.

External sacrifice is seen when the fighter narrative focuses on significant changes made

in the fighters life that are directly linked to fighting. Forrest Griffin and Kenny Florian both talk

of the sacrifices they have made in terms of employment, interpersonal relationships and, in the

case of Florian, “his face.”39 Addressing these statements—whilst aware of the fighter’s

background and opportunity for capital accumulation (at least in modest quantities)—suggests the fighters have an innate desire to fight, or at the least derive enough pleasure from their participation in the sport and the subculture to off-set the loss they have taken in financial and official cultural capital (in the Bourdieuian sense). However, interpreting these statements in the contextual vacuum that is each fighter’s backstory serves only to increase the perceived value that they place on the UFC contract.

The UFC Organizational Identity

The inflated social value given to the contract, and the symbolic position of employment it entails, lies in stark contrast to the constructed identity of the fighter-contestant. It is in the

39 Quote from episode 13 149

separation of these two produced discourses that the UFC positions itself. The UFC’s

“monologue of self-praise” is one that paints itself as an emancipator of the working class; a

route to social and financial ascent. Unlike traditional routes that require the development of

human capital, The Ultimate Fighter tells viewers of the value in the working class identity— potentially even touting a life of adversity as a requisite for the achievements valued in the

Mixed Martial Arts community. This is seen through the implication that the fighter’s adverse upbringing has been beneficial in their ability to successfully fight. As Lodune Sincaid notes, he feels no more intimidation in the build up to the fight thanks to his childhood abuse.

Essentially the UFC becomes positioned as a site for valorizing the working-class identity. The show positions the institution as a tool to be used by these individuals to attain a life of social value. The sport becomes equated with manual labor as skill is downplayed in favor of “warrior spirit” thus increasing the perceived accessibility of employment in the UFC.

Similarly, couching the sport within the metaphor of manual labor invites comparison between the pay in those professions rather than to sporting economies of scale. Central to this discourse of working class ascent is that this upward mobility requires no change in the individual habitus, an attribute of reality television valued in working class audience members (Allen & Mendick,

2012).

The UFC’s altruistic image is the direct result of the contestant positioning and the

“opportunity” narrative that surrounds the show. The UFC gifts the fighters with the opportunity to change their lives—to fight there way out of the figurative ghetto. The opportunity is so great that it is worth sacrificing immediate economic return. This can be seen in fighters’ acceptance of White’s “Do you want to be a fucking fighter?” speech. Indeed, for Lodune Sincaid the

150 opportunity itself is enough for him to change his life as he transitions from alcoholic to sobriety over the period of three episodes,

I’ve been partying, I’ve been doing my thing, what changes is uh, alcoholics like to call it

a moment of clarity. Something came into my head last night and I realized I don’t have

anywhere to go after this. I have no job, I have no apartment, no car, why am I shooting

myself in the foot when someone [the UFC] wants to [present this opportunity] for me

anyway?

Similarly, the UFC’s image as a philanthropic institution is enhanced by the emphasis placed on the prize money that goes to the winner of each bout—money which becomes seen as unnecessary compensation following the “fucking fighter” speech in which White is able to leverage the “opportunity” provided on the show. The same episode he turns around with a

“surprise” provision of $5,000 for the winner. The prize money is mentioned prior to every fight without fail. Finally, in line with the emancipatory position, the UFC presents itself as an equitable and meritocratic employer through separating itself from the fight matchups and fight outcomes. The provision of funds to the winner is framed not as manipulation of the fight style and content, but as reward for victory.

Such a reading of the UFC as a working class emancipator relies on and propagates the broader discourses of neoliberalism and the benefits of a free market. The UFC is seen as a market creation; an employer emerging in response to burgeoning labor supply. And as a product of the free market the employment deal is seen as an exchange of mutual benefit for both the organization and the employee. The UFC is able to continue its growth and capital accumulation which simultaneously acting as a social and financial elevator. Further, the UFC becomes the most advantageous site of employment for individuals situated within, or who situate themselves

151 within, the subject position of the abstract fighter-contestant outlined above as it does not require the contestants change their cultural identity, habitus, or accrue human capital. The message sent is that the members of the working class are ready-made fighters, who by nature of their social position have what it takes to achieve the status of legend and a life of conspicuous consumption.

Essentially the UFC becomes the working class’s “low hanging fruit” as the most profitable and simplest site of employment. What is ignored however, is that the laborers are the same low hanging fruit for the UFC—cheap and exploitable employment. As a capitalist institution it is their primary imperative to pick these fruit and extract surplus value. The question then has to be raised as to the economic motives for the UFC to continue the social and financial elevation of their employees—essentially increasing the cost of labor, when ready made working class laborers are already available? In the next section I outline the reality of this employment relationship as it departs form that presented in the show before exploring the shows position in the broader neoliberal and spectacular social system—a system that essentially keeps lowering the fruit bearing branches for the UFC.

Occlusion

The presentation of the contestants as exclusively lower class, and the organization as a benevolent emancipator, is largely antithetical to the reality of both “characters”, while the presentation of the contracted fighter perpetuates the myth of the celebrity-millionaire fighter that the UFC propagates in response to any and all accusations of exploitative practice. Through this section, I provide specific exemplars of the departure of this mediated reality from the actual lived experience of the UFC fighter employee. This begins with an analysis of the contract.

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The show presents the contract as the key to a better life, a life explicitly depicted as free from constraint—“all they have to worry about is coming in and getting better at what they supposedly want to do for a living”. Self-determinism is amplified through the separation of the fighters from the UFC and their choice of whom they fight. Similarly fighter narratives suggest that employment by the UFC offers more freedom than their alternative stifling work opportunities. For example, Nate Quarry’s mention—in the first episode—that he quit his job of ten years to fight implies the achievement of level of freedom and autonomy. Such narrative, by nature of the fighters’ lower class positioning, echoes the justification for boxing put forward by

Wacquant, that boxing offers the pugilist a “degree of control over the labor process”

(Wacquant, 1995a, p. 502).

When we look into the contract released through the Bellator vs. UFC legal dispute however, this reality simply does not stack up. Rather than grant autonomy, the contract expressly stipulates the fighter is to sign over most every aspect of their identity to the UFC in perpetuity (Article I & II). The UFC does not stop at the appropriation of the fighter’s “name, sobriquet, image likeness, voice, persona, signature, and biographical material” (Snowden, 2013, p. 6), it appropriates the time of the fighter through mandatory attendance and promotion of “(i) the Bout, (ii) any and all rebroadcast of the Bouts in any media whatsoever, (iii) other UFC bouts, (iv) other UFC events and broadcasts, and (v) the sale of UFC merchandise, including making appearances at a reasonable number of press conferences, interviews and other sponsorship or promotional activities…without additional compensation therefore.” (Snowden,

2013, p. 10, Article III). This is no longer a fight contract; it is a contract to the life and body of the employee.

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Such appropriation of the leisure time of the employee is typical of the neoliberal, free

market economy. What Couldry (2008) terms “a system of cruelty” (p. 3) which has transformed

the labor environment due to the unequal distribution of market power between the employee

and capitalist employer. Couldry goes on the explicate two modes of transformation highly

relevant to the UFC’s conditions of employment. First, is “an extension of working hours into a

permanent availability-for-work under the guise of ‘flexibility’” (Couldry, 2008, p. 4). Such an

extension is a natural response to the competition for work, particularly in unskilled jobs. As the

contract outlines, the employees are required for more than their ability or willingness to fight

but for their willingness to be totally subsumed by the organization by which they are

employed—or they will be easily replaced. This leads to the second transformation, “increased flexibility for the employer to terminate work opportunities with minimal regard for the consequences to the employee” (Couldry, 2008, p. 4). This is highlighted in the contract’s clauses placing the power of termination in the hands of the UFC. Meanwhile, the clauses such as the “Right to Match” and the “Champions Clause” make it near impossible for the fighters to leave the UFC of their own volition. In fact the “Right to Match” and the “Champions Clause” are highly reflective of aspects of previous sporting contracts that have resulted in historic legal

action under the Sherman Act. The MLB’s “reverse clause” afforded teams the right to renew the

contract of a player for another year following their contract expiration, essentially denying free

agency and retaining a players services under the same contractual conditions indefinitely. The

clause has been shown to directly decrease the competition in the market and suppress the players’ wages under conditions of monopoly (Kahn, 2000; Quirk & Fort, 1999; Scully, 1974;

Rottenberg, 1956). The restrictive nature of the clause resulted in anti-trust cases throughout the

1950’s (e.g. Toolson v. New York Yankees, 1953 & Flood vs. Kuhn, 1972). The cases were

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however unsuccessful on the grounds that baseball was not considered interstate business and

thus, was exempt from the Sherman Act. The clause was removed from the collective bargaining

agreement in 1975 allowing for free agency.

A similar contract in boxing resulted in the first time a sport was held accountable to the

Sherman Act. In ‘International Boxing Club of New York, Inc., et al. v. United States of America’

(345 U.S. 236, 1955), it was alleged that James D. Norris and Arthur Wirtz, (owners of several arenas including Madison Square Garden, Chicago Stadium and Detroit Olympia) paid Joe Luis, the heavy weight champion at the time, $100,000 to renounce his title and “that he would procure exclusive rights to the services of the four leading title contenders in a series of elimination contests which would result in the recognition of a new heavyweight champion, that he would also obtain exclusive rights to broadcast, televise, and film these contests, and that he would assign all such exclusive rights to the defendants.” (International Boxing Club of New

York, Inc., et al. v. United States of America 345 U.S. 236, 1955, p 1). Essentially Luis was gifting the defendants a monopoly over all major boxing matches in the heavy weight division.

The “Right to Match” (Article XII) and the “Champions Clause” (Article IV) reflect such cases as they essentially assign the fighter to the UFC for as long as the UFC wants them.

Should they become a Champion, their contract renews for a further three fights after each victory. Should they want to leave and pursue a career with another fight organization (be it boxing, MMA, Mui Thai or any other form of organized combat spectacle) the fighter is obligated to present their new contract to the UFC with such presentation then taken as an exclusive, irrevocable offer to contract with Zuffa LLC. on the same financial terms and conditions” (Snowden, 2013, p. 22).

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Along with the inherent contradictions in the contract, the social status and financial

position of employment that the show highlights fails to stack up to the reality for the UFC

employee depicted by fighters such as John Cholish and Jacob Volkmann. Jacob Volkmann can

be seen to be expressly addressing this contradiction when he states, “People always tell me,

‘You’re rich—your on TV!’” Volkmann goes on to break down the poor pay he received in 2011

and 2012:

I made $54,000 two years ago, paid $9,000 in taxes. That leaves me with $45,000. This

last year, I made $50,000 and paid $8,000 in taxes. That leaves me with $42,000—that’s

barely above poverty. I have three kids and a wife I’m supporting. (quoted by Holland

2013, para. 4)

The fighter’s health and injury management is another area in which The Ultimate

Fighter occludes reality. It seems logical that a sport predicated on violence—that incentivizes it

(with both cultural and economic capital provision)—would look after the broken bodies that

result. During The Ultimate Fighter this is highlighted through the multiple trips to the hospital and doctor on the UFC’s bill. Diego Sanchez even gets the chance to have an injury looked at he has carried for a long time but could not afford the MRI. Volkmann again dispels this myth, stating:

The healthcare plan is horrible, with a $1,500 deductible per injury—the catastrophic

injury insurance is not even really good insurance. There’s no retirement fund, there’s no

signing bonus. You start off at six-and-six, you’re really not making too much money

because you’re self-employed, so your paying self-employment tax, and you’re paying

the regular tax and income tax. So you’re paying twice as much in tax. They claim

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they’re treating their fighters well, but they’re not, realistically. (quoted by Holland,

2013, para 4.).

Through its self-created position of privilege as the ruling class in the world of MMA, the

UFC becomes the author of their own story. Their “uninterrupted monologue of self-praise”

betrays the reality of employment in the UFC. This however, serves a function beyond just

creating a particular public persona. Through placing these findings into conversation with the

reality television literature and extending on the “watching as working” concept by Jhally and

Livant, (2006), we can tease out the potential The Ultimate Fighter has in (re)constructing,

promoting, or limiting the subject positions of an aspirant fighter audience.

Institutional Human Capital

“Media stars are spectacular representations of living human beings, distilling the

essence of the spectacle’s banality into images of possible roles…Themselves

incarnations of the inaccessible result of social labor, them mimic byproducts of that

labor, and project these above labor so that they appear its goal. The by-products in

question are power and leisure—the power to decide and the leisure to consume.”

(Debord, 1994; 60).

With reference to the above quote from Debord we can assert the show’s contestants

become “stars” in their representation of the labor-class human being40. This reflects the assertion by Couldry (2004) that “mediated reality is somehow “higher” or more significant than

40 It is perhaps more appropriate to label the contestant a “demi-star” as they represent an individual in transition to, or aspiration for the ultimate Star status gifted by the contract. This will be addressed in the following section on the role of The Ultimate Fighter as an apparatus of the spectacle. The “Star” label is appropriate for this discussion of The Ultimate Fighter as a spectacle in its own right. 157

non-mediated reality” (2004, p. 61), that the mediated individual is perceived of higher status by

virtue of their mediation. Again Debord can be seen to allude to this notion when he states, “The

spectacle manifests itself as an enormous positivity, out of reach and beyond dispute. All it says

is “Everything that appears is good; all that is good will appear,” (Debord, 1994; 12), however,

in the spectacle of The Ultimate Fighter the appearance is expressly placed within reach.

Through the negotiation of the “paradox of situation” we see the positioning of UFC employment as simultaneously fantastic and authentic (Rose & Woods, 2005), while through the discourse on the show the attributes required to become an ultimate fighter are presented as accessible for specific individuals.

As outlined in the previous section the UFC main event is displayed as a fantastic experience, a deriver of hedonic pleasure in the status it affords as the center of attention in front of “millions”. The fantastic value emphasized by the fighter narrative referring to a UFC appearance as their “dream” or their singular “goal,” or the references to the finale as “the most exhilarating experience of his [Forrest Griffin’s] life” (Dana White). The process of achieving such status however, is normalized throughout the show by repeated exposure and repeated explanatory dialogue surrounding the sport, the training, and the corporate context. This can be assumed to derive an authentic reading in the audience (Rose & Woods, 2005) while also positioning the fantastic event within reach. The show spectacularizes the UFC labor processes, in doing so it can be thought to provide insight or outlay a schematic as to the skills, abilities, and attributes required to achieve such status (similar to the Apprentice or America’s Next Top

Model as they function to outline the physical, human and cultural capital valued in their respective industries [Ouellette & Hay, 2008]). Similarly, the show presents a narrative on how to be a notable individual while in front of the camera and how to best help along the

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“celebrification process” so as to extract the greatest value from their mediated position (Hearn,

2006). Hearn (2006) termed this process “self-branding” whereby the contestants become actors

perpetuating the politics and ideology of the spectacle within which they partake. The self

becomes branded and commodified and serves the capital accumulatory function: “In the case of

self-branders, however, we see a highly self-conscious process of self-exploitation, performed in

the interests of material gain or cultural status” (Hearn, 2006, p. 204).

Revisiting the literature from Chapter Two, I would now outline the attributes and

behaviors that the UFC presents as most valuable through The Ultimate Fighter. Through this we

begin to map out the attributes of human capital unique to the UFC. The first of these attributes

is the presentation of a troubled past. As I have already covered, the fighters are depicted as

coming from pasts punctuated by poverty, violence, and alcohol abuse. However, the specific

way these narratives are deployed sends a message that such backgrounds can be of value. The

troubled-past trope is typically delivered in the build up the fight. This adds context for the fight

but also serves to present such a discourse as an asset for the fighter. The broken home becomes

a training ground for the fighter, gifting them motivation and desensitizing them to violence. As

Lodune Sincaid notes in the build up to his bout with Bobby Southworth,

Am I intimidated? No. I have had much more intimidating experiences in my life,

growing up was intimidating. Living with the family I grew up with was very

intimidating. Who’s gong to be drunk? Who’s going to be pissed off ready to put a boot

in your ass? That’s very intimidating. There’s no intimidation in my life anymore.

Second, the show highlights the value in the concept of “warrior spirit” and emphasizes

the requirement of the fighters to push through pain and fight against the odds. The value in this psychological trait—with connotations to working class physicality—is emphasized through the

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non-fight eliminations in which Randy Couture chooses fighters perceived to have more heart

than those with skill or experience. Third, the fighters have to be willing to sacrifice. This relates

to warrior spirit in the sacrificing of the body but extends further to include the willingness to

sacrifice alternative employment and interpersonal relationships in the pursuit of the UFC

contract. This is exemplified in the semi-final ‘twist’ in which fighters ended up fighting their

teammates and friends. Finally, the fighters have to be willing to submit to authority. This is seen

in the anti-intellectual discourse that emerges when it is revealed Sam Hogar is “playing the game” as opposed to blindly following directives and relying solely on his physicality to make it through the show. In addition, Bobby Southworth’s inability to submit to Dana White presents tension in the show as those in authority—White and the coaches—perceive Southworth to have

an “attitude.” White makes frequent comment as to “why he never made it (presumably in the

UFC).” Interestingly, Bobby Southworth was perceived as one of the best fighters entering the

show and was the overall first pick by the coaches. He went on to win his first fight by a

spectacular knock out of Lodune Sincaid and was only narrowly eliminated in his second fight

by a split judges’ decision. Despite what was a good performance on paper, Southworth never

went on to fight in UFC, an anomaly among the first season’s contestants. Chris Leben

highlights the unusual (and un-meritocratic) nature in Southworth’s omission from the UFC.

Although Leben lost twice on the show—a feat in itself—he went on to a long, all be it mixed

career in the UFC. Leben was highly willing to submit (stating, “I’ll fight who ever anyone

wants me to fight”) and exemplified a working class background and “a grit you can’t teach.”.

These findings suggest some sort of influence going on here between the contestant, the

UFC and the media text. It may be that the individuals are acting in accordance to their perceived

political and social environment, it may be that the fighters were selected based on these traits, or

160 it may be coincidence. Where this becomes interesting—with regard to cultural economy—is how this discourse is consumed by the audience who may find it valuable. It would seem that the

UFC is targeting a lower class fighter and, based on the results provided by Allen and Mendick

(2012), we can assume such a target audience would receive the institution more positively. As they state:

Participants valued working-class [Reality TV] contestants who had seemingly achieved

fame and credibility because of their working-class ordinariness: those who had

maintained their ‘true’ self against the odds (when others want to change you). These

were largely but not exclusively participants from working class backgrounds (p. 10

emphasis in original).

The UFC plays to this message by assigning value to working class attributes; attributes that may not find value in any other form of employment. These findings can be taken to propose an economic explanation for the sporting cultures: that the UFC is targeting an economically vulnerable group to exploit. As Rottenberg (1956) states with regard to the baseball labor market: each player has their supply price or reservation wage “related to how much they can earn in the next best employment outside of baseball” (p. 252). Individuals with little alternative employment are going to have a low reservation price. As such, targeting these individuals will allow for greater surplus value extraction. Alternatively, employing individuals in the middle- class with alternative employment opportunities grants them the freedom to walk away from the sport when it becomes financially un-viable. Unfortunately John Cholish is far more the exception than the rule.

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Interestingly, in response to Cholish’s claim that the UFC exploits its fighters, Dana

White has come out with the same rhetoric of meritocratic individualism and the opportunity

presented in the reality show—a dream based on the hand full of success stories:

He signed a contract. He got the same opportunity that George St-Pierre, that Anderson

Silva, that Jon Jones, Cain Velasquez41 and the list goes on, and on. The unfortunate part

of this business is some of you are good enough to be here and some of you are not.

That’s life, Cholish.

Fighter pay has been beaten to death. If you don’t want to be here, don’t sign a contract

with us. I can tell you this, John Cholish was paid discretionary bonuses even when he

lost. What do you want me to tell you? The guy is delusional, not too bright and what do

you want me to say to that? (Dana White, quoted in Reinsmith, 2013).

An Apparatus of the Spectacle and the Collapse of a Metonym

The discussion thus far has revolved around understanding The Ultimate Fighter as an isolated spectacle of the UFC’s labor force. As I have outlined such a spectacular representation holds the potential to construct the labor force in line with the goals and motives of the UFC.

This is not to say that The Ultimate Fighter guarantees the production of laborers from its audience, but that it presents a dominant frame of understanding as to what it means to be an ultimate fighter and an employee of the UFC. Such understandings are inherently embedded in broader discourses around work and employment in a neoliberal economy. In addressing this broader function—what I have termed the apparatus of the spectacle—I turn my attention to the positioning of The Ultimate Fighter in society and the ways in which the labor spectacle

41 All current champions of their weight division. 162

propagates specific ideologies as it works to self-replication of the current systems as it produces

a profitable product and (re)produces the social conditions of production.

The previous section notes the labor economic imperatives of presenting the fighters as

working class laborers—the ability of the spectacle to attract and reproduce such laborers—

however, it is perhaps more likely that the specific framings for the fighters was based around

what make the most entertaining, or most profitable television spectacle. The character frame is,

however, more than benign entertainment. The characters become emblematic of their broader

social context. As such, the discourse presented in the show has specific imperatives for the

normalization or legitimation of broader social, political and economic ideologies. This was

noted by Susan Jeffords (1994) in her book, ‘Hard Bodies: Hollywood Masculinty in the Regan

Era’ where she makes note of how the presentation of specific characters, themes and stories in

Hollywood films such as ‘Rambo’ and ‘Robo Cop’ help to disseminate the neoliberal politico- economic shift championed by the likes of Ronald Reagan, Milton Friedman, and Margaret

Thatcher. For Jeffords the male protagonists became allegories for a specific conception of

American strength and (post) Cold War nationalism.

In the case of The Ultimate Fighter, we see what is presented as an “authentic” representation of individuals as opposed to fictional characters. However, as I have outlined, these representations are just as orchestrated as Rambo. As such, they can be seen to function in the same way and toward the same political ends—not toward a conception of American nationalism but toward a legitimation of the global (free) labor market. In this way, the reality television spectacle can be seen to operate beyond self-replication of the UFC, but also a replication of the broader capitalist society of the spectacle. This primarily revolves around understandings of competition and individualism but is best approached through the

163 understanding or consumption of violence in the show. Such a discussion revolves around the shows ability to normalize or “sportize” (van Bottenberg & Heilbron, 2006; 2010; Garcia &

Malcolm, 2010) the violence depicted in MMA. Indeed, the sport was banned in nearly every US state due to the severity in the shows violence. And it was real! Fictional violence often pushes the limits of social acceptability; the more real it gets the more problematic it becomes.42 As I noted during the results, the increased exposure to the violent context has a normalizing effect.

Downey (2006) took this normalization a step further to suggest that the exposure to the violence through media technologies had a pedagogical function—turning the spectator into an enthusiast through the accrual of embodied knowledge. However, I feel there has to be something more going on in the spectacle of The Ultimate Fighter that has led not only to the sports acceptance, but to the massive growth in popularity of the sport. The answer seems to lie in the ritualistic aspect of the reality show.

As Couldry (2004) notes, there are two types of ritual: first, the idea of formalized action, in which we see action patterns “organized in a form or shape that has meaning over and above any meaning of the actions taken by themselves” (Couldry, 2004, p.59). That is action that has added meaning because of its contextual cues. In the case of the violent content in the show this can be seen by the contextual demarcation of the acceptability of violence. That is, in “civil” contexts such as in the house or in public settings violence is not acceptable. It happens on the show but it is chastised, presented as a violation of the rules of the game and, as such, can be seen to develop transgressive tension (van Bottenberg & Heilbron, 2010). In the Training Centre however, violence takes on another purpose, here it becomes functional.

In order to extend this theorizing beyond the contexts of the Training Centre to the broader UFC, the second form of ritual needs to be employed. Couldry (2004) described this as

42 Look to the rejection of WWF/E and its negotiation of reality vs. fiction 164

an action that is not always formal, but is associated with some form of transcendent value, “less emphasis is placed on the formality of actions and more on the kinds of values with which these actions are associated” (Couldry, 2004, p. 59).

Throughout the show, the fighter is framed around achieving self-improvement and ascent from their (re)constructed position as lower or working class individuals. The UFC contract becomes their route to ascent through employment. Here we see the fight in the UFC as

more than an act of violence, it is an act of individual responsibility. The show sends the

message of these fighters are taking action against their adverse social situation (real or not) and

seeking self-improvement.

The inherent individualism of The Ultimate Fighter articulates to the larger spectacle of the UFC event in which the fighters become symbolic members of a proletariat class not simply through their physical appearance—their (stereotypically) hard, white bodies, tattooed with hairless heads and cauliflower ears—but through their necessity to subject themselves to such violence in the (futile) attempt at capital accumulation and social elevation. This understanding becomes part of the wider project of the society of the spectacle in which we see The Ultimate

Fighter legitimating the current economic system. It praises the neoliberal logic of individualism in which each of us is responsible for our current position and has at our disposal the vehicles at hand to “pull ourselves up at the boot-straps”. Indeed, it must be tribute to the free market that such an institution exists whereby individuals, equipped with no transferrable skills, are gifted the opportunity to perform an embodied alchemy in which their sweat and blood is turned into gold.

Similarly, the competition reflects valued neoliberal ideologies of meritocracy and egalitarianism. The show clearly states there is no special treatment in the cage. The fighters

165 enter alone—of their own volition. The only way a fight stops (in the UFC’s ideal scenario) is through knockout or submission—a definitive, objective victory. The winner is rewarded both financially, and symbolically through the grant of our attention for at least another week. It is the purest of sports—pure, unfettered competition in which those deserving rise to the top. This meritocratic individualism has become the Dana White’s justification for the fighter pay structures. In a Bleacher Report article by Trent Reinsmith released this month (July, 2013),

Dana White makes this doctrine explicit:

The guys that are complaining about [pay] are the guys that don’t matter. That might

sound [expletive] mean and harsh and ‘Why would no body matter, everybody matters.’

We’re in a society now where everyone should win a trophy. No, everyone shouldn’t win

a [expletive] trophy. The guys who stand out and the guys who deserve bonuses, they are

guys that make it exciting, and the guys that rise to the top are the guys that deserve the

money. (Quoted in Reinsmith, 2013, para. 6)

White is explicitly articulating the UFC to the broader social structure, function and prevailing ideologies. However, he is positioning the sport business and its structures as a product of the system and ignoring its role as a (re)producer or part of the legitimation process.

The Ultimate Fighter presents the system of harsh competition and individualism as inherently good. In such a way we can see the spectacle of the UFC relating back to the words of Jhally

(2006), where he proposes:

[T]he immense attractiveness of sports is that they present a spectacle of unmystified

competition. It is around this image that people unite. In sport it seems to us that, unlike

life, we can see how society works, we can see who are the competitors, we can see what

it takes to win. To see these things has an enormous effect on us. It makes us feel smart;

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it makes us feel sane. In short, it makes us happy Sports cannot show us how society

really works. But they can show us how we desire it to work. We desire a society of

unmystified competition. The attraction of sports is founded upon the seeming

clarification of the alienated relations of competition of modern society (Jhally, 2006, p.

156, emphasis in original).

Indeed the sporting spectacle of the UFC hides the harsh reality of the capitalist order.

The story follows the winners and glorifies the benefits they receive as the eventual winners of the knock out tournament. This is of course an idealized view that ignores the plight of the loser; evicted following a loss; cut from the show and the mind of the audience. Helping in the justification of such violent competition is the play frame. As Patkin (2003) notes, “play is unique in that is stands apart from ordinary life by virtue of its being “not serious” (i.e. non- instrumental in nature).” It entertains the audience through the stimulating oscillation between the absorbing seriousness of authentic competition and the refreshing reminder of the fabricated nature of the spectacle. The play frame of The Ultimate Fighter is constructed through the shows use of tried and true gamedoc rituals: They participate in arbitrary games-within-the-game and their exit from the show is pronounced by the closure-giving final confession camera address.

Furthermore, the situation of the gamedoc within the context of a “sport” reinforces notions of play. The fighter’s routinely talk of their love of the game, and the enjoyment they derive. The establishment and announcement of codified rules for the sport also act to reinforce its status as a sport and, therefore, a game.

However, the play frame—and Jhally’s proposition—break down through the smallest looks past the spectacle itself; when it is realized that this show is premised not on play and sport but on employment. The show no longer sings a laudatory monologue of the capitalist order. It

167 highlights the in-humane and violent nature of the current social system. While the audience no longer hears their tails of suffering at the hands of the current socio-economic order, the—now former—contestant returns to live it. The violent nature of capitalism becomes manifest in the popular cultural form that is MMA and the UFC. It is the cultural politics of neoliberalism coalesced in and authorize the existence of the sporting spectacle. But in doing so the sporting spectacle becomes a job. In such a way we see the collapse of a metonym of sport and play.

When sport becomes equated with an occupation—brought into the market, and subject to the amoral laws of supply and demand—it is no longer a game to be played but a cutthroat game to be survived. The entire business of sport becomes a pugilistic system. One can only hope the athlete has accrued enough capital while playing to be prepared for such an inevitability.

Conclusions

Through this study I have endeavored to do a number of things. First, I hoped to draw into question the accepted logic of neoclassical labor economics in general and in the field of sport more specifically. The formulaic reductionism of theories like Scully’s Marginal Revenue

Product generation (1974) can offer a point to work from in conceiving exploitative practice, but it offers little by way of explanation as to why the individual actors within an exploitative system continue to offer their labor. To understand the decisions of these economic actors we need to move beyond suggestions of a rational utility maximizing actor to situate these actors within the immediate subcultures of their employment institution and the sport in general while articulating this whole complex to the cultural formations and social norms of society more generally. This can reveal micro-economic flows of cultural capital supplementing the financial—as was put forward by Bourdieu (2006) and Fiske (1992). The Debordian theory achieves this cultural

168 economic conception in a more seamless conception by asserting the spectacle as the product and process of both cultural and economic formations within the capitalist order. The spectacle serves the direct function of capital accumulation through its immediate consumption. However, it becomes more than the mediated text, it is a frame of understanding the world whereby every aspect of life becomes representation. In response to this degradation of life we can begin to understand every behavior within the society of the spectacle as a drive to achieve connection or, in the least, alleviate separation. This manifests in both cultural and economic activity.

As far as the labor economy of the UFC, this study has raised more questions than answers. I have proposed the spectacle of The Ultimate Fighter constructs a lower class identity in its fighter labor force. Such a construction issues directives as to the values, backgrounds and behaviors that are most likely to lead to success in the UFC—directives that can be interpreted from to have economic value to the UFC. By constructing a working class identity the UFC may attract a more economically exploitable labor force. Similarly by promoting a “warrior spirit” the institution seems more accessible to these individual through promoting the sport as a test of individual character instead of skill. This also ensures a better product for the audiences as the fighters endeavor to display their grit.

This construct in particular has ties to conceptions of masculinity and its performance in the UFC. These were explored in the study by Swain (2011), however they were done in the context of perpetuating commodity circulation due to the lack of the spectator’s ability to perform such manly feats. Instead, I would like to propose an alternative reading in which both the UFC’s position as an accessible route to celebrity and the growing number of local MMA gyms spanning the globe present the sport as a site to accrue such symbolic value without commodity consumption. In such a conception the body becomes commodified—a process

169

perfected at the level of the UFC spectacle. Understanding this mobilization of labor and the role of masculinity is another project in itself.

The findings of a constructed lower class identity through the show become even more interesting when placed into comparison with the growing ethnographic research on MMA.

Scholars such as Green (2011) and Abramson and Modzelewski (2010) have made clear the growing number of middle class participants—a majority in the case of the study by Green

(2011). This perhaps suggests an inability of the spectacle to construct sporting cultures, however a number of factors confound such a conclusion. First, the sites of these studies are temporally separated. The Ultimate Fighter was filmed in 2004 and aired in 2005, while

Abramson and Modzelewski’s study was conducted toward the end of the decade at a time when

MMA viewership was at its peak (see Figure 1). Second, the focus of both the Green (2011) and

Abramson and Modzelewski (2010) studies was on the practitioners at the amateur or local level

of MMA. It is possible that we see a class based motive to be a professional fighter—as I have

mentioned, fighter with John Cholish’s employment opportunity are by far in a way the minority

of UFC or ex-UFC employees.

It could also be that there has been a glamorization of the working class identity, drawing

in individuals to the UFC. This has potential to operate on the motives for authenticity and a true

meritocratic environment noted in these studies. The third motive offered by Abramson and

Modzelewski (2010) of “Voluntary Community as Purity” speaks to this suggesting those with

alternative opportunities cast them aside as they come together of their own volition. “They feel

that through their sacrifices and actions, they have demonstrated their worth and earned their

spot in the community” (p. 167).

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Alternatively these differences could suggest the motive of professionalism lies in the

working class as the participants of both Abramson and Modzelewski (2010) and Green (2011)

focused on the amateur or local practitioner. These are but a few explanations of the differences, but they highlight the primary limitation of this study as research into cultural economy: researching the spectacle in isolation. For such a study to gain explanatory weight it needs to focus on each of the aspects of the spectacles circulation in line with the theory of encoding/decoding proposed by Hall (1980a). We need to look at how the spectacle is produced, the spectacle as text, and at the site of consumption while simultaneously locating each point on this circuit within its cultural and economic context. For the UFC this involves engagement with the level of production of the spectacle—an unlikely feat based on the UFC’s tightly closed doors. This can also be achieved through interview with the participants of the spectacle and how they feel they were portrayed. As Chris Leben noted in a reunion show in 2008 when asked how he came across, “They definitely paint their own picture, that's for sure…Yeah, they made me look like a dick sometimes, huh.” Similarly there is a growing archive of UFC texts especially in the mediation of their labor process with the 18th season of The Ultimate Fighter due to begin filming soon. It would be interesting to see how the shows character construction has evolved with the MMA industry. Most importantly is engagement with the aspirant fighter audience of

The Ultimate Fighter to see how they self-reflexively consume the show and articulate themselves into the text. This data can be attained through the embodiment research put forward by the likes of Wacquant (1995a) and Spencer (2009) in which embedding the researcher in the environment can reveal more than the human capital development or body callousing, but reveal the cultural economic constructs; the value systems, motives ad beliefs of the participants that drive them to become economic agents in the sporting economy.

171

Such a study looks beyond the “Watching as Working” put forward by Jhally & Livant

(2006) to suggest the audience has a use value beyond just their ability to speed up the circulation of commodities but that through shows that spectacularize labor, they derive a use value as potential laborers. It is through this multi site analysis we can see the process by which this use value is realized by the spectators mobilized to the level of laborer.

Finally I would like to problematize the reality television context as a spectacle of the labor force in general. Of the sixteen contestants in the first season a majority of the fighters went on to fight for the UFC. Indeed many still do. The show it seems serves to provide the fighters with a live audition and test how they act in front of the camera. The competitive format of the show is a façade serving mealy to expand the UFC’s access to their labor pool. Not only that, but as these fighters are already under a contract and, as such, they have less bargaining power when they go for employment following the show. John Fitch—the fighter cast but cut from the show before flying to Vegas—corroborates this while discussing his omission,

It sucks but in the long run actually ended up working out better because I—after about

thee of four fights—I was making, you know, a lot more money than Swick or

Koscheck—who were on the show—because they had signed these extensive contracts

for being on the show.

I hope that this research provides the starting point for further analysis into the UFC’s cultural economy. I have aimed to raise questions as to the role of the professional sport in the society of the spectacle. It is often argued that the sporting spectacle operates on the audience as an opiate, legitimating and praising the current system while occluding its exploitative function.

When we center our analysis on the laborer however, the reality of such a system of competition and individualism becomes abundantly clear. Looking beyond the spectacular representation of

172 the UFC as egalitarian and altruistic, we realize the power is in the hands of a few while exploiting the rest for all the value that can be extracted. In such a way the UFC is both product and process of the capitalist economic system. A spectacle that holds the potential to engender

“the consent of the dominated, by convince the majority [in this case the fighter laborer] to identify with and to support the present system of rewards and power rather than oppose it, in fact to live their own domination as freedom” (Jhally, 2006, p. 47).

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APPENDIX:

IRB APPROVAL LETTER

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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Michael Elliott Armstrong was born February 10, 1989, in Greenwich, England. In 1999, he immigrated to New Zealand where he received his secondary school education at Nelson College. He received a

Bachelor of Science in Physical Education and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and Economics from the

University of Otago in 2010 and 2011 respectively. In 2012 he was invited to attend the Florida State

University and work within the Centre for Physical Cultural Studies, where he completed his Master of

Science degree in Sport Management.

Academic Presentations and Publications:

• “Fighting Culture: Culture’s Influence on the UFC Labor Market”

-Presented at Nation Association of Sport Management Conference (May, 2013).

• “Fighting Economics: A Counter Conception of the Exploitative Institution of the UFC”

-Presented at the International Conference of Qualitative Inquiry (May, 2013).

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