Why does boxing seduce and devastate Topuria?

With a fight in sight, Sol Fernández trains five days a week, three hours a day, in a gym he opened five years ago in his town. “I started getting interested in boxing with ‘Million Dollar Baby,'” he says. «It was eleven years ago, then I stopped two and it’s been four since I started training again. At first I didn’t want to compete, but after a month I was already ‘getting on’ and the thorn of getting into the ring was there. At 30 years old and graduated in Advertising, with a master’s degree and studies in Paris, in her first fight she won the amateur featherweight championship (less than 57 kilos). “It was a great moment,” he remembers. Fernández, who will defend his title next Friday at the Casino Gran Madrid, could be a symbol of the boom that contact sports are experiencing in Spain, where the ‘Topuria phenomenon’ has unleashed the craze for mixed martial arts (MMA). acronym in English) after in February the Spanish-Georgian fighter was proclaimed featherweight champion of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), the most important company in the world in MMA. Known as the ‘Matador’, he has just revalidated the title.

The Spanish MMA Association has 160 affiliated clubs spread throughout the country. “Interest in mixed martial arts has skyrocketed, with 3,000 licenses and events every week,” celebrates Jacinto Mordillo, president of the entity. A trend that boxing is also experiencing, which since 2017 has doubled its licenses, going from 13,000 to more than 19,000 in the last year, thanks in part to the arrival of franchises that have popularized the ‘non-contact’ modality of a sport that survived. on the periphery.

«Boxing was banned because it had a political bias: it was one of Franco’s favorite sports, and when he died they destroyed him because they couldn’t handle football. For about seven years it has resurfaced due to its commercial role, not because of Topuria, although bless it because it has opened the doors to brands. I have had offers from investment funds to set up 25 branches with my brand,” says Jero García, former boxer, educator, writer, television personality and coach of La Escuela. «As it is beneficial for health, gym chains are opening, and actors and models begin to practice it. People don’t just come to fight. Eight out of ten people never make gloves and there are places that prohibit it. The mothers go, and their children grow up with a boxing culture at home. Among the public figures who appear with the gloves are Miguel Ángel Silvestre, Pablo Motos, Elsa Pataky, Lara Álvarez, Jaime Lorente and Mario Casas.

The School is a classic boxing gym in the Madrid neighborhood of Carabanchel. Opened more than two decades ago, it is reminiscent of the ‘tiger’s eye’ made famous by the movie ‘Rocky’. An industrial basement with high ceilings and a metal door, with two quadrilaterals and eight bags in a row, where “amateurs, professionals and people who come to sweat” gather. Every afternoon shift is packed. The majority are young; There are also minors.

«There are boys who show a lot of anger. Now a little more than before, because they tolerate frustration less, and boxing gives them tools to withstand it: even in your best fight you get a blow that hits you on the ass,” says the coach, who chairs the Jero García Foundation against social exclusion and for the prevention of violence, including bullying. «There are many children who have no idea that they are bullies, like I was. And I have detected cases that are boring,” he admits.

‘Youtubers’ vs ‘influencers’

The practice of boxing to worship the body has contributed to the expansion of this sport as a business. A business that content creators like Ibai Llanos have also seen, who has already organized four evenings in which ‘influencers’ and ‘youtubers’ meet. The last one filled the Santiago Bernabéu and was followed by almost four million viewers through the Twich platform.

“There are formats that become obsolete and others come, because young people consume in a different way,” says Antonio Sánchez Pato, director of Sports Sciences at the International University of La Rioja (UNIR). «Sport is spectacle. Even e-sports (video games) are, because there are people who want to see others play. Youth live glued to their mobile phones and sports shows have had to adapt and use those spaces to make themselves visible. It is a commercial interest of conglomerates of communication companies, such as platforms. The format of these sports is easier to follow and bottle to sell and consume with a large audience from anywhere. “A mutual interest is generated between companies and sports.”

The show moves money, even in its most extreme version. «The most recent events demonstrate a clear commercialization of sport. For example, the UFC, which organizes the most emblematic world competition in mixed martial arts, is a private company that has been trying to expand its market share for years. The ultimate goal is to obtain performance and profit,” says Alfredo del Río Casasola, professor at the Complutense University of Madrid and co-author of the article ‘Cooperative sport and contemporary commons’, published in the Spanish Journal of Sociology. “Sporting events are increasingly becoming spectacles in Europe,” he says.

At street level

But the lucrative business of martial arts is still not seen on the street. «The first MMA schools date back to 2008, and in 2014 there were already quite a few. That year we organized three events in rented pavilions. We lost several thousand euros. Most people lose and we don’t have investment funds behind them,” says Fran Montiel, one of the first Spanish MMA promoters with his company AFL. «In Spain no one lives from fighting. If you teach and fight four or five times a year, yes. And if you enter the UFC you start having three fights a year. If you win them, your stock market goes up, and you can now make a good living from this. Win 200,000 euros or two million per fight,” he says.

Nor could Jero García make a living from the ring, a reality that remains. “I dedicate myself body and soul, but it’s not enough to live on,” admits Alfonso Quintas, a 28-year-old boxer from La Escuela, who works as a bar manager three days a week so he can train the rest. He moved from A Coruña to Madrid just to pursue his dream and in 2023 he won the title of Spanish champion in the minus 75 kilo category. “As a professional you begin to be a company in which you have to invest time, money and dedication,” he says. All this to charge an average of 1,200 euros for a fight that is prepared throughout the year.

More than money, contact sports provide other benefits. “You learn to manage a thousand demons of anxiety and fear,” confesses Sol Fernández. «Boxing gives me the security of feeling that I am strong. “I have never been confrontational, but now I have the confidence to set limits.” The bell rings.