Summarizing Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) to a fight in a cage has become has been. From now on, the discipline combining English boxing, Thai boxing, wrestling, Brazilian ju-jitsu or even judo, is on the rise. It has its television studio specialists, brings together crowds and continues to conquer France. Practiced in an octagonal cage lined with tatami, tricolor MMA now has its new heroes. Fans and advertisers are snapping up the French Ciryl Gane and the Cameroonian Francis Ngannou, after having vibrated for the mythical rivals, the Irish star Conor McGregor and the “eagle” of Daghestan, Khabib Nurmagomedov.
The goal of the game is simple: two protagonists oppose each other in a duel that ends in knockout, decision of the judges or submission (on armbar or strangulation). The meetings are divided into three or five rounds of five minutes. If the fight goes to its conclusion, three judges designate the winner. Spectacular effect guaranteed.
“Attack on human dignity”
What is behind the acronym MMA? A mixture of pankration, an ancient Greek sport, and vale tudo – a form of free combat born in Brazil in the 20th century – which has since become a big business. MMA is a heavyweight in the international sports economy. Born in 1993 in Denver, Colorado, the Ultimate Fighting Championship, the colossal American MMA league, was bought in 2016 for 4 billion dollars (3.5 billion euros) by the Californian company WME-IMG, now Endeavour. The mother organization, a time deficit, has since structured itself to gain credibility, as well as the fight that has been organized. In 2001, a unified regulation comes to put barriers and frame the MMA. Since that date, more than thirty bans have been in force, some of which are worth disqualification. Jumble: biting, pinching, spitting, putting your fingers in your eyes, aiming for private parts or even trampling the opponent on the ground is out of the question. For men, eight weight classes exist while women compete within four.
Until January 2020, France was irreducible. Along with Norway and Thailand, the country of wrestling and André the Giant was one of the last countries to ban MMA competitions. Prohibition which was based in particular on a recommendation of the Council of Europe of 1999. The body then advised member countries “to prohibit and prevent free fights such as cage wrestling”, going so far as to call MMA a“attack on human dignity”. Aficionados do not let go and persist. Since 2004, former champions and coaches, such as Bertrand Amoussou, have been leading the battle to have the practice accepted in the country, attacked in particular by other combat sports and martial arts. “MMA is a refuge for jihadists”, even dare in 2015 the boss of the French Judo Federation Jean-Luc Rougé. “For me, MMA is not a sport. All this was born from an invention to do business, he added. There is no educational aspect with this kind of discipline.
Progressive recognition
On the political side, successive sports ministers pass on the hot potato. In October 2016, Secretary of State Thierry Braillard put a coin in the machine. He signs a decree effectively prohibiting competitions. If he did not name the discipline, the text prohibited “the punches, kicks, elbows and knees aimed at a fighter on the ground”. The decree, which redefine the “technical and safety rules applicable to public combat sports events”, also confined the authorized duels to a carpet or a ring. This decision of the government of Manuel Valls had then shocked the defenders of MMA all the more that it came to pull the rug out from under the foot of a parliamentary report about to be delivered, proposing the progressive recognition and supervision of the discipline.
It took the efforts of Roxana Maracineanu, the Minister Delegate for Sports, for MMA to be finally legalized in France in January 2020 and placed under the aegis of the French Boxing Federation. From now on, France can host and organize professional competitions. But the practice already existed in fact in many clubs. MMA would have between 30,000 and 50,000 French practitioners. According to the 2016 parliamentary report, the number of viewers watching the UFC in France was estimated at 250,000 while the authors considered the sport to reach more than 1.2 billion households worldwide.
