Bloodthirsty Mama
The hidden beauty and the violence of the mixed martial arts
The canvass was so slippery with blood that fighters had trouble staying upright. It forced the veteran referee Marc Goddard to wave off the match. Nicholas Dalby and Ross Houston, both looking like extras in a horror film, embraced.
“Is that why you watch MMA?” my husband averted his eyes from the screen of my laptop.
I swallowed hard but didn’t answer, ashamed of my obsession with my favorite sport. The scene seemed abhorrent even to a man from Dagestan, the republic famous for its athletes’ prowess in martial arts. At the 2020 World Wrestling Championship, all but one out of ten gold medalists in freestyle wrestling were born in Dagestan. A competitor from the place I was born took bronze at that championship.
My husband is from the Caucasus mountains, and I’m from Siberia. Although we are from different parts of Russia, wrestling is a favorite sport in our cultures. Resilience, courage, strength, and agility are equally valuable for wrestling and survival in harsh conditions.
Since I was a little girl, wrestling competitions were part of the summer solstice celebrations, my homeland’s most important holiday of the year. The rules were simple: only two points of your body could simultaneously touch the ground.
The necessity to keep your balance made age, strength, and weight not critical in the battle. I’ve seen a slender boy defeating a tall, muscular man to delight and cheers from the crowd. Another time an old frail-looking man had won by a maneuver, which made his young, barrel-chested opponent stumble and put his knee on the ground. It was inspiring that creativity and the awareness of one’s body, not the brutal force, could be the keys to success.
My whole fascination with combat sports has its roots in my childhood. At the tender age of six, I’d spend half of the night on my father’s lap, watching boxing on TV. An amateur boxer himself, my father would explain what was happening and what “hooks” and “uppercuts” were. During breaks between the action, he would entertain me by squishing my hand into a fist and punching my imaginary opponent, using the techniques we’d seen in the match.
I still remember how animated my usually calm and collected father was and how good it felt to share the experience with him. It seemed the whole world of unknown dangers and shadowy enemies could be held at bay by the power and warmth of my father’s embrace.
I had learned about the world of mixed martial arts (MMA) as an adult and was immediately enamored. It was like finding a restaurant serving all kinds of cuisine in which you would like to partake. In addition to my old, proven favorites, such as boxing and wrestling, MMA incorporated other disciplines that were new and exotic to me. That’s why I was so intrigued when our eldest son Tim had decided to learn Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
I’ve watched wrestling matches where competitors’ faces distorted from effort and pain. I’ve seen knockouts in boxing when people crashed down senseless. Still, as it happened, nothing could prepare me for the sneaky ways of Jiu-Jitsu.
Tim’s first bout in the tournament ended in his sudden victory by submission. The opponent looked purplish for a moment and then went limp, his eyes rolling back in his head. I felt the strange tingling on my neck and looked around, trying to identify the mom of the boy my son had harmed. Nobody jumped out.
To my relief, the second bout was less dramatic. Tim and his opponent tussled around, grabbing each other at the lapels and jumping into guards, which looked like acrobatics. Who would be upset by such a demonstration of human flexibility and grace?
However, the next match completely ruined the competition for me. Tim got the worst of an accidental clash of heads, and blood gushed all over his face. The referee stopped the bout, and the attending physician came to the mat.
I, the brave soul who used to watch men bleed on TV, hid behind my husband and closed my eyes, my heart bursting out of my chest. As soon as I could, I rushed after the physician and bombarded him with questions. Was it a concussion? Would he need stitches? Could he get blood poisoning from those disgusting mats? Was my baby’s life in danger?
The experience made me question myself. Had I been a hypocrite willing to watch MMA, as long as it was not my children beating each other into a pulp? Was I a sick person attracted to the sight of other people’s blood? What was it, honestly, that explained my morbid interest in such a violent sport? The questions remained unanswered till the Coronavirus spread around the world.
While all the major sports in North America took a break during the pandemic, the UFC, the world’s largest MMA promotion company, kept producing the shows. And I kept obsessively watching them. It was the most fierce and fascinating fight between two female athletes: China’s Weili Zhang and Poland’s Joanna Jędrzejczyk, that made me finally recognize the main reason for my seemingly unhealthy fixation.
The one hundred fifteen pound female fighters outdid their male counterparts in the brutal “masculine” sport. At the end of the year, the media declared their match to be the best fight of 2020. It happened not because of the violence, gore, and blood, even if all that was still there. When the contest had ended, Joanna was barely recognizable. With a massive hematoma on her head, she looked like an alien.
Despite all of that, the spectators, including me, couldn’t help but admire the purest form of competition between two human beings, who had demonstrated the human capacity for bravery, mental and physical strength, and sheer warrior spirit.
It was the primitive lizard part of our brains that collectively identified a rare breed of contemporary gladiators. We watched Weili and Joanna fight, and we felt alive. We knew that even if there were rules, referees, and cages, the risk of permanent damage, or the worst-case scenario, death was as real as it gets. The gladiators’ old motto, “Those who are about to die, salute you!” rang true and clear, making our souls soar and crash at the same time.
Some day death will come for all of us, but who wouldn’t like to have the cojones to look in its face as bravely as two tiny girls in the octagon did? For one, I wouldn’t dream of possessing the warrior spirit that helped our species survive and thrive. Still, I would gladly watch others demonstrate it for me, hoping desperately to be able to follow their example when the time comes. So, I watch and tremble. Today is not yet my day to die.
