Public Affairs Quarterly
Volume 29, Number 4, October 2015
A Moral Critique
of Mixed Martial Arts
Nicholas Dixon
M
ixed martial arts (MMA) is a form of combat that allows moves from a
variety of blood sports, including boxing, kickboxing, wrestling, Muay
Thai, and jujitsu—hence, the name mixed martial arts. Fighters strike each other
with punches, kicks, knees, and elbows, and they try to choke opponents and
break, dislocate, or otherwise damage arms, legs, and joints. In the best-known
and most profitable MMA organization, the Ultimate Fighting Championship
(UFC), fights take place in chain-link cages. They consist of up to five 5-minute
rounds, and the winner is declared when a fighter is knocked unconscious or
submits by “tapping out,” or the referee stops the contest or names a winner
on points. Mixed martial arts fights are governed by rules, and acts such as eye
gouging, biting, blows to the groin, and hair pulling are forbidden. However,
the unrelenting nature of the striking makes MMA, in contrast with boxing,
more closely resemble a street fight. Whereas boxers who have been felled
by punches have a ten-second respite before the fight resumes, MMA fighters
immediately jump on downed opponents and continue to punch and kick them
as they lie on the ground. Mixed martial arts, which has its roots in the ancient
Greek sport of pankration, only emerged in the modern world in the 1990s, but
its popularity already rivals that of the much older sport of boxing.1 Because
of its rapidly growing popularity and because its explicit goal is to hurt and
incapacitate opponents, making it a paradigm case of violent sport, MMA is a
worthy subject of moral evaluation. This paper’s thesis is that the initial revulsion that many viewers of MMA experience is based on sound moral arguments,
even though making the case against the practice requires more discussion of
objections than might be expected.
1. Comparison with Boxing
According to the Philosopher’s Index (http://philindex.org/), no philosopher has
published any moral analysis of MMA. In contrast, several philosophers have
addressed the morality of boxing, to which MMA bears an obvious resemblance.2
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A good starting point will be considering how well these discussions transfer to
MMA. For example, in my critique of boxing, I argue for a legal prohibition on
blows to the head. A substantial percentage of boxers suffer from brain damage,
which drastically impairs their ability to live fulfilled lives, since the brain is
the seat of rational, autonomous decision making. My 2001 article makes use
of medical data from the late twentieth century about cognitive impairment as a
result of boxing.3 The current century has brought a far greater awareness of the
risk of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in a variety of sports, including
not only boxing but also football and, more surprisingly, soccer. A recent article
applies this more advanced knowledge of brain injuries and concludes that boxers
suffer from decreased brain size and slower mental speeds.4
On the basis of the evidence of the danger of significant mental impairment,
I argued on two paternalistic grounds for reforming boxing to prohibit blows to
the head. First, because of the vast rewards that the most successful professional
boxers can earn, and because the vast majority of boxers come from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, doubts exist about the autonomy of their decision to
enter the ring. Second, even if the initial decision to join the profession is fully
autonomous, brain damage diminishes fighters’ future autonomy, and we can use
what I call “pre-emptive paternalism” to justify restricting their current freedom
to protect their future ability to think rationally.
Because MMA is, by comparison with boxing, in its infancy, we lack data on
its long-term effects, and what data we do have is as yet inconclusive. The cuts,
bruises, and damage to bones, joints, and muscles that often do occur in MMA,
although they may be gory, are not catastrophic enough to justify interfering
with an adult’s decision to engage in the practice. Such injuries are, moreover,
not significantly worse than those that are risked by participants in many contact
sports.5 Moreover, because MMA fighters wear much lighter gloves than boxers,
punches tend to be more painful and damaging, fights tend to be much shorter
than boxing matches, and participants receive far fewer blows to the head than
do boxers. Even though MMA is more bloody than boxing, with greater potential
for injuries like broken bones and damaged joints, its participants seem less likely
than boxers to suffer from brain damage. That said, we should remain vigilant
about the possibility that MMA fighters may turn out to suffer from just as much
brain damage as boxers. One study found that 31.9 percent of MMA fights end
in a knockout or a stoppage by the referee due to blows to the head. In the thirty
seconds prior to the knockout or stoppage, the losing fighter receives on average
three to seventeen strikes to the head.6 Furthermore, the same study cited earlier
that reported significant cognitive impairment in boxers also found a smaller but
still measurable impairment in MMA fighters.7
The cuts, bruises, and injuries to limbs and muscles that MMA fighters suffer
do not justify paternalistic restrictions. Until we have conclusive evidence of
a comparable risk of a comparable level of brain damage to that which boxers
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suffer, the paternalistic arguments that I used to argue for restrictions on boxing
do not get off the ground in the case of MMA.
No use is made in this paper of concerns that MMA causes fighters to act
violently outside the ring and exacerbates violence in society at large. These
empirical claims are contentious and a priori seem to be just as likely to be false
as true. In the case of fighters, engaging in MMA may have a cathartic effect
that reduces their violence in everyday life. Even when MMA fighters do get
involved in violence outside the ring, this need not be a result of cage fighting, in
that people who already have violent tendencies may be drawn to this sport. The
same hypothesis about a possible cathartic effect of MMA also weakens claims
about its negative effect on society at large. Moreover, like boxing, MMA remains
a niche sport with a relatively small following and seems less likely to have an
effect on violent behavior than far more ubiquitous activities like playing violent
video games and watching violent movies. This essay focuses instead on MMA’s
inherent nature, not on its alleged negative effects.
2. The Intrinsic Immorality of MMA
The critique of MMA offered here will differ crucially from my article on boxing, which called for legal restrictions on the sport. This paper addresses only
the morality of MMA, and makes no proposals for legal prohibition or reform. I
defended the view that boxing is indeed intrinsically immoral, but dismissed legal
moralism as a sufficient ground for legal restrictions. The current paper addresses
the morality of MMA as an end in itself, not as a ground for legal restrictions.
The essence of the critique presented here is very simple: attempting to hurt
and injure another person is morally problematic, even if the victim is a willing
participant in an organized MMA contest. Paul Davis makes a similar point about
boxing by referring to the vicious attitude toward the opponent that is reflected
in a boxer’s face.
[T]he face of at least one boxer will suggest an attitude of unbridled ferocity toward the opponent. A snapshot of the face of a fighter on the offensive
is liable to reveal an attitude toward the opponent that, in any other context,
might be fairly described as vicious.8
This description is all the more applicable to MMA, which is far more akin to
a street fight, albeit between highly trained and skilled athletes. This objection
to MMA is most naturally expressed in terms of Kant’s “ends in themselves”
formulation of the categorical imperative. This principle enjoins us to “use humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the
same time as an end, never merely as a means.”9 Mixed martial arts fighters, that
is, treat each other as objects to be hurt and injured and not as ends in themselves.
This is not the place for a detailed excursus on Kant’s ethics, but a few words
are in order regarding his “ends in themselves” principle. This principle forbids
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us from treating people merely as instruments for our own goals. Instead, we
should recognize that people have intrinsic value over and above any benefits that
we may derive from our interactions with them. Underlying our intrinsic value
is our status as moral agents capable of regulating our behavior by reference to
moral considerations. Many instances of failing to recognize people’s intrinsic
value—in Kant’s language, treating them merely as means—involve different
kinds of objectification. A man treats a woman as a sex object if he regards her
merely as a source of sexual gratification, without regard for her own desires
or interests. Muggers treat their victims solely as objects from which to obtain
money. Sycophants treat their rich acquaintances in the same way, albeit in a
slightly more subtle manner. Ruthless politicians treat rivals and colleagues alike
merely as stepping stones—objects to be manipulated—to their own accumulation of power. We can objectify people in one way but not in others: muggers, for
instance, typically do not treat their victims as sex objects, but mugging remains
a clear instance of treating people solely as means.
Objectification is not a unitary phenomenon and is not a simple litmus test for
failing to treat people as ends in themselves. With regard to sexual objectification
alone, Martha Nussbaum has distinguished seven overlapping subcategories, the
most central of which she thinks is instrumentality.10 More important, Nussbaum
does not find all objectification morally problematic, and she cites using her
partner’s stomach as a pillow as they lie on bed as a morally harmless instance
of instrumentality.11 Instrumentality (and hence objectification) is wrong only
when it is the main or only feature of our interaction, which is clearly not the case
when someone uses her partner’s stomach as a pillow in the context of a loving
relationship. This mirrors Kant’s view that using people as a means is acceptable
providing that we simultaneously treat them as ends in themselves.
Kant’s injunction to treat people as ends in themselves and not merely as instruments for our own goals is not a mechanical formula that produces a definitive
verdict when we supply the factual details of whatever situation is under moral
scrutiny. Instead, it supplies a framework that gives us guidance regarding which
questions we should ask, and using this framework in particular cases requires
analysis and argument. Two Kantians can come to opposite conclusions on the
same moral issue, but this does not invalidate the framework any more than
disagreements among utilitarians on particular issues lead us to reject the moral
theory. Kant himself supported the death penalty, but the dissenting opinions in
Gregg v. Georgia, in which the United States Supreme Court reinstated capital
punishment, use unmistakably Kantian language in arguing against the practice.
Justice Brennan states that execution is “by its very nature, a denial of the executed person’s humanity” and “treats members of the human race as nonhumans,
as objects to be toyed with and discarded.12 In a similar vein, Justice Marshall
complains that the death penalty “has as its very basis the total denial of the
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Moral Critique of Mixed Martial Arts 369
wrongdoer’s dignity and worth.”13 In the eyes of opponents of capital punishment,
it is the ultimate instance of treating people as worthless objects and failing to
treat them as intrinsically valuable ends in themselves.
While there is room for disagreement about whether such practices as the death
penalty constitute a failure to respect people as ends in themselves, clear paradigm
cases exist on which we can safely assume widespread agreement. Murder, rape,
and robbery all involve treating people merely as means and failing to recognize
their intrinsic value. In all of these cases, treating the victim instrumentally is
the only feature of the interaction, and (unlike the case of the stomach pillow)
there is no broader context of respect for the victim that would “cleanse” it. More
germane to the topic of this paper, assault is another uncontroversial instance of
treating people solely as means, in that perpetrators ignore their victims’ pain and
injury in order to achieve whatever goals they attain by their attack. Respecting
people’s bodily integrity is central to treating them as ends in themselves, and
deliberately injuring them treats them as having no more value than objects with
no feelings. An assault in the course of a robbery is still very wrong, but an assault in which hurting and injuring the victim as badly as possible is the direct
goal is especially reprehensible. Mixed martial arts is a prolonged mutual assault
to which Colin Radford’s remarkably candid (in the light of his defense of the
practice) description of boxing is equally fitting. A fighter’s goal is
hitting his opponent so hard that the opponent’s capacity to make effective
punches in reply is impaired. A boxer, therefore, is hoping and trying to hurt
his man. . . . [T]he boxer’s intention is to hurt, to temporarily incapacitate a
fellow human being.14
The burden of proof, then, is on defenders of MMA to show why the practice
is not a prime instance of treating opponents as worthless objects rather than as
intrinsically valuable ends in themselves.
As the above quotation from Radford indicates, the Kantian critique of MMA
offered here transfers well to boxing, whose participants are equally devoted to
hurting and injuring opponents. A detailed discussion of the implications for boxing of my thesis belongs to another paper, but a few brief comments are in order.
The fact that, in boxing, the action is stopped for ten seconds when a fighter is
downed or issued a “standing count,” in contrast with the unrelenting assaults
that characterize MMA, may reduce the amount of pain and injury that occurs.
The infliction of pain and injury remains, nonetheless, the explicit goal of the
sport. We can, though, make a morally significant distinction between amateur
and professional boxing. The potential for injury is notably lower in amateur
boxing, where bouts last only three or four rounds (as opposed to up to twelve
rounds in the professional game), fighters wear protective headgear, and referees
are far quicker to stop bouts to protect outmatched boxers. Perhaps most significantly, there is more emphasis on scoring points in amateur boxing, in contrast
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to the big hitting that is encouraged in professional boxing. In Olympic boxing,
for example, a blow scores a point, regardless of how hard the opponent was hit,
when all three judges push a button to register the punch. In this regard, amateur
boxing has something in common with fencing, where the goal is to make contact
rather than actually stab the opponent. Because of these differences, amateur
boxing is at least partially immune to the critique of MMA offered here, because
the infliction of pain and injury is less central to success.
3. The Role of Consent
Contra the critique of MMA presented thus far, a familiar point from countless
introductory ethics texts is that treating people as a means is consistent with treating them as ends in themselves and hence morally unobjectionable as long as
they consent to being so used. Typical examples include diners in restaurants and
waitresses, who, with mutual consent, treat each other as a means of getting food
and earning a living, respectively. This mutual agreement is the broader context
that renders treating one another instrumentally consistent with mutual respect.
A Kantian defense of MMA, then, would be the claim that, since both fighters
consent to being subjected to a violent assault in the cage, they are respecting
each other as ends in themselves. In particular, each respects the other’s desire
to engage in cage fighting. This mutual consent, so the defense of MMA under
consideration goes, overrides the prima facie wrongness of hurting and injuring
others. The legal maxim volenti non fit injuria (a person is not wronged by that
to which he or she consents) seems equally sound as a defense against the charge
of moral wrongdoing. To refuse to grant moral force to the consent of competent
adults seems to fail to recognize their status as autonomous moral agents.
Steven Weimer gives a sophisticated account, with specific reference to sport,
of the “morally transformative power” of consent, through which people waive
rights so that “[a]ctions which would have violated rights were it not for such
an act of consent, do not in fact do so.”15 He connects consent with freedom of
association, which is the right to form groups to engage in mutually consenting activities, even if the activities would be wrong without this consent. Thus
neighborhood watch groups can enter other people’s land in pursuit of suspicious
people, even though, without the property owners’ consent, such incursions would
be acts of trespassing. The same principle of freedom of association appears to
prevent us from condemning cage fighting. On this view, we have no reason to
criticize people who choose voluntarily to join an MMA organization that permits
actions that would be, without this consent, common assaults. Weimer argues
that we should give more weight to consent than to either the moral principles
that condemn actions in sport that would be wrong without such consent or to
internal principles about the excellences and skills that sport is designed to foster
and test.
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Weimer concedes, however, that consent is powerless to exonerate actions that
violate inalienable rights, if any such rights exist.16 A celebrated example of an
allegedly inalienable right is J. S. Mill’s critique of slavery, however autonomous
the decision to waive the right to freedom may be.17 Weimer allows that some
other inalienable rights, or considerations of human dignity, which he regards as
closely related to rights anyway, may exist and hence rob consent of its cleansing
power. The thesis defended here is precisely that cage fighting violates inalienable
rights to dignity and against being treated as an object to damage.
The consent of someone who suffers harm only exculpates the person who
caused the harm to the extent that the consent was fully voluntary and autonomous. Parallel to the familiar concept of informed consent in medical ethics,
fully voluntary consent must be based on adequate information and must be free
from coercion. Parry18 and I19 have argued that the value of many boxers’ consent
is diminished by de facto economic coercion, and similar concerns arise in the
case of MMA fighters, many of whom come from poor backgrounds and have
had limited educational opportunities.20 However, this paper’s central concern
about the morality of MMA would remain even if we could be sure that all participants give their fully autonomous consent. We will see that, not only in the
case of MMA but also in a variety of other areas of applied ethics, consent is not
the moral trump card that it is often claimed to be.
The first problem with the attempt to reconcile MMA with Kant’s “ends in
themselves” principle by reference to participants’ consent is that Kant himself did
not believe that consent, however free and voluntary, always rebuts the charge of
treating someone merely as a means. In the case of morally innocuous interactions
like the mutual use that diners and waitresses make of each other, consent does
indeed permit mutual users to also treat each other as ends in themselves. While
both parties treat each other instrumentally, there is no suspicion that either party
is degraded or disrespected by the interaction. However, in some other instances,
Kant held that this is not the case. For example, Kant famously thought that the
only circumstance in which sex does not involve mutual disrespect is marriage.
No matter how consensual, prostitution, unmarried committed relationships, and
casual sex are all condemned.
More important, we do not need to share Kant’s conservative sexual ethics to
realize that mutual consent does not entail that two people are respecting each
other as ends in themselves. Howard Klepper asks us to imagine a society in which
typical male–female sexual interactions involve the male seeking gratification with
no regard for his female partner’s sexual pleasure. By hypothesis, in this society,
such behavior is considered perfectly normal, and women raise no objections.
Despite women’s consent to this practice, however, we would consider it unjust
and demeaning to women, who would be treated primarily as sexual servants of
men. Making this negative judgment would not require that we hypothesize that
the women in this society are in some way coerced to participate in this practice.
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Even if their participation is fully informed and voluntary, their consent does not
allay the concern that men do not treat women as ends in themselves.
Nor are cases in which consent is not sufficient for moral justifiability confined
to sexual ethics. Consider a hypothetical TV game show in which contestants
compete to see who can yell the most demeaning racist, sexist, or homophobic
insults at other contestants. Even though all the contestants consent to appear
on the show (presumably for handsome payments), we would still say that they
exemplify mutual disrespect.21 Consider, too, the sorry practice of dwarf tossing
that became popular in bars in the United States in the 1980s.22 We can grant for
the sake of argument that the little people who participated were well paid and
acted fully voluntarily, but their consent does not allay the concern that the activity
is inherently demeaning. The source of this concern is that using them as human
projectiles is treating them solely as objects. The appeal of this activity is precisely
that it allows contestants to treat dwarves like sacks of potatoes, thus violating
the taboo that we should not treat persons in such an objectifying manner. What
distinguishes this litany of morally problematic consensual activities from morally
harmless waiter–diner interactions is that the former are inherently degrading.
Mere consent is too flimsy a basis to create a mutually respectful context that
overrides the demeaning nature of the interactions. Treating waiters as a means
for fetching food in no way threatens their status as intrinsically valuable beings.
In contrast, treating people as sex objects (Klepper’s sexist society), objects of
ridicule (game show contestants), or as things to be physically manhandled (dwarf
tossing) all imply such profound disregard for their moral worth as to fail to treat
them as ends in themselves.
The key question is where we should classify MMA on the continuum from
innocuous diner–waitress interactions at one end to systematically unequal sexual
relations, demeaning game shows, and dwarf tossing at the other. Mixed martial
arts belongs at the latter end of the continuum. The exchange of services between
waiters and diners involves no hint of degradation. A Kantian could conceivably
try to justify the imaginary game show by claiming that the contestants utter the
mutual insults tongue in cheek, without really meaning them, but it would be
disingenuous to say that MMA contestants don’t mean to hurt and injure each
other. On the contrary, MMA fighters epitomize the feature of objectification that
Nussbaum terms “violability,” in which “the objectifier treats the object as lacking in boundary-integrity, as something that it is permissible to break up, smash,
break into.”23 Mere consent does not provide a sufficiently respectful context to
override the malicious attitude that MMA fighters display toward opponents for
the duration of the contest, treating them as mere objects to be damaged. The
attitude of MMA fighters, who intend to hurt and injure opponents, is more disdainful than that of men in Klepper’s hypothetical sexist society, who are merely
indifferent to women’s pleasure. The closest analogy with MMA is provided by
dwarf tossing, because MMA also crosses a taboo by treating people as objects
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Moral Critique of Mixed Martial Arts 373
to be manhandled in ways that we normally only allow in the case of inanimate
objects. Objectification by MMA fighters with the intent to physically harm and
injure opponents is at least as demeaning as the objectification with the intent to
demean and ridicule that occurs in dwarf tossing.
Furthermore, Kant’s “ends in themselves” principle applies to how we treat
humanity “in our own persons” and not just how we treat other people. This is
the insight that underlies Thomas Hill, Jr.’s, well-known critique of servility, in
which he argues that servile people who consent to letting others treat them as
having inferior worth are guilty of failing to respect their own intrinsic value.24
Mixed martial arts fighters are, therefore, culpable not only for the way that they
treat opponents but also for the way that they allow themselves to be treated. Just
as my opponents’ consent does not exculpate me for my attitude toward them
in the MMA cage, nor does my own consent release me from the duty to treat
myself with respect by not allowing others to treat me merely as a means.25
4. Implications for Bondage, Domination,
Sadism, and Masochism
The critique of MMA presented here is that fighters treat each other as violable
and that, as is also the case with a wide range of other inherently demeaning actions, their consent is insufficient to reconcile this attitude with respecting each
other. What does this entail for bondage, domination, sadism, and masochism
(BDSM), a sexual practice that seems to share many of the features of MMA and
other practices deemed here to be morally objectionable? Bondage and sadism
may involve intentionally causing pain and injury to partners, while both of these
practices and domination may also have the explicit goal of demeaning the partner.
Any action that is designed to bring about pain and injury and express demeaning
attitudes does, at the very least, stand in need of justification, and the bare fact of
participants’ consent seems insufficient.
However, defenders of BDSM can point to crucial facts about the context of
BDSM that may serve to differentiate it from MMA and escape the criticism
given here. First, just as Nussbaum argues that treating someone as the object of
sexual desire is morally unproblematic in the context of a loving relationship, we
could also defend BDSM in a similar relationship. While any pain and injuries
that result from BDSM are real enough, they are part of a role-playing charade
in which participants pretend to despise one another. In such a context, actions
that normally signify contempt may instead be an expression of mutual trust and
other respectful attitudes. In contrast, the blows and manipulations in an MMA
contest typically represent nothing beyond the participants’ desire to win by hurting and injuring their opponent. The only case in which such a defense might be
applicable to MMA would be when the contestants are romantic partners, family
members, or close friends. Mixed martial arts activity in such circumstances is
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far more likely to involve sparring, in which the goal is to challenge one another
and improve skill, in sharp contrast with actual MMA fights, in which the goal
is to inflict maximal damage as quickly as possible in order to win the contest.
As stated in endnote 25 with regard to boxing, sparring is more of a cooperative
enterprise and does not share the goal of incapacitating opponents that is the basis
of this paper’s critique of MMA. A sparring session in which one participant was
severely injured by a blow and could not continue after just ten seconds would
be considered a misfortune, but the same outcome in an actual fight would be
viewed as a sensational victory for the opponent. It seems safe to assume that
the vast majority of MMA fights are very different from sparring and involve
participants who are not loved ones or close friends.
Second, engaging in BDSM meets certain psychological needs of the participants, who actually enjoy being subjected to pain and humiliation. While
performing such actions is normally wrong, when recipients fervently desire
such treatment in order to meet their idiosyncratic emotional needs, it may after
all be compatible with respecting them as ends in themselves. In contrast, with
the exception of the subset of MMA fighters who are also BDSM enthusiasts,
we may safely assume that the vast majority of cage fighters do not desire to be
hurt. If they had their druthers, they would far rather win their bouts without
experiencing any pain or injury. Suffering is a price that they pay in order to
achieve victory rather than something that they desire for its own sake. Even in
the case of a pair of MMA fighters who both also enjoy BDSM, this argument
would provide a possible justification of their cage fights only when each one is
aware of the opponent’s predilection for BDSM and is motivated by the desire
to meet that opponent’s needs.
Nussbaum’s justification of treating people as objects of sexual desire is confined to loving relationships and will not appeal to those who think that even
casual sex (sex without love or commitment) is morally permissible as long as it
is consensual. Similarly, the first of the two tentative arguments presented in this
section only justifies BDSM in the context of loving relationships. But enough
has been said to demonstrate that the moral critique of MMA presented here
does not imply that BDSM is always wrong, and the second argument sketches
a possible way to justify even “casual” BDSM.
5. The Role of Noncombatants in MMA
This paper defends the thesis that the actions of MMA fighters are wrong. We
should, though, temper our moral criticism of professional cage fighters themselves to the extent that de facto economic coercion influences them to engage
in this morally problematic practice in the first place. An even more appropriate
target for moral criticism would be people who profit from MMA—managers,
trainers, promoters, and so on—without suffering any pain or injury and without
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any suspicion of economic or any other kind of coercion. Since trying to hurt
and injure other people is inherently wrong, those who create and profit from the
institutions that make such immorality possible are morally culpable.
Over and above the act of enabling an immoral practice, the role of spectators, who derive pleasure from the spectacle of two people trying to injure one
another, raises additional moral concerns. Many MMA spectators display a
character flaw that is best expressed in the language of virtue ethics. Granted,
some spectators may be purists who admire MMA participants’ skill and others
may appreciate the bravery of fighters who push themselves to their physical and
emotional limits in the ring. Little doubt exists, however, that the vast majority
of fans are most excited by dramatic knockouts or stoppages after particularly
savage blows or painful chokes or manipulations of limbs. The amount of noise
that spectators at televised MMA events make is proportionate to the amount of
pain and injury caused. They cheer most loudly, that is, when a fighter is hurt by
a powerful blow or painful wrestling move. Promotional video clips for upcoming bouts prominently feature fighters who are felled by heavy strikes, and one
assumes that marketers are catering to the intended audience’s preexisting tastes.
It is hard to avoid the conclusion that a dominant motivation of MMA fans is to
experience schadenfreude, the German word meaning pleasure at other people’s
suffering.
Revealingly, the cage fighters whom Abramson and Modzelewski studied
sharply distinguished their own attitude toward MMA from that of fans. They
observe that “fighters downplay the violence and highlight the difficulty, competition, strategy, and challenge of fighting, often referring to it as a game of
chess,”26 and “joy in hurting others” is despised.27 They quote a cage fighter who
says that “the fans are idiots. They just want to see blood. That’s not what this
sport is really about.”28 (However, even though fighters may not view their sport
as violent and even though they may genuinely respect opponents, we will see
in the next section that this does not morally justify their actions.)
John Portmann has argued that schadenfreude can be morally acceptable when
it is a response to wrongdoers receiving their just deserts,29 but this hardly seems
to be the case with MMA fighters. On the contrary, apologists for MMA stress
the moral virtues that fighters display, such as courage, endurance, and discipline.
Kristján Krisjánsson has argued that the paradigm case of schadenfreude is pleasure at other people’s undeserved suffering, and it is hard to morally rehabilitate
this attitude.30 Mixed martial arts fans could reply that they enjoy watching the
blows, chokes, and manipulations that cause pain and injury, rather than regarding the pain and injury themselves as the source of their pleasure. This seems a
little sophistic, given that the most visible measure of the quality of blows and
other moves is precisely the extent of the pain behavior, blood, and other bodily
damage that they cause. It defies belief to suggest that MMA fans would be just as
excited by punches or kicks inflicted on a punching bag or some other mechanical
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device designed to objectively measure the power of a blow. It is precisely the
subjectivity of damaged fighters—in particular, the pain that they suffer—that
heightens fans’ enjoyment. Even if some fans focus more on athletes’ skill and
courage than on their suffering, this at best rebuts the charge of schadenfreude
and leaves fans open to the accusation that they display moral callousness by
gaining pleasure from actions that inevitably cause pain and injury.
6. Objections and Responses
a. MMA Fighters Do Respect One Another
While cage fighters clearly do intend to hurt and incapacitate opponents, they
do not want to cause serious, permanent injury. On the contrary, just like boxers, cage fighters form a close-knit fraternity with genuine mutual respect for
the courage and prowess that rivals display in their fights. This is exemplified in
post-fight embraces and complimentary comments in post-fight interviews. The
cage fighters whom Abramson and Modzelewski studied were eager to distance
their bouts from what they consider real violence, which they characterize (in
contrast with MMA) as “an attempt to hurt or kill people out of animosity, anger,
for instrumental gain, or duty.”31
Although the suggestion that the attempt to hurt and injure opponents in the cage
is “cleansed” by fighters’ respectful attitude toward each other outside the cage is
appealing, it cannot rescue MMA from this paper’s critique. First, Nussbaum’s defense of objectification in a loving relationship works because the couple’s actions,
including using the partner’s stomach as a pillow, and sex itself, are transformed
by their love into acts of tenderness. Professional respect among cage fighters, in
contrast, cannot transform violent acts into anything more than attempts to hurt
and injure. Second, this attempt to justify MMA falls foul of Kant’s injunction that
we should treat other people as ends in themselves at the same time that we treat
them as means. As Alan Soble says, in a very different context, we do not think
that “my treating you badly today is either justified or excusable if I treated you
admirably the whole day yesterday and will treat you more superbly tomorrow
and the next day.”32 What is needed to satisfy Kant’s principle is an argument that
the act of deliberately hurting and injuring opponents is not inherently demeaning.
This essay’s thesis is that no such argument is forthcoming.
b. Dwarf Tossing Analogy Questioned
Dwarf tossing was one of the analogies given above in order to deny that consent
is always sufficient to absolve actions that normally display disrespect. Perhaps,
though, this analogy is faulty in that the wrongness of the practice arises from
the history of discrimination against little people. But the central reason why
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dwarf tossing is wrong is because it treats little people as objects of ridicule, and
the practice of tossing people would remain problematic even if the objects were
instead middle-aged, affluent white males. The existence of systematic prejudice
exacerbates this wrongness in the case of dwarf tossing but is not the source of the
wrongness. Similarly, the imaginary racist game show mentioned above would
still be morally problematic (though arguably less so) in a society that enjoyed
racial equality and harmony.
c. MMA Is No Worse than Several Other Sports
Contact sports like football and soccer involve tackles that are often at least
somewhat painful and sometimes cause injuries. The current critique of MMA
would prove too much if it also condemned all contact sports, most of which we
consider to be morally unexceptionable.
However, important differences exist between MMA and sports like football.
In football, tackles and hits are aimed at stopping opponents from advancing the
ball. Any pain and injury is incidental to this goal. When a hit no longer achieves
the goal of stopping the opponent, such as a late hit on a quarterback who has
already released the ball, we condemn it, since it becomes gratuitous violence.33
In contrast, causing pain and injury is inseparable from achieving victory in
MMA. The claim that a punch, kick, elbow, or choke hold was intended to achieve
victory, but not to cause pain or injury, would be risible. This moral distinction
between MMA and football would remain even if our increased awareness of the
risk of CTE in football revealed the sport to be even more dangerous than MMA.
The crucial difference would be that causing pain and injury is a side effect of
football whereas it is the explicit goal of MMA. Granted, the rules of a game like
football may permit and give an incentive for players to engage in hard but legal
hits intended to cause injury and knock a star player out of the game. However,
in such cases, both the tackles and the rules themselves are morally questionable
for the same reason that MMA is problematic.
Defenders of MMA might also point to sports not usually considered violent
for examples of action that are designed to make opponents suffer. For instance,
an American collegiate wrestler trying to perform a “cradle” (to get an opponent
on his back) manipulates his opponent’s head with his hands and pushes his knees
against his opponent’s ears, which apparently can be very painful.34 To the extent
that causing pain in this way directly helps wrestlers to score points, it becomes
harder to separate wrestling from MMA. Nonetheless, differences remain between
the two sports. First, the goal of MMA is to incapacitate opponents to the point
where they cannot continue, while the goal of collegiate wrestling is to score points
by specific manipulations of the opponent’s body. Second, this painful move is
an exception in collegiate wrestling, and, if all its moves were intended to cause
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pain, it would no longer be so implausible to apply to it a parallel criticism as
the one here leveled against MMA.
Even in non-contact sports like cycling, racers may try to demoralize opponents
by suddenly breaking away from the pack, forcing opponents to expend considerable energy. In such cases, the cyclist who breaks away intends that opponents
will feel pain when they attempt to catch up, because this will break their will and
increase the fast-breaker’s chances of winning.35 In response, a major difference exists between physically causing pain and injury by inflicting blows and, in contrast,
performing actions that require opponents, if they desire to remain competitive, to
voluntarily perform actions that cause them pain. This particular objection itself
proves too much since it would also condemn arduous and painful training routines,
on the ground that it would force competitors to undergo the same pain in order to
remain competitive. A certain amount of physical pain is understood to come with
the territory of training for and competing in sports involving vigorous physical
activity. Acting in a way that leads opponents to voluntarily undergo such pain in
no way objectifies them, and actually recognizes their agency. In contrast, pounding
people’s faces with punches, elbows, and kicks in order to hurt and injure them is to
suspend—temporarily at least—any recognition of their status as ends in themselves.
d. Other Forms of Competition Inflict
More Serious Harms on Opponents
Perhaps the most serious objection to the critique of MMA offered here arises
from the fact that, in many competitive contexts that we find morally harmless,
the victors can inflict quite serious harms on the losers’ interests.36 A college
athlete who outshines the opposing team’s star player in a key tournament game
can significantly set back the star’s prospects of receiving a professional contract.
A soccer player who plays a brilliant tournament to help his or her country win
the once-every-four-years World Cup may deny opponents the only opportunity
they will ever have to win the sport’s greatest prize. These significant career
setbacks are arguably far more substantial harms than the bruises and cuts that
are usually the worst harms suffered by losing MMA fighters. Aside from any
harm to professional careers, elite athletes of any age who lose vital contests
can experience significant psychological suffering that is more enduring than
the physical aftermath of cage fights. If causing either professional or psychic
harm to opponents is wrong, then we would be driven to the highly implausible
position that all competitive sport is wrong.
The untenable consequences that appear to result from condemning MMA on
the ground that it harms opponents’ interests extend beyond sport. Many goods
in the professional world are zero-sum; if one person achieves them, then other
people cannot. My professional interests are harmed by you being chosen for the
dream position for which I applied or by you receiving a prestigious award that I
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coveted. I may be emotionally devastated if the person of my dreams chooses you
instead of me as her romantic partner. All of these harms may be far deeper and
longer-lasting than injuries suffered in a cage fight, and yet, once again, it would
be absurd to condemn our successful competitors for their actions. In general,
as long as the activity itself is not morally problematic, and as long as our rivals
do not act unfairly in securing their success, they deserve no blame for any harm
that arises to us as a result of their achievements. (Of course, whether MMA is
morally problematic is precisely the question at hand.)
In responding to this objection, we should first note that this essay’s critique of
MMA is a Kantian, not utilitarian, argument. It is based on the inherent wrongness of treating people as violable, not on the extent to which a person’s interests
are harmed. It is quite possible to significantly damage a person’s interests, for
example, by giving a desperately needed job to a rival candidate, without doing
any moral wrong. In contrast, a casual racist or sexist put-down might have little
tangible effect on the victim’s interests, but is still wrong.
Second, what distinguishes hurting and injuring opponents in MMA from
morally innocuous types of competitive harm is, in most cases, the motivation of
the victor. In most competitive contexts, harm to our rivals’ interests is a consequence of our successful pursuit of a goal, whether it be winning the affections
of a love interest, achieving a professional distinction, or victory in an athletic
contest. Harming other competitors is not desired as an end in itself—indeed, if
it were, we would regard the victor with suspicion, for example, a person whose
main motivation in applying for a job is to prevent the professional advancement
of a rival applicant. In contrast, hurting and injuring an opponent in a cage fight
is not a side effect of the desired goal of winning. It is directly intended as the
essential means of achieving victory. It is by hurting and injuring opponents that
we render them unable to continue, and defeat them.
Distinguishing MMA fights from victories in some other sports is a little more
complex. Unlike a candidate for a professional honor who wins the award by
displaying the relevant excellence while having no impact on rivals’ ability to
display the same excellence, one of the elements of athletic excellence in “interactive” sports is precisely the ability to make opponents underperform. An astute
tennis player will keep the ball away from an opponent’s powerful forehand, and
wily coaches will devise strategies to neutralize rival teams’ strengths. In this
sense, competitive athletes do desire to harm the interests of rivals as a means of
achieving victory, yet this seems morally unobjectionable in itself. What makes
cage fighting different is the type of harm that is intended: pain and injury. Outsmarting and outstrategizing opponents in order to render them less effective in
no way demeans them, but trying to hurt and injure them is a paradigm case of
degradation that cannot be cleansed by its consensual context. Degradation occurs not in trying to make opponents play less effectively in an attempt to defeat
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them, but in the manner in which this competitive advantage is achieved. Trying to
hurt and injure opponents is certainly not the only way to demean and disrespect
them—trash talking is another37—but it is one such way, and this is why MMA
is morally problematic.
e. Compensatory Virtues Displayed by MMA Fighters
In his general defense of dangerous sports, J. S. Russell makes a good case that
they have substantial intrinsic value, in that they enable us to test ourselves in a
way that is not possible in other activities. “In confronting serious physical danger
through our own choice and actions, we can be affirming our being by meeting
and extending the boundaries of our existence.”38 Because of this inherent value,
Russell argues, simply pointing out that a particular dangerous sport like boxing has some negative consequences is not sufficient to justify banning it. We
have instead to decide whether eliminating the risks to which the sport gives rise
outweighs the loss of self-affirmation that it permits. In the case of boxing, “it is
not as if . . . the sport itself has negligible or merely frivolous value, so that no
one is really harmed by its elimination.”39 Russell’s argument transfers well to
MMA since it is hard to imagine a more dramatic form of testing ourselves, and
consequent self-affirmation, than fighting in a cage with an opponent whose goal
is to hurt and injure us as badly as possible.
While Russell’s analysis of dangerous sport makes a good case for the value of
the self-affirmation that MMA makes possible, MMA is still problematic because
it involves treating opponents as violable—as objects to be destroyed—rather than
as ends in themselves. Just as Russell proposes that dangerous sport is a healthier
outlet than war for the desire to test our limits, better still would be an outlet that
does not aim to harm others at all. Plenty of other dangerous sports would escape
this criticism while still permitting self-affirmation: those in which the danger
comes from high speeds (e.g., motor sports), in which injuring opponents is not
the direct goal (e.g., contact sports like football), or that do not involve opponents
at all (e.g., mountain climbing). Similar comments apply to defenses of MMA
that appeal to courage, endurance, and other virtues that fighters display. It would
be better to display such virtues in the context of other sports and other activities
that do not involve the moral issues arising from the intent to hurt and injure other
people. Furthermore, trying to alleviate human suffering by working on medical
research, improving access to health care, helping to reduce poverty, promoting
peace, and fighting injustice all provide ample opportunity for risk-taking and
self-affirmation without treating others as objects to be damaged.40
7. Conclusion
The voluntary informed consent of autonomous adults normally blocks any
moral criticism of their mutually consensual activities with other autonomous
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adults, as long as they do not harm any non-consenting parties. However, when
the activity involves degrading a person, no amount of consent can erase its inherently problematic nature. Since the intent is to hurt and injure, the consent of
participants is not, therefore, a moral get-out-of-jail-free card for MMA fighters,
their enablers, or their spectators. It is true that BDSM may also involve hurting
others and treating them in ways that normally signify contempt, but, in the context of a loving relationship, these actions may be consistent with mutual respect
as ends in themselves. Pain and injury also occur in other sports, but only as a
side effect of pursuing other goals, whereas, in MMA, injuring opponents to the
point of (temporary) incapacitation is the express goal. Other sports and other
competitive activities also result in harm to losers’ interests, in some cases, harm
that is significantly more serious and enduring than the cuts and bruises that cage
fighters endure. In most of these contests, however, the winner is successful by
simply displaying the relevant excellences without impairing the loser’s ability
to perform well and without demeaning him or her. Even in nonviolent head-tohead sports where competitors do try to prevent rivals from playing well, they do
so by employing skill and strategy, not by treating opponents as violable. While
fighters exhibit admirable qualities and some good therefore comes from MMA,
many opportunities exist to develop and display similar virtues in activities that
avoid the moral problems of this practice. Because enablers and fans are sustaining a morally questionable practice without displaying any of the compensatory
virtues that fighters show, and without being subject to any economic pressures
to participate, they are even more deserving of moral condemnation. Finally, over
and above their support for an immoral practice, fans exhibit an unacceptable
attitude—schadenfreude at worst, and moral callousness at best.
Alma College
Notes
I have greatly benefited from feedback on this paper from audiences at the 2012 Canadian Philosophical Association meeting in Waterloo, Ontario; the 2013 International
Association for the Philosophy of Sport meeting at California State University, Fullerton; and the 2014 sports ethics symposium at the Annenberg Institute of Sports, Media,
and Society at the University of Southern California. I am especially grateful to Eric
Borgeld, Miller Brown, Sheryle Dixon, Bill Morgan, Marc Ramsay, Heather Reid, and
John Russell for their comments. Finally, this essay has been significantly improved
thanks to the constructive criticism of an anonymous referee for Public Affairs Quarterly
and editor Rebecca Kukla.
1. Sports Business Journal reports in 2013 that 5.3 percent of the US population are
“avid fan(s)” of boxing while 5.1 percent are avid fans of UFC (the most popular MMA
organization). See “Tracking Fan Avidity for the Fight Game.”
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2. See Radford, “Utilitarianism and the Noble Art”; Davis, “Ethical Issues in Boxing;
Dixon, “Boxing, Paternalism, and Legal Moralism”; Herrera, “Moral Controversy over
Boxing Reform”; and Lewandowski, “Boxing: The Sweet Science of Constraints.”
3. Dixon, “Boxing, Paternalism, and Legal Moralism,” 323.
4. Bernick et al., “Repeated Head Trauma.”
5. See Ngai, Levy, and Hsu, “Injury Trends in Sanctioned Mixed Martial Arts Competition.”
6. Hutchison et al., “Head Trauma in Mixed Martial Arts.”
7. Bernick et al., “Repeated Head Trauma.”
8. Davis, “Ethical Issues in Boxing,” 52.
9.Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, 38.
10. Nussbaum, “Objectification,” 257. The seven features of objectification that she
lists are instrumentality, denial of autonomy, inertness, fungibility, violability, ownership,
and denial of subjectivity.
11. Ibid., 394.
12. Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153 (1976), 230.
13. Ibid., 241
14. Radford, “Utilitarianism and the Noble Art,” 69–70.
15. Weimer, “Consent and Right Action in Sport,” 17.
16. Ibid., 17–18.
17.Mill, On Liberty, 101.
18. Parry, “Violence and Aggression in Contemporary Sport,” 221.
19. Dixon, “Boxing, Paternalism, and Legal Moralism,” 325–31.
20. However, while this generalization about socioeconomic status may be true of
professional MMA fighters, a subculture exists populated by club-level MMA fighters
who come from a wide variety of backgrounds, including affluent white-collar careers.
For a very interesting analysis of this subculture and the motivations of these serious but
amateur fighters, see Abramson and Modzelewski, “Caged Morality.”
21. This thought experiment comes from Dixon, “Boxing, Paternalism, and Legal
Moralism,” 337.
22. Klepper, “Sexual Exploitation and the Value of Persons,” 486.
23. Nussbaum, “Objectification,” 257.
24. Hill, “Servility and Self-Respect.”
25. Joseph Lewandowski has defended sparring in boxing as a cooperative activity
designed to improve the skills of both participants. See Lewandowski, “Boxing: The
Sweet Science of Constraints.” Because its goal is not to hurt or injure opponents—the
sparring session typically stops in either event—it is immune to this essay’s criticism. If
there is such a thing as sparring in MMA, perhaps a training session, it would be equally
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immune. The objection presented here is directed at actual MMA fights, a trademark of
which is ferocious, unrelenting striking designed to incapacitate opponents.
26. Abramson and Modzelewski, “Caged Morality,” 158.
27. Ibid., 159.
28. Ibid., 161.
29.Portmann, When Bad Things Happen to Other People, chap. 6.
30. Kristjánsson, “Fortunes-of-Others Emotions and Justice.”
31. Abramson and Modzelewski, “Caged Morality,” 160.
32. Soble, “Sexual Use,” 316. Soble’s comment is a critique of Martha Nussbaum’s
attempt to justify the objectification that occurs in sex by requiring that it occur in the
context of a loving relationship. It is, however, also directly applicable to our moral evaluation of MMA.
33. This is reflected in the opprobrium directed at the New Orleans Saints American
football team when it was revealed that players received a “bounty” or bonus for injuring
opponents.
34. I am grateful to Eric Borgeld for this example.
35. I am grateful to Heather Reid for this example.
36. I am grateful for this objection to Marc Ramsay, who commented on this paper
at the Canadian Philosophical Association meeting at Waterloo, Ontario.
37. For a detailed moral critique of trash talking, see Dixon, “Trash Talking.”
38. Russell, “Value of Dangerous Sport,” 14.
39. Ibid., 16.
40. A similar response is applicable to Radford’s defense of boxing in “Utilitarianism and the Noble Art.” According to Radford, a world devoid of pain and danger would
be dreary and sterile, and “danger is a spice to life without which it lacks savour” (67).
It would be better to achieve this spice without intentionally hurting and injuring other
people.
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