How Did Combat Sports Become Right-Wing?

But I think with combat sports, I think you may have noticed there's been a quite pronounced shift.

in recent times about how it's, it's become almost, I guess, explicitly right wing in a way that I think in the past you may have associated combat sports with right wing men.

Um, and I think combat sports has always kind of been used by strong men, politicians in the past to kind of like associate themselves with like, you know, big, powerful, masculine men to kind of like give themselves like a political veneer of like, I guess kind of like mirroring the fighters that they promote or the fighters that they like have in their countries and stuff.

But now I think it's almost become with the kind of Trump administration and the White House UFC card and Joe Rogan and Dana White and how kind of inextricably linked they all are.

It's become right wing in a way that I, as a combat sports fan, obviously I've been following the various combat sports for, you know, 20 years now.

I've never really felt that way about it before in my life in a way where essentially it's now becoming like impossible to kind of separate the two.

And I think with, Positive and negative, obviously, connotations.

If you're left-wing like me, obviously, following a sport like UFC or following a sport like MMA that's become so pronounced and so overwhelmingly right-wing is becoming harder and harder to do.

And especially in an organization like UFC, which is essentially just kind of almost like a vehicle for Donald Trump now, it's becoming kind of almost like a kind of there's no... what's that stupid fucking phrase everyone

says no ethical consumption under capitalism like

whatever i mean i just like guys fighting i just love to watch guys beating each other up um and so um watching ufc i mean it's not like i don't know it's it's a it's obviously something i wrestle with all the time but basically i just wanted to explore um this idea i mean i i For me personally, I started doing combat sports, as I said, I started it from martial arts when I was 16.

And I do think there is a difference between martial arts and combat sports.

Essentially martial arts, the reason why they're different in my head, stuff like martial arts would be stuff like Kung Fu, Tai Chi, maybe Aikido, um, Stuff where essentially you're learning something, not necessarily for how effective and practical it is, but more for the skill.

And it's like the technique and the skill and that's the thing you're getting out of it is learning these skills and techniques.

It's not to say that someone who's a fucking expert in Shaolin Kung Fu couldn't absolutely kick the shit out of me.

I do think that people that do Kung Fu aren't as effective actually in a fight.

And that's why you don't really see any like top UFC guys being Wing Chun like experts.

But that's kind of how martial arts, I see martial arts in my head.

So I started doing that.

And then combat sports, I got into, which is more traditional in my 20s.

I got into, the reason why combat sports are so different is because I think it's everything you're doing is with a view to its effectiveness.

So you're learning skills and techniques like you do in Wing Chun, like you do in Kung Fu, like you do in Aikido, for example, or ninjutsu or whatever it may be.

But every single skill and technique you're doing is with a view to how effectively it can hurt someone or how effective it will be in a fight or a rolling session or a sparring session.

So someone like Muay Thai, it's almost kind of diametrically opposed to Kung Fu in the way that everything is there just to be the most painful it could possibly be.

Every technique you learn is that, oh, that might look good.