Neoliberal masculinity in the Ultimate Fighting Championship

ABSTRACTIn this article, the author examines neoliberal masculinity in the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s election. She uses neoliberal masculinity as a framework for understanding how and why the UFC promotes diverse masculinities—including alt-right white masculinity—who can brand themselves for an array of domestic and international markets. She argues that neoliberal masculinity requires entrepreneurial subjects who view the market as the ultimate moral authority and discourage athletes from challenging the sports-media-complex's labor exploitation. The UFC ironically requires a docile athlete-worker that is incongruent with the sport’s reputation for hypermasculine performances of power.KEYWORDS: Neoliberal masculinitysports mediaUFCMMAwhite masculinity AcknowledgementsThe author would like to thank Kate Osmond for editing the manuscript, Mia Fischer for offering substantive feedback on an early version of the article, and the peer reviewers for such generative suggestions for improvementDisclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Melanie E. S. Kohnen, “Cultural Diversity as Brand Management in Cable Television,” Media Industries 2, no. 2 (2015): 88–103; Herman Gray, “Subject(ed) to Recognition,” American Quarterly 65, no. 4 (2013): 771–98; Jennifer McClearen, Fighting Visibility: Sports Media and Female Athletes in the UFC (Urbana Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2021).2 MMA is a hybrid martial art that combines elements of distinct fighting styles into one. MMA fighters develop skills in striking, grappling, and wrestling instead of specializing in one form of martial art. The UFC is the largest MMA promotion in the world.3 Ronda Rousey was the first woman to be signed to the UFC in 2012. She became one of the promotions most popular fighters. MAGA refers to the “Make America Great Again” slogan used by Donald Trump and his acolytes. McClearen, “Fighting Visibility.”4 UFC Staff Report. “UFC 25 Years in Short Docuseries Premieres on YouTube.” UFC.com. May 21, 2019, https://www.ufc.com/news/ufc-25-years-short-docuseries-premieres-youtube.5 I use the term “white masculinity” to signal the ways that white supremacy and the patriarchy intersect in the contemporary moment to shore up and maintain power instead of “white” as a generic category pertaining to all men racialized as white. See also McClearen, “Fighting Visibility,” for an analysis of branded difference.6 George Monbiot, “Neoliberalism – The Ideology at the Root of All Our Problems,” The Guardian, April 15, 2016, http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology-problem-george-monbiot.7 Wendy Brown, “Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution,” (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015), 22.8 Hegemonic masculinity, originally theorized by gender scholar Raewyn Connell, identifies a socially constructed understanding of men and the essence of maleness that supports a patriarchal gendered order in society by contrasting straight, predominantly white, cisgender men with other identities, such as women, queer men, and men of color. Hegemonic masculinity compels rather than forces men to adhere to dominant understandings of maleness. As Connell and Messerschmidt write, “hegemonic masculinity was not assumed to be normal in the statistical sense; only a minority of men might enact it. But it was certainly normative.” Raewyn Connell and James W. Messerschmidt, “Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept,” Gender and Society 19, no. 6 (2005): 832. Niko Besnier, Daniel Guinness, Mark Hann and Uroš Kovač, “Rethinking Masculinity in the Neoliberal Order: Cameroonian Footballers, Fijian Rugby Players, and Senegalese Wrestlers,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 60, no. 4 (2018): 839–72; Gerald Voorhees and Alexandra Orlando, “Performing Neoliberal Masculinity: Reconfiguring Hegemonic Masculinity in Professional Gaming,” in Masculinities in Play, ed. Nicholas Taylor and Gerald Voorhees (Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2018), 211–27.9 McClearen, “Fighting Visibility.”10 Jeremy Gilbert, “This Conjuncture: For Stuart Hall,” New Formations 96, no. 96–97 (2019): 6.11 Graeme Turner, British Cultural Studies: An Introduction 3rd ed. (London: Routledge, 2003).12 Raewyn Connell, The Men and the Boys (Oxford: Polity, 2000).13 Raewyn Connell and James W. Messerschmidt, “Hegemonic Masculinity”14 Lawrence Grossberg, “Cultural Studies in Search of a Method, Or Looking for Conjunctural Analysis,” New Formations 96, no. 96–97 (2019): 44.15 Jack Bratich and Sarah Banet-Weiser, “From Pick-Up Artists to Incels: Con(fidence) Games, Networked Misogyny, and the Failure of Neoliberalism,” International Journal of Communication, no. 13 (2019): 5005.16 Bratich and Banet-Weiser, “From Pick-Up Artists to Incells,” 5005.17 Bratich and Banet-Weiser, “From Pick-Up Artists to Incells,” 500918 Bratich and Banet-Weiser, “From Pick-Up Artists to Incells.”; Kyle W. Kusz, “From NASCAR Nation to Pat Tillman: Notes on Sport and the Politics of White Cultural Nationalism in Post-9/11 America,” Journal of Sport & Social Issues 31, no. 1 (2007): 77–88; Kyle W. Kusz, “Notes on the Uses of Sport in Trump’s White Nationalist Assemblage,” Review of Nationalities 9, no.1 (2019): 39–59.19 McClearen, “Fighting Visibility.”20 Wendy Brown, In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise of Antidemocratic Politics in the West (New York: Columbia University Press, 2019), 179. See also Nik Dickerson and Matt Hodler, “‘Real Man Stand for Our Nation’: Constructions of an American Nation and Anti-Kaepernick Memes,” Journal of Sport & Social Issues (2020); Mark Falcous, Matthew G. Hawzen and Joshua I. Newman, “Hyperpartisan Sports Media in Trump’s America: The Metapolitics of Breitbart Sports,” Communication & Sport 7, no. 5 (2019): 588–610; Kusz, “From NASCAR Nation to Pat Tillman”; Kusz, “Notes on the Uses of Sport in Trump’s White Nationalist Assemblage.”21 Darrell Enck-Wanzer, “Barack Obama, the Tea Party, and the Threat of Race: On Racial Neoliberalism and Born Again Racism,” Communication, Culture & Critique 4, no. 1 (2011): 23–30; David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on Racial Neoliberalism (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009); Jodi Melamed, “The Spirit of Neoliberalism: From Racial Liberalism to Neoliberal Multiculturalism,” Social Text 24, no. 4 (2006): 1–24; David C. Oh and Omotayo O. Banjo, “Outsourcing Postracialism: Voicing Neoliberal Multiculturalism in Outsourced,” Communication Theory 22, no. 4 (2012): 449–70.22 Jennifer McClearen. ““We Are All Fighters”: The Transmedia Marketing of Difference in the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC),” International Journal of Communication [Online], Volume 11(2017).23 McClearen, “Fighting Visibility.”24 Brooke Erin Duffy, “Social Media Influencers,” in The International Encyclopedia of Gender, Media, and Communication, ed. Karen Ross, Ingrid Bachmann, Valentina Cardo, Sujata Moorti and Cosimo Marco Scarcelli (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2020).25 Forbes, “#53 Conor McGregor,” Forbes Magazine, June 4, 2020, https://www.forbes.com/profile/conor-mcgregor/; Drakkar Klose (@drakkar_klose), Instagram, 2021, https://www.instagram.com/drakkar_klose/.26 McClearen, “Fighting Visibility.”27 Casey Ryan Kelly, “The Wounded Man: Foxcatcher and the Incoherence of White Masculine Victimhood,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 2, no. 15, (2018), 161–78; Paul Elliott Johnson, “The Art of Masculine Victimhood: Donald Trump’s Demagoguery,” Women's Studies in Communication 40, no. 3 (2017); Bratich and Banet-Weiser, “From Pick-Up Artists to Incels.”28 Kelly, “The Wounded Man,” 162.29 Johnson, “The Art of Masculine Victimhood,” 242.30 Brown, “In the Ruins of Neoliberalism,” 175.31 Bratich and Banet-Weiser, “From Pick-Up Artists to Incels,”32 Brown, “In the Ruins of Neoliberalism,” 163.33 Brown, “In the Ruins of Neoliberalism.”34 Colby Covington (@colbycovmma), Instagram, 2021, https://www.instagram.com/colbycovmma/?hl=en.35 Karim Zidan, “UFC’s Colby Covington, the Athletic Embodiment of Trump’s Politics,” The Guardian, August 5, 2019, http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/aug/05/colby-covington-ufc-eric-trump-donald-trump-jr-mma; Vinayak, “Joanna Jordaycheck is a C**t”- Colby Covington lashes out at Joanna Jedrzejczyk and Jorge Masvidal,” Essentially Sports, May 29, 2020, https://www.essentiallysports.com/ufc-news-joanna-jedrzejczyk-is-a-ct-colby-covington-lashes-out-at-joanna-jedrzejczyk-and-jorge-masvidal-dustin-poirier/.36 Trent Reinsmith, “UFC’s Colby Covington Calls Brazilian Fans ‘Filthy Animals’ after Win over Demian Maia,” Forbes Magazine, October 29, 2017, https://www.forbes.com/sites/trentreinsmith/2017/10/29/ufcs-colby-covington-calls-brazilian-fans-filthy-animals-after-win-over-demian-maia/.37 Reinsmith, “UFC’s Colby Covington Calls Brazilian Fans”38 Zidan, “UFC’s Colby Covington.”39 Farah Hannoun, “How Colby Covington’s Infamous “Filthy Animals” Speech in Brazil Saved his UFC Career,” USA Today, December 9, 2019, https://mmajunkie.usatoday.com/2019/12/ufc-colby-covington-filthy-animal-speech-brazil-saved-career.40 Mike Rothstein, “How Colby Covington Became the UFC’s Biggest Villain,” ESPN, August 2, 2019, https://www.espn.com/mma/story/_/id/27295062/how-colby-covington-became-ufc-biggest-villain.41 McClearen, “We Are All Fighters,” 3230.42 McClearen, “We Are All Fighters.”43 Lucy Nevitt, “The Spirit of America Lives Here: US Pro-Wrestling and the Post-9/11 War on Terror,” Journal of War & Culture Studies 3, no. 3 (2011): 319–34.44 UFC, “UFC 245: Usman vs Covington,” UFC Fight Pass, December 14, 2019, https://ufcfightpass.com/video/107093/ufc-245-usman-vs-covington.45 “The Candace Owens Show: Colby Covington,” YouTube, December 8, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQRMxivohcI.46 Vinayak, “Colby Covington lashes out at Joanna Jedrzejczyk.”47 Scott Harris, “A Morality Play for Our Time: Usman vs. Covington is More than Mere Grudge Match,” Bleacher Report, December 11, 2019, https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2866291-a-morality-play-for-our-time-usman-vs-covington-is-more-than-mere-grudge-match.48 “Kamaru Usman: ‘I’m More American’ than Colby Covington (UFC 245),” YouTube, December 16, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQPUumh7HKg.49 Kamaru Usman (@usman84kg), Instagram, 2021, https://www.instagram.com/usman84kg/.50 Ben Carrington, Race, Sport, and Politics: The Sporting Black Diaspora Los Angeles: Sage, 2011.51 Harris, “Usman vs. Covington is More than Mere Grudge Match.”52 Harris, “Usman vs. Covington is More than Mere Grudge Match.”53 Rothstein, “How Colby Covington Became the UFC’s Biggest Villain.”54 Cindy Boren, “UFC Fighters Called One of Their Own a Racist. Dana White Answered, ‘We Don’t Muzzle Anybody,’” The Washington Post, September 24, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2020/09/24/ufc-dana-white-covington/.55 McClearen, “Fighting Visibility.”56 Similarly, Connell also understands subordinate masculinities as existing in a hierarchical structure of gender wherein hegemonic masculinity is normalized and coercive. Raewyn Connell, Masculinities. 2nd ed. (Berkley: University of California Press, 2005).57 Michel Foucault, “Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison,” trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Pantheon Books, 1977), 136–7.58 McClearen, “Fighting Visibility.”59 Josh Eidelson, “UFC Wants You to Watch Brawls, Not its $5 Billion Lawsuit,” Bloomberg Businessweek, May 8, 2020, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-05-08/as-ufc-pushes-may-mma-event-fighters-say-deals-are-getting-worse.60 Eidelson, “UFC Wants You to Watch Brawls.”61 McClearen, “Fighting Visibility.”62 Chuck Mindenhall, “‘Good for UFC, But Not Good for Fighters’: Competitors across MMA Talk UFC Pay,” The Athletic, June 2, 2020, https://theathletic.com/1850384/2020/06/02/ufc-reebok-sponsorship-deal-fighter-pay/.63 McClearen, “Fighting Visibility.”64 Eidelson, “UFC Wants You to Watch Brawls.”65 McClearen, “Fighting Visibility.”66 Joseph Zucker, “Jorge Masvidal Accuses Dana White of ‘Strong Arming’ UFC Contract Negotiations,” Bleacher Report, June 14, 2020, https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2896172-jorge-masvidal-accuses-dana-white-of-strong-arming-ufc-contract-negotiations.67 Bratich and Banet-Weiser, “From Pick-Up Artists to Incels,” 5014.