Fighting As Real As It Gets

Book excerpt: Michael Staack’s multi-year ethnography is the first and only comprehensive social-scientific analysis of the combat sport ‘Mixed Martial Arts’. Based on systematic training observations, the author meticulously analyses how Mixed Martial Arts practitioners conjointly create and immerse themselves into their own world of ultimate bodily combat. With his examination of concentrative technique demonstrations, cooperative technique train-ings, and chaotic sparring practices, Staack not only provides a sociological illumination of Mixed Martial Arts culture’s defining theme – the quest of ‘Fighting As Real As It Gets’. Rather further-more, he provides a compelling cultural-sociological case study on practical social constructions of ‘authenticity’.