Long before the hayday of the Ultimate Fighting Championship and mixed martial arts in general, the sport was galvanized with what discipline was the best and most dominant of all. The pride in which these competitors kept with them in an effort to defend their craft’s honor was inflated to the highest core.
Enter today’s MMA landscape and gym pride has never been higher. Different gyms aim to hold the most champions and breed the greatest amount of contenders in the world’s most premiere MMA organization. With pride though, comes the ability for prejudice and nothing holds truer in male dominated sports in terms on non-acceptance than sexual orientation.
Homophobia in male sports is often present due to the severe, macho nature of competitors who believe that having a gay player or teammate in their field of play both insinuates and perpetuates a level of weakness, submissiveness and unmanliness.
Said mindsets are often triggered by ignorance, insecurity and an overall lack of understanding in hindsight. The passive verbal nature of a player feeling uncomfortable in the locker room with a gay athlete is publicly condemned but privately appreciated and understood within the playing surface.
This male mentality is not limited to MMA by any stretch of the imagination and it could very well initially spill over into the UFC. I specify male fighters because there are already many female fighters who have publicly come out, including Liz Carmouche, Raquel Pennington and Jessica Andrade.
The viewpoints on lesbianism however, trigger almost a night and day response from their fellow athletes. Generally in women’s sports, homosexuality among players in the locker room is not only encouraged, but expected.
It’s all because of the way our society has been bred mentally in terms of accepting gay women due to their natural femininity, but men (especially professional athletes) yield an entirely different response.
If you don’t think so, ask New Orleans Saints linebacker Jonathan Vilma, the Diaz brothers (Nick and Nate) or any other heterosexual male athlete on the professional landscape. They may butter their words up on camera but I can almost guarantee that if you unplug the microphone and shut off the camera, those sentiments take a complete 180 turn.
After former NBA veteran Jason Collins and Missouri defensive end/NFL draft hopeful Michael Sam publicly acknowledge that they were gay, many questions surfaced to players and owners about whether or not they would accept a gay teammate. Most of them poled in both leagues overwhelmingly replied “yes.”
Though while these team sports are typically more akin to accept anyone who helps them win, the fact that they’re dressed in uniform and minimize in quantity certainly helps matters. In the NBA, there are 12-15 players in the locker room including coaches and trainers.
In the NFL, there are over 53-players that come out of the tunnel on a weekly basis for a game. MMA on the other hand, is an individual sport. Outside of the referee, the only others who share the cage at fight time are the competitors themselves. In basketball and football, players are dressed in full-fledged uniform. In MMA, the only essential male attire are trunks and gloves.
Moreover, the sport has a vital aspect in which competitors often take the fight to the ground, a position that would make some male fighters uncomfortable if they were tied up in position with a gay opponent.
The normal mindset of any heterosexual fighter (or fan for that matter) would naturally be whether or not the gay athlete would be “turned on,” sexually aroused and thus, completely unwilling to improve position. As comical as it may sound, this is very much a realistic frame of mind and the very thought of this ideology must not be ignored.
Note that the attention on this piece focuses on the possibility of the first openly gay male UFC fighter. However, the first openly male MMA fighter has already came out. Last year, 35-year King of the Cage veteran Shad Smith acknowledged that he was gay, but that was also in the comforting confines of a much smaller company.
Albeit still a homophobic-ally viewed sport by the general media, the announcement of a gay individual in the UFC would attract many American media outlets and casual eyeballs based on the fact that it’s the cream of the crop organization in the sport and a worldwide global entity.
Last year, White said he would ‘fix’ any problem that surfaces with discrimination to or refusal of a fighter to get in the Octagon with a gay opponent. It sounds so simple when he put it in those terms, but how do you fix a predetermined and set mentality? How do you fix refusal of the purchase of a pay-per view event of a fan because there’s a gay headliner involved?
Ultimately, how do you even fix people? Sure he could govern his fighters and brand into forced acceptance and impose strict fines, penalties, restrictions, suspensions or firings based on discriminatory behavior, but it’s very difficult to change a person’s mindset when their mind is already set.
While there are certainly whirlwind opportunities to finally accept openly gay male athletes into the scene, I’m not sure if it would be the smoothest transition for fighters, managers and fans alike. There must be natural progression of acceptance and understanding, not by force. It could be a beautiful thing and highlight for the company but for now, I’m not sure if it would be the right time or place.