56 – The Invisible Hand of MMA Face Punching (transcript) (Patreon)

In large and small ways, unregulated capitalism controls every aspect of an MMA fighter’s life. Mixed martial arts presents itself as the free market of martial movements and strategies, but due to the structure of incentives and punishments (much like all free markets), even choices such as how a fighter fights—whether they kick, punch, or grapple—are influenced by the UFC. When an athlete is looking for knockouts, and thus risking being knocked out, the UFC rewards them with post-fight bonuses (on and off the record), and favorable marketing. If an athlete fights “too strategically,” in the opinion of the UFC, they can be cut, put on the shelf, forced to fight for less pay, forced to fight while injured, lose coverage for training-related injuries, given mismatches and last-minute fights (to lose), and placed in early prelim fights so that if they do win, no one notices.

One of the early criticisms of the UFC, made famous by former Senator John McCain, was that it was nothing more than “human cockfighting.” When Dana White and Zuffa, LLC bought the UFC in 2001 from SEG, they implemented rules to make MMA appear more like boxing and less like a violent spectacle. Since regulators were already familiar with professional pugilism, this gave the UFC an air of legitimacy. MMA was now ostensibly a sport.

The explicit rules were changed to give the impression of reducing the violence, yet in truth, this gave cover for the UFC to introduce perverse incentives that added the violence right back. It was only then that the UFC was able to take control of the fights away from the fighters, and place it into their own hands. As far as control of fighter autonomy, it is more akin to human cockfighting now than it has ever been.

There is no independent regulating body the UFC answers to—state commissions only enforce state regulations, and the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) works for the UFC. If there were an independent regulating body, they would never allow such a disruptive incentive structure because it would create unnatural and artificial behaviors. The game would be rigged, no longer sports but sports entertainment. Imagine watching a video game where players one and two were both played by the same person?

The UFC is a monopoly in the most real sense—no one can tell it what to do, it maintains complete control, including owning the majority of the MMA market and influencing all other fight promotions. Just like all other free markets, there is no market solution preventing monopolies, cronyism, exploitation, or behavior control. If you think of the UFC (or any private entity) as a government, then it’s an absolute authoritarian dictatorship where participants have no vote, representation, or say in how their government is run. Monopolies are private dictatorships.

To better understand the UFC’s control mechanisms, imagine basketball if the NBA itself paid out a bonus for players who had the most slam dunks in a game. Would that impact how the game was played? Would it turn into a spectacle of style over winning? Of course.

When framed through the lens of other sports, this is obvious. Yet, seemingly, for everyone involved in MMA, this is a massive blind spot—everyone other than the UFC, that is. For the UFC, controlling behavior isn’t an accident, it’s the point. Some NBA teams do have performance bonuses written into individual contracts of their star players, but it’s for things such as the number of games played, whether they’re playing in the post-season, a predetermined number of rebounds and assists, and other behaviors to help the team win more games. However, this is different from the NBA itself creating a blanket incentive that favors certain players and styles over others. One of the purposes of a regulating body is to eliminate favoritism (or at least attempt to regulate against it); whereas, in the UFC, favoritism is the rule.

Moreover, the number of slam dunks is quantifiable. It does not require human subjectivity. What constitutes an exciting performance? Dana White, the president/ dictator of the UFC, has stated on numerous occasions that it is better to be exciting and lose than to be “boring” and win. Yet whose job is it in the UFC to decide what’s exciting? It’s unclear, though most of the time it appears to be Dana White himself.

The UFC doesn’t care if fighter A wins or loses, because the UFC represents both fighter A and B. As Don King once said after arriving with one fighter and leaving with another, “I came into the ring with the champion, and I left with the champion.” The UFC has similarly left nothing to chance. The victor is inconsequential. All the UFC cares about is how the fight is fought.

To go back to the NBA analogy, if the league were to create performance incentives, they wouldn’t be based around “winning,” since that’s the goal of each NBA team. The league would only care about making the games more exciting. This is why incentives created by teams would be different from ones created by the governing body—they have conflicting interests. Such measures would never get passed because both the owners and players would oppose it as they would only benefit the league but not its members. In the NBA, like most major sports, the team owners and athletes all have a say. While the UFC also has MMA team owners, as well as athletes, they have little voice in matters of league business.

In the UFC, the governing body creates the only incentives. Incentivizing performance is not the same as incentivizing winning. What’s supposed to make sports pure and fair is one simple premise: all that matters is victory. The UFC has conflicting interests from the MMA teams and their fighters. It is not unusual in MMA to have managers siding with promoters over their clients—an old problem in boxing that was finally addressed in 2000 with the Muhammad Ali Boxing Reform Act. The UFC continues to prevent this act from expanding into MMA. Court documents reveal the UFC has spent well over half a million dollars lobbying against it. Perhaps it’s poignant that before his death, former Senator John McCain advocated for the expansion of the Ali Act into the “human cockfighting” of MMA, and it is the UFC that is preventing that wish from being fulfilled.

For UFC fighters, there is a panic-inducing tension between being crowd-pleasing and winning. Some UFC fighters have spoken up about the damage this has caused their psyche, and it’s not unusual for fighters to admit to considering suicide. In, “A Future with No Future: Depression, the Left, and the Politics of Mental Health,” Mikkel Krause Frantzen writes:

“Capitalism, in other words, inflicts a double injury on depressed people. First, it causes, or contributes to, the state of depression. Second, it erases any form of causality and individualizes the illness, so that it appears as if the depression in question is a personal problem. In some cases, it appears to be your own fault. If you had just lived a better and more active life, made other choices, had a more positive mindset, et cetera, then you would not be depressed. This is the song sung by psychologists, coaches, and therapists around the world: happiness is your choice, your responsibility. The same goes for unhappiness and depression. Capitalism makes us feel bad and then, to add insult to injury, makes us feel bad about feeling bad.”

We hear about fighters suffering, but we don’t assign blame to the UFC because we have been taught to see mental health problems as an individual character flaw, rather than as a symptom of a flawed system. What the UFC likes to hear from its fighters is, “Somebody is going to get knocked out in this fight,” which could potentially include the person making that statement. Imagine if an American football player said they were willing to hurt themselves to make the NFL happy. Not playing hard to win, not sacrificing for the team, but to do something at the sacrifice of their body for the sake of the league. This is neither a competitive nor healthy mind. Perhaps this is what the UFC means when they say they don’t want competitors or athletes, but “fighters”—or as Joe Rogan puts it, “A wild man.” Like any cult, they don’t want healthy people but those who are the most vulnerable.

To reinforce the UFC post-fight bonuses, base pay is kept low. Only 10-20% of the UFC’s revenue goes to fighter pay, which includes the bonuses. In most other sports, it’s closer to 50%, and for boxing, it could be well above that. If an NBA player were to start making a fraction of their current pay, would that slam dunk bonus matter more? Would anyone be confused as to why there were fewer three-pointers?

In every UFC event, several fighters will ask (sometimes plead) for a bonus. They’ll often be transparent about how bad they need the money. If fighters are desperate, they’ll do more of what the UFC wants. Low base pay creates the right amount of desperation. Imagine the NFL implementing a longest pass bonus. What would happen to the running game? Would Hail Mary passes become the norm, as Hail Mary haymakers (overhand punches) are in the UFC? The overhand right is usually the last punch a professional boxer will learn. As far as punches go, it is possibly the most destructive yet also the clumsiest, and thus why it’s used sparingly in boxing. In the UFC, this is its signature punch.

If UFC-style incentives were applied to other sports, would it be harder for coaches to get their players to follow gameplans? Would these incentives directly contradict the coach’s job? Would it change long-term coaching strategy? Even in the short-term, would coaches be more willing to risk permanent injury to players to win one game? Even for inconsequential games?

If the coach of the team got a split of all the player bonuses, would they modify their strategy? Would coaches tailor their approach around bonuses? Is this why so many BJJ (Brazilian jiu-jitsu) coaches have fighters that only strike? Is this why wrestlers abandon their wrestling strategy for striking? Are perverse incentives why corner stoppages in MMA are so rare? In this unnatural incentivize vs. punitive environment, would the best strategies for winning rise to the top? The problem with financial incentives isn’t that they don’t work, but that they work too well.

Limited rules create an illusion of an open and free environment, but there are hidden constraints. It’s the invisible hand of capitalism; rather than create opportunities, it closes off possibilities until you are left with only a few options. No one told Amazon employees to pee in bottles; they were always free to pee in their pants. Reporters don’t wonder why Amazon employees do this, it’s either this or lose their only source of income. Freedom under duress is not freedom.

In every UFC event, several fighters will ask (sometimes plead) for a bonus. They’ll often be transparent about how bad they need the money. If fighters are desperate, they’ll do more of what the UFC wants. Low base pay creates the right amount of desperation. Imagine the NFL implementing a longest pass bonus. What would happen to the running game? Would Hail Mary passes become the norm, as Hail Mary haymakers (overhand punches) are in the UFC? The overhand right is usually the last punch a professional boxer will learn. As far as punches go, it is possibly the most destructive yet also the clumsiest, and thus why it’s used sparingly in boxing. In the UFC, this is its signature punch.

If UFC-style incentives were applied to other sports, would it be harder for coaches to get their players to follow gameplans? Would these incentives directly contradict the coach’s job? Would it change long-term coaching strategy? Even in the short-term, would coaches be more willing to risk permanent injury to players to win one game? Even for inconsequential games?

If the coach of the team got a split of all the player bonuses, would they modify their strategy? Would coaches tailor their approach around bonuses? Is this why so many BJJ (Brazilian jiu-jitsu) coaches have fighters that only strike? Is this why wrestlers abandon their wrestling strategy for striking? Are perverse incentives why corner stoppages in MMA are so rare? In this unnatural incentivize vs. punitive environment, would the best strategies for winning rise to the top? The problem with financial incentives isn’t that they don’t work, but that they work too well.

Limited rules create an illusion of an open and free environment, but there are hidden constraints. It’s the invisible hand of capitalism; rather than create opportunities, it closes off possibilities until you are left with only a few options. No one told Amazon employees to pee in bottles; they were always free to pee in their pants. Reporters don’t wonder why Amazon employees do this, it’s either this or lose their only source of income. Freedom under duress is not freedom.

An informal bonus, as far as exposure, is to get on UFC commentator Joe Rogan’s podcast, which sometimes fighters opt to do in lieu of asking for a bonus. As a fighter, that means getting in an event and being placed high enough on the card that Rogan might interview you, since he does not interview every winner and does not commentate on every UFC card. Having a media personality as powerful as Joe Rogan represent the UFC is a conflict in itself. Does the UFC have zero influence over which UFC fighters get to appear on The Joe Rogan Experience? There’s no way to know.

Then there’s headlining a pay-per-view, which means getting a percentage of the PPV buys. For most, if not all fighters, this is the only way to make over a million dollars in a UFC fight (or ever). In advertising, there is something known as a “Q score.” It’s a way to quantify how valuable a celebrity is to a brand. The UFC has an unspoken system that works just like the Q score, yet it is not based on any market research. The UFC relies more on feel and stereotypes—it likes characters and “crazy” matches. The UFC’s informal Q system often gets compared to the WWE’s, but to be fair to the WWE, the UFC’s system is much less sophisticated and still at the Hulk Hogan vs. racist heel stage.

Going back to Joe Rogan, how does a fighter get on Rogan’s radar? The same way they get on Dana White’s radar, by increasing their UFC Q score. Record and rankings are secondary to a fighter’s UFC Q score. Rankings themselves are also subjective. If the powers that be don’t like you, it might be a while before a fighter gets a UFC title shot. Khabib Nurmagomedov is valued by the UFC now, but it took him 25 straight wins (nine in the UFC) to get to a title shot. Though Nurmagomedov was dominant and the consensus best lightweight in MMA, he had a wrestling-heavy style, and his English was limited. Part of his rise in popularity was his newfound willingness to engage with Conor McGregor, and scuffle with him and his team outside of the octagon. McGregor, on the other hand, got his first title shot in five fights. (Racking up four UFC Q score-friendly bonuses along the way.) After winning the featherweight title, McGregor was 1-1 against Nate Diaz, yet still challenged for the lightweight title in his first fight at that weight division. The UFC is an arbitrary system that prioritizes profit and spectacle over fairness, purity, or fighter autonomy and safety.

Theoretically, what makes the UFC stand out from boxing and kickboxing, besides the use of a cage, is the chance for a submission. Yet in 2018, only 18% of UFC fights ended by submission. Compare this to 56% of fights ending by submissions in 1994. There is debate in the grappling community regarding which submissions are “best” for MMA. Currently, leg locks are the new darlings. However, in 2019, the UFC had a total of 517 fights, out of which only one ended by leg lock. That’s 0.2%.

One type of submission, however, has stood the test of time, and that is the choke. In 2018, chokes constituted 85% of the submission finishes in the UFC. This is not by accident but by design, because choking an opponent, the same as a knockout, eliminates their ability to continue. Most fighters, if they can continue, will choose to do so because the only way for most of them to get the other half of their paycheck is to win. It’s similar logic to why corners don’t stop more fight or why more fighters don’t retire in between rounds. It’s not just a matter of pride, it’s also financial. Furthermore, if winning also means making a comeback, that increases the possibility of a performance bonus. It’s a high-stakes lottery with dire physical consequences.

What is being missed by those that train, and even some coaches, is that we are seeing fewer submissions overall as compared to the past because less of the fight is being contested on the ground. Part of why this blind spot exists is because, in sports, there is usually some amount of purity. But the UFC is not a sport. In their own words, they are a “fight business,” just as the WWE calls itself a “business.” Incentives eliminate purity. Even if a fighter could resist the carrots, they can’t escape the punishments for resisting.

The best piece of wisdom I ever received about combat sports didn’t come from any of my coaches; it came from a gambler who used to come by and watch the training at my MMA academy. One of our best fighters had just had their first submission victory in the UFC. He was a submission wizard, one of the best grapplers in North America at the time. His name was Karo Parisyan, and everyone at the academy was expecting a pile of broken limbs in the UFC.

Karo had just tapped all of us out in a grappling ironman as he prepared for his second UFC fight. That’s when the gambler told me, “You all tap in the gym because there’s no money on the line. When you have a fighter who’s really desperate for money, he ain’t gonna tap.” He was being hyperbolic, but he wasn’t lying either. Karo’s first submission victory in the UFC was also his last. Money doesn’t just change training/ sparring, imagine how differently every martial arts or self-defense demonstration would go if the person who was being thrown around were told that they’d get ten thousand dollars for stopping all the instructor’s moves?

Along with added resistance, there is less time being spent on the ground because of fewer takedowns. There are fewer takedowns because there are fewer attempts. In 2019, out of 19 title fights, only seven of them featured a fighter attempting five or more takedowns, or 37%. Some matches only had one fighter attempting takedowns. Some matches had zero takedown attempts by either fighter. In submission ace Demian Maia’s last fight against Ben Askren, Maia attempted zero takedowns as well. In 2013, the UFC also had 19 title fights. 11 of these fights had at least one fighter attempting more than five takedowns (58%). There were also five submission finishes, that’s 26% compared to 5% in 2019.

Then what matters more, how you fight or winning? Dana White has said through his words and actions that what matters is how you fight. The UFC has cut winning fighters after a single loss because they didn’t like how they fought—Liz Carmouche and Elias Theodorou are just two examples.

For Carmouche, that not only meant being released after a world title fight but also while doing unpaid promotional work on behalf of the UFC. She also lost income from her day job. Even after challenging for two UFC titles, Carmouche is still unable to support herself with fighting alone. Expenses not being covered for a fighter the UFC doesn’t like is not uncommon, as Leslie Smith had similar issues.

Smith, along with Kajan Johnson were outspoken in trying to get UFC fighters more rights and freedoms. They were not only punished and released by the UFC, but essentially blackballed. It took Smith several years before she was able to sign with another promotion, and Johnson has yet to fight again. Even marquee fighters like Cris ‘Cyborg’ Justino are unable to avoid the UFC’s punishment when speaking out against unfairness and poor treatment. The UFC mistreats you and then, to add insult to injury, punishes you for feeling bad.

Former UFC champion Tyron Woodley has often wondered out loud why UFC fighters can’t get the same treatment as athletes in other sports, but like most other fighters, he can’t point out the glaringly obvious: NBA, NFL, NHL, MLB, MLS, all have unions. During the height of the 1980s professional wrestling craze, former NFL player Gene Upshaw told Jesse Ventura during a chance meeting, “You boys need to unionize”—professional wrestlers had no power otherwise. The WWE squashed Ventura’s union hopes before they even started. The UFC is playing out of a playbook pioneered by the WWE and Vince McMahon.

Professional wrestlers have figured out a workaround for the lack of a wrestler’s union. Ever wonder why so many pro wrestlers appear in B-movies? Wrestlers become actors to join the Screen Actor’s Guild. MMA fighters have already begun to follow this secondary playbook. Ironically, some are even finding that they can get better pay and treatment in the WWE.

The UFC’s punishment can even follow fighters outside of the promotion. In the case of ‘Cyborg,’ the UFC purposely hurt her ability to negotiate by stating publicly they were not interested in her, she was not in negotiations with the UFC, and that they would not match any offers. Furthermore, other promotions do not want to be on bad terms with the UFC. The UFC’s punishment can be like a scarlet letter, haunting fighters their whole career.

Then there are “exciting” fighters like Takanori Gomi, who was allowed five UFC losses in the row, all via first-round finish (4-14 overall in UFC). There’s BJ Penn who’s always in a “scrap,” yet hasn’t won a UFC fight in his last eight appearances. The promotion only released him due to Penn’s personal legal issues. Phil Baroni, Chris Leben, and Andrei Arlovski have also had similar treatment.

BJJ black belt José Aldo, who comes from one of the winningest BJJ teams, Nova União, and trains under BJJ legend André Pederneiras, rarely fights on the ground. This is such a common sight in the UFC that when a commentator explains the origin story of a feared striker, they only need to say, “They got introduced to BJJ as a teenager, and the rest is history.” BJJ is a ground fighting art, so how does that explain why they only strike? It doesn’t. But the fans are so used to seeing this incongruity, it no longer stands out. Aldo fights the way he does because it’s the style the UFC likes. Aldo has lost his last two fights and five of his last eight, yet he is currently in talks for a bantamweight title match.

What if you fight like Ryan Hall, who is aptly nicknamed ‘The Wizard,’ for his slick submission skills and insistence on fighting on the ground? You end up fighting less than once a year. Hall is also one of the only TUF (The Ultimate Fighter) tournament winners to have never competed in a main event, and the only TUF winner to never main event while being undefeated in the promotion. In his last match against Darren Elkins, Hall attempted only one takedown. The rest of the fight, Hall, the grappling ‘Wizard,’ fought as a kickboxer, knocking Elkins down twice. If given enough time, the UFC’s operant conditioning always works.

Getting an opponent to the ground and attacking submissions in a prizefight is lots of work, but submissions only count when successful. Near submissions curry little favor with the judges or the UFC, whereas almost knocking an opponent out can automatically win the fighter the round, and possibly gain the attention of Dana White. Under unregulated MMA capitalism, the work to reward ratio for submissions is often not worth the effort.

The UFC itself drafted an 80-page analysis for fighters that explains why it makes more sense to keep the fight standing. Mixed martial arts is becoming incentivized boxing with small gloves, with a little bit of other martial arts mixed in. And that’s what the UFC wants. Their system of control works; otherwise, they wouldn’t use it.

If the UFC truly were about who’s the best or discovering what the most effective tactics and strategies for winning were, it would stay neutral, trying to interfere as little as possible—allowing the sport to evolve naturally. That was once the point of the UFC, to discover what really works best in a fight. But that is no longer what the UFC is and no longer what the UFC wants.

Financial incentives even influence a fighter’s stance. A fighter’s fighting stance is akin to a painter’s palette—the art begins from there. So how do incentives corrupt something so sacred? Consider for a moment that, in spite of striking becoming the dominant style in the UFC, the majority of UFC fighters come from wrestling or some other form of grappling. This only makes sense because UFC is more lucrative than a wrestling (or grappling) career, but it would make little sense to transition from a high paying sport like football, basketball, baseball, or even high-level boxing to MMA. (When athletes do come over, it’s only as a second choice). Currently, more and more MMA fighters are requesting to go to boxing for the bigger paychecks.

In wrestling, along with other grappling arts, if you are right-handed, you stand with your right leg forward. In boxing and kickboxing, this makes you a southpaw. However, standing with your dominant side in the lead makes sense if you are trying to grab your opponent (for a righty, your right hand is now closest to your opponent). Though striking has become dominant, you can still grab and wrestle in the UFC. On one hand, standing southpaw means right-handed wrestlers are putting their most powerful limbs in the lead and power striking from their “weak” side. On the other hand, wrestlers are more used to wrestling and defending from this position.

Moreover, southpaws do disproportionately well in all sports. Only 10% of the general population is left-handed, but in MMA, it’s closer to 20%. As far as winning is concerned, being a southpaw is an advantage. Then why do wrestlers who are used to standing southpaw, switch to orthodox? When it’s a stance that they’re not only unfamiliar with but one that also undermines their wrestling? Because they want the ability to power strike with their power hand in the rear. In economics, this is called performance chasing, where one risks success for performance. In the UFC, what’s more important: winning or knockouts?

Realistically? Knockouts.

For this reason, spamming right hands is a hallmark of UFC striking (which influences the rest of MMA).

But, besides just their success, there might be a stylistic reason for the over-representation of left-handers. When there is a southpaw fighting an orthodox fighter, you have what is known as an open stance match-up. Picture an open book and the spine represents where the two leads meet.

Two fighters of the same stance would be a closed stance match-up since both fighters are standing parallel to one another. The open stance creates an opportunity for “collisions” where both fighter’s faces are open to running into their opponent’s power strike—increasing the likelihood of a power-hand slugfest. This is what the UFC likes. And if the UFC likes you, you’ll stick around.

You have the legendary fights of Anderson Silva, Nick and Nate Diaz, Robbie Lawler, Johny Hendricks, Conor McGregor, Lyoto Machida, Cro Cop, Rich Franklin, and as previously mentioned, Chris Leben, to name just a few southpaws. Leben lost five out of his last six fights. He didn’t leave the UFC because he got cut, but rather he retired from MMA, only to later come back. Leben was always involved in slugfests, racking up six post-fight bonuses. The personal cost of fighting the UFC way? An addiction to painkillers and a failing heart.

Compared to the Royce Gracie, Mark Coleman, Randy Couture, and Tito Ortiz eras, modern UFC looks a lot like boxing with more face-punching. As corrupt as boxing is, it doesn’t have the same incentives and punishments as the UFC, and also has more regulating bodies, as well as the aforementioned Muhammad Ali Boxing Reform Act. (Don King, for instance, takes far less of a cut than what the UFC takes from its fighters.) This is part of why you’ll see more body shots, more defense, and less spamming of right hands. Some will argue this is all about skill disparity between boxing and MMA striking. To that, I say, bring the same incentive/ punishment structure into boxing that the UFC employs, and we’ll see a lot of the technical aspects vanish.

UFC fighters train in all the technical aspects of combat, hiring specific coaches for each combative art. But one does not fight as they practice; one fights as their incentives demand.

Rather than killing boxing, as the UFC once claimed, the UFC now wants to become boxing. There are many parallels with Dana White and Vince McMahon. Dana White really wanted to be involved with boxing. He turned the UFC into something as close to boxing as he could. Now he wants to go all the way with Zuffa Boxing. Vince McMahon didn’t dream of being a wrestling promoter; he wanted to be in football. Much like McMahon and the XFL are trying with football (again), White wants to get into boxing the same way, as a monopoly that turns the sport into Hunger Games.

Perhaps only then will enough people notice it’s not the fighters or the trainers, but the incentives that drive behavior. What further analysis would a veteran boxing commentator need then, “They’re fighting like this because of the stupid way they’re being paid.”

“Excitement” was never about what the fans wanted; it was always about what Dana White wanted. If fans wanted boxing, they would have stayed with boxing. People turned to mixed martial arts to see the mixing of martial arts—to see variety, not something monolithic.

Maybe Dana White was right, and he will kill boxing. But rather than through competition, he’ll kill the host body from the inside—replacing a fighter’s will with maximized profits.