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Social Studies of Science
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Producing Pain

Techniques and Technologies in No-Holds-Barred Fighting

Greg Downey

Macquarie University, greg.downey{at}scmp.mq.edu.au

Starting in 1993, the Ultimate Fighting Championship broadcast ‘no-holds-barred’ fights, pitting athletes trained in a variety of combat sports against each other. While critics were scandalized by the permissiveness of these contests, aficionados were stunned by the effectiveness of relatively non-violent fighting techniques. The matches revealed how resilient a trained fighter’s body might become. Fighters had to adapt to several waves of changes in fighting strategies and to strategic revisions of match regulations intended to make them more obviously violent. Seemingly minor changes in the tools available to contestants - ‘mundane technology’ such as the structure of the fighting space, standardized clothing and lightweight gloves - shifted radically how contestants’ bodies could be used. In addition, fighters modified their own bodies to make them better suited for the activity, for example, altering perceptions of pain. Ironically, the mass-mediated presentation of deregulated fighting revealed that, instead of being humanity’s natural state, it was technically demanding, dependent upon substantial enculturation of athletes’ bodies, and far from instinctual.

Key Words: bodily techniques • combat sports • innovation • skill

Social Studies of Science, Vol. 37, No. 2, 201-226 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/0306312706072174
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