In the past few years, mixed martial arts has enjoyed remarkable commercial success. Some fans imagine that its popularity is a result of its vast technical superiority over traditional martial arts styles. But neither MMA techniques nor training methods are particularly innovative; much of what you see in the competition ring was pioneered decades or even centuries ago.
The recent success of the MMA product is best explained with a sociological model, not a technical one; and this model predicts an inevitable fall from grace. MMA will decay, like every style before it, into a traditional martial art.
MMA and the Product Lifecycle
MMA is more than a martial art, or combination of arts; it is a multi-million dollar industry. It is a product sold on pay-per-view television and in training halls across the United States and the world. And like any other object of commerce, it is subject to the product lifecycle.
Credit: Nate Bailey
The lifecycle model defines the different stages that all products travel through on their journey from birth to death. These life stages are marked by shifts in market awareness, profitability, and competition; and most importantly, by a migration in the psychology of the consumer.
Philosophically speaking, today’s MMA is an expression of heterodoxy, a rejection of traditions gone stale. As such, this modern style has attracted many of the best and brightest fighters: men and women who, in an earlier age, might have practiced a purer form of Judo or Taekwondo. In the language of business, these people are known as innovators and early adopters.
The vanguard of every product adoption curve is composed of such consumers. Statistically, these individuals are younger, richer, and more risk-tolerant than the marketplace as a whole. They prove a product’s potential, escorting it from obscurity to commercial success.
MMA: A Tradition in the Making
Pokemon and Digimon
Entering the this stage of rapid product growth, competition floods the marketplace. Producers introduce variations on the product, to target the mainstream and low-end consumer, with the goal of maximizing income. After Pokemon, we got Digimon; similarly, the UFC concept has been extended to dozens of televised MMA competitions and reality shows.
As the novelty and quality associated with the art starts to fade, early adopters will be the first to abandon it. Transitioning out of the growth stage into maturity (market saturation), MMA will be directed by a very different psychology.
Late adopters of any product are by definition conservative and risk-averse. They reject change, and embrace the familiar. These are the consumers of “traditional” martial arts products, and MMA producers will adapt to suit their tastes. To do anything less would be bad business.
So, industry marketing teams will re-discover the values of “discipline, respect and honor”—as profitable euphemisms for non-threatening social stability. Unpredictable elements of the authentic traditional practice, such as free sparring, will be de-emphasized. After-school “kiddie MMA” will rise to prominence.
Big business will choke the vitality out of modern mixed martial art, but we should not shed a tear for its demise. This is the circle of life, and hasn’t every decrepit traditional art we recognize today followed the same course?
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8 responses so far ↓
1 Thomas // Dec 1, 2007
I suppose that the death of MMA, as with all things, will be inevitable. However, the question lies in when and for what purpose. Right now, I’d say we’re still in the Early Adopters phase, maybe barely into the Early Majority phase. Boxing, by comparison, I feel has reached the Late Majority or Laggards phase, and has taken about two hundred years to get there. So how long will it take for MMA to reach the same state? Due to the unparalleled complexity of the game (I doubt any other sport is so free-form), I imagine we may be well into the twenty-third or twenty-fourth century before it starts to fade away.
2 Chris // Dec 1, 2007
Is boxing dead? By our modern standards, no–but those 18th and 19th century boxers who never knew the Marquess of Queensberry rules might have a different opinion.
I don’t think the technical complexity of MMA will lengthen its mainstream lifecycle, because as I tried to explain above, this is not a technical issue. Society is changing faster than ever before, and attention spans are shrinking.
3 Thomas // Dec 2, 2007
Well, I suppose the question is just how long do you think MMA’s mainstream lifespan will be? Society is changing faster than ever, and it can be argued that the free-form and unpredictable nature of MMA matches suit the current niche for combat sports. The biggest demographics for MMA are males in the early 20s, which leads me to believe that it will continue to grow and develop, sticking around for quite some time.
Side-note about martial arts lifespans: Do we consider traditional martial arts dead as well? It is inevitable that things will change, as you explained with boxing. The real training methods and environment for traditional gong-fu, karate, and taekwondo have all disappeared, and real qigong has all but vanished. Traditional art forms will never last forever, no matter how hard we try to keep them alive, because they’ll always change as time goes by.
4 proponitis G // Mar 25, 2008
do a bit of research and you will find that MMA is actually the oldest traceable martial art in the world originally known as pankration.
and yet you say it will become a “traditional martial art” what a joke MMA already has a firmer base in tradition than any other martial art that we know of other than boxing and wrestling
5 proponitis G // Mar 25, 2008
648 B.C till 2008 A.D thats 2656yrs and still going strong.
but maybe one day it will reach the “late majority” stage
6 Chris // Mar 25, 2008
proponitis G, this article is based on a distinction between Mixed Martial Arts techniques and the MMA commercial offering. As you noted–and so did I in the very first paragraph–MMA techniques are centuries-old. Why then is MMA marketed as an alternative to “traditional martial arts”?
Do a bit of research on psychology and market segmentation, and you will find the answer.
7 Chris // Mar 29, 2008
Ultimate fights expand to include kids (March 27 2008, Associated Press)
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[…] fairly describes most of the “traditional martial arts” marketed to the mainstream American public—but not, in my opinion, the authentic martial perspective and […]
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