Juiced in it - Conor McGregor and the UFC's capitalism

These days, it’s hard to remember the mixed-martial artist Conor McGregor before all the riches and fame. In recent years McGregor has established himself as one of the most famous men on the planet: a man who pervades the spectacle to such a degree that even people of no interest in mixed-martial arts are fully aware of what he looks like, how his voice sounds and what he does. At the root of McGregor’s fast rise to global fame has been his ability to attract the media cameras by boasting about both his fighting talent, and the obscene amounts of money his talent has afforded to him to earn. But at the start of his fighting career in 2013, calm, without swearing or raising his voice, McGregor can be seen informing the cameras of his fundamental beliefs: that he is open, drawing inspiration from anything he sees in life – just anyone chasing down any old dream… whether you’re a day one beginner or not whoever you are…I’m always tryin to take things, always tryin’ to learn…just wanna absorb everything.

The interviewer asks McGregor, at this point living at his parent's house, jobless, what he wants from his career - What I want? I don't want anything. I am everything I wanna be, I’m already there- I have everything already. Too many people are always asking what they want, you get too into that, just want want want. I have everything I need already.

There are no grand claims, or statements of desire to have it all. McGregor speaks with stone sharpness of a fierce devotion to his art and with the wit of a man who has considered himself with genuine honesty. But as his stature grew and wealth beckoned, McGregor started to scream, using the pre-fight hype machine as a chance to parade and relentlessly bolster his ego. In 2015 he told Brazilian opponent Jose Aldo that he wanted to ‘turn his favela into a Reebok sweatshop’ and began boasting that he effectively owned the UFC, so central was he to their revenue and so enormous the stock of his own wealth. After a year or two of turning professional, every new pre-fight interview would hear McGregor repeat the same old lines: I’ve made more money in this game than anyone else, all the sponsors need me! I just want to reach $100 million now…any fighter I fight owes me for their life, their fight deal with me makes them for life.

The old McGregor, an upstart from the working-class suburb of Crumlin, south Dublin, is worth remembering, however. Because as he turns up at each new press conference throwing about cups of whiskey and wads of cash, it is all too easy to fall into the trap of casting him as a proletarian let-down, a man who has found himself suddenly at the height of world fame and fortune but without any remote sense of the care and thought needed to handle the position properly. McGregor did have some of this at one point in time, not too long ago, and the question left to dwell upon is what on earth, in the interim, has managed to go so wrong.

I honestly believe there is no such thing as self-made. I believe that is a term that does not exist. For me it certainly doesn’t. The people who have been around for my whole career... This night and this moment is for them

Comparisons of late have been made between McGregor’s loud-mouth style and that of Muhammad Ali. These comparisons have been rightly ridiculed: of course, McGregor has none of Ali’s politics whatsoever and appears to have embraced nihilism so completely that he now sees racism and homophobia as simple fair game when it comes to promoting a fight. The comparison is intriguing however, in taking stock of two different lives working out in completely different contexts.

Crucially, Ali had segregation and an entire Civil Rights Movement to rally against and with, spurred on intellectually by chance encounters with the Nation of Islam on the streets of Chicago. His politicisation and development into a counter-cultural figurehead paralleled his rise to international fame almost precisely. The introspective musings of McGregor conversely, appear to have wilted as fame and money prodded away at the darker elements of his psyche. For McGregor, who grew up in the hushed shadows of the so-called Celtic Tiger, the UFC became an all or nothing shot at a life away from the mundane and destitution of estate life. Where Ali had the NOI, McGregor has Dana White, the businessman who helped buy out the UFC for $2 million in 2001, selling it for $4 billion as much as fifteen years later.

The UFC was dreamt up in 1993, by an advertising executive, a film producer and a martial arts coach. The idea was to create Entertainment, selling off a unique style of brutal, no-holds-barred cage fighting on television, with rules being added literally on the fly as a response to injuries sustained in the cage. Dana White’s guidance saw the UFC catapulted into international renown, with the recent McGregor-Khabib fight selling an estimated 2.4million pay per view tickets. As the ‘00s wore on, the UFC purchased off rival competitions both at home in America and in Japan, establishing a firm monopoly in the world of competitive cage-fighting. It’s this monopoly that allows the UFC to hold its fighters to such exploitative contracts. One of these contracts, leaked in 2013, held a clause stipulating that the fighter’s deal could be completely cancelled in the event of a defeat, regardless of how long the fighter had originally signed up for. Another clause handed full marketing rights over the fighter’s name to the UFC and another stipulated that the fighter must even gain the UFC’s consent over any tattoo-designs they wish to wear.

The average UFC fighter is said to earn $42,000 a year. As Scott Harris explained in an article for Bleacher Report, this would constitute a respectable working wage were we not to consider the particularly short careers fighters endure, and also the extreme risks involved in cage-fighting. The health insurance afforded to fighters is minimal, with fighters expected to pay severe premiums (reported at over $1,000 per injury) before being covered. Harris tracks down fighters braving long, cold winters in sleepy American towns to try and make the UFC. While the initial financial reward is minimal, the dream of one day signing a mega-deal to fight a Khabib, Ronda Rousey or McGregor ensures the fighters keep coming back. Many of these fighters, who go well under the radar of the international media work tirelessly in low-paid secondary employment, supporting families and trying desperately to squeeze enough time out of their lives to make a successful, lucrative fighting career possible. Fighters are often called to UFC tournaments at particularly short-notice, sometimes only having a matter of weeks to prepare for a fight. The sheer desperation of budding competitors means the tournament has the upperhand in picking who plays, and as one fighter describes to Harris, ‘when you keep a lot of your staff starving, they’re a lot easier to control’. While the bulk of its fighters struggle to keep afloat, the UFC’s holding company creamed over $700 million profit in 2017 alone.

Functioning essentially as a ‘gig economy’ for professional fighters, UFC embodies the anxieties of neoliberalism like no other sport. Individuals lured in by the chance to earn a big, fast buck work tirelessly in unprotected conditions, desperate to land the ‘big contract’ that’ll turn their life around. The competition hands out crumbs to fighters chasing a promise of the big-time, exploiting them ruthlessly in order to accumulate obscene volumes of capital and establish market dominance. Much like the marketplace itself, it’s a cowboy free-for-all disguised as a black-tie dinner-dance.

This mad scramble for cash drives the kind of spectacle we see McGregor at the forefront of. With each successive fight McGregor – as if being pulled and pushed on Dana White’s puppet strings - has forced the boundaries of etiquette and fighter respect to a new breaking point, desperate to do anything he feels will attract more attention for the competition. And interviews of McGregor before the recent Khabib fight showed a man in the throes of anxiety. Fidgety, cheeks scorched red, the twinkled-eyed serenity of only five years ago stamped out in a furrowed frown of anger, contorting itself into whichever scream and string of words it believes will up the pay packet yet more. As if his skin and bones have been thrown through the factory grinder with his heart on ice, now reassembled in a suit, whiskey brand to hand, in zombie-capitalist form before the world’s eyes.

It was hard not to feel somewhat sorry for McGregor, broken on the canvas against Khabib, his loud mouth and flesh being pounded into the floor. George Plimpton once said that the end of a fight always brings ‘mixed emotions’, because it’s hard not to see someone who only moments earlier looked so ‘formidable’, so ‘titanic’, now slumped on the ground in defeat. McGregor riled Khabib all along the pre-fight hype trail, insulting his Muslim beliefs and Dagestani heritage. Khabib asked for some kind of explanation for the racism, demanding ‘LETS TALK’ while laying blows to McGregor’s head in the ring. All McGregor could say in return as the bell rang out for the end of third was a limping, meek ‘it’s just business’. Surely at that point even in McGregor’s head, a voice would have been asking him if it was all really worth it. McGregor’s coach Jon Kavanagh, being interviewed the week after the fight, expressed his own frustrations with trying to train someone so cobwebbed in ‘business’ commitments, the suggestion being that the fighter has taken his eye too far away from the ball in recent years. Kavanagh insisted he’d need to lock McGregor down in the event of any rematch, taking him away from the bright lights of fame for half a year and into a training camp where he can focus without distraction. One wonders if such a programme could see a transformed, more reflective McGregor; the introspective musings and philosophies of 2012 renewed and more aware, aware of the dangerous trappings and hubris that arrive with the seemingly never-ending sunshine of celebrity.

That’s what happens with older people…they just wanna turn up and spar and roll…but they’ve stopped tryna learn…when that happens you’re getting ready to lose

The UFC has seen recent hints towards unionisation among some fighters. The barriers to this have proven resolute thus far. Fighters have no unifying groups or teams to facilitate building unions together. And the UFC has worked hard to ensure that any sign of mounting opposition is stifled. The latest attempt at unionisation, led by female fighter Leslie Smith was launched earlier this year, under the name Project Spearhead. The campaign promises to fight the long battle of signing up 30% of the UFC’s roster, at which point the National Labor Relations Board has to decide whether or not fighters can be classed as employees of the UFC. If they are, it would surely elevate the plight of gig economy workers even further, securing solidarity for Deliveroo and Uber workers on a worldwide platform. And to have a man of McGregor’s stature rattling and bristling away before the world’s cameras, showcasing not a new whiskey brand or a new found taste for racism – but pure working class solidarity – one wonders how a spectacle like that could affect our dreams, our ambitions and the economic condition of the world we work in.