Chattanooga: MMA's appeal keeps growing

By Will Woodbery, Staff Writer

Shawn Hankins watched intently as two fighters began the first sparring session of a Wednesday night last month at the Chattanooga Fight Factory, a mixed martial arts training facility on Hixson Pike.

With a noticeable limp, Hankins skirted the perimeter of the red-matted area and shouted words of encouragement to one of the competitors, Jesse Grunn, a national amateur middleweight champion who hopes to turn pro in the near future.

“Man, I wish I was out there,” Hankins said, shaking his head.

Hankins was sidelined with a medial meniscus tear in his left knee, an injury he suffered while training in May for his second pro fight. He’s expected to return in three months.

For the 27-year-old Hankins, who turned pro last August, that’s not nearly soon enough.

“It’s the part where it’s different from football or baseball,” said Hankins of the one-on-one competition that is the basis of mixed martial arts, a hybrid of kickboxing, boxing, jujitsu and other various disciplines. “It’s just you and your opponent. You can’t blame anything on anybody else. When you lose, it’s your own fault.”

Avid competitors and rabid fans like Hankins are turning MMA from a side-gym attraction into a pay-per-view craze.

The Ultimate Fighting Championship, founded in 1993 and now one of the sport’s marquee organizations, has played a large part in MMA’s growing popularity.

In addition to perennially raking in millions from pay-per-view sales and sold-out arenas, MMA recently has begun to lay claim to coveted primetime spots on major networks. In attempt to reel in younger audiences, CBS featured former streetfighter and YouTube sensation Kimbo Slice, aka Kevin Ferguson, in the first ever MMA bout on one of the four major networks in May.

“It’s honestly the fastest growing sport in the world right now,” said Scott Schrader, a co-owner and instructor of the Fight Factory, along with Chad Miller and Chatt Lavender. Schrader operated a MMA training center in East Ridge before merging in May of last year with Miller and Lavender, both of whom had been grooming young fighters out of their basements.

“The popularity has increased because these fights are exciting,” Schrader said. “There are so many ways to end a fight. Instead of like boxing, where two guys just stand there and punch each other in the body and the head until somebody falls down.”

Some experts have suggested MMA has the potential to overtake boxing in popularity. Royce Feour, a contributor to ESPN.com and former boxing writer for the Las Vegas Review-Journal for 37 years, wrote in January that MMA’s burgeoning popularity is forcing boxing promoters to adapt and organize bouts more appealing to the public. Marc Ratner, the UFC’s vice president of government and regulatory affairs, told Feour that he believed boxing promoters perceived MMA as a “veiled threat.”

On a local level, MMA’s rise to prominence has meant more training resources are available to young fighters. Lavender, who was ranked fourth in the world at 170 pounds by one MMA organization in 2003, remembers when that wasn’t always the case.

“I didn’t have anybody teaching me like this whenever I was coming up and fighting,” he said. “I would travel all over the place. I had a circuit. I would travel from Nashville to Birmingham to Atlanta to find somebody to train with, to teach me some things.

“I can remember a time when I was fighting that I’d have to drive 10-12 hours, get paid $300 to fight, and now these guys don’t even know what that’s like. They don’t have to deal with that, which is good. It’s a little frustrating with the popularity of it now. Now it seems every other guy knows somebody who does it or think they do it. It’s like, ‘Man, I was doing this before it was cool.’”

But Lavender and his colleagues at the Fight Factory have embraced MMA’s mainstream appeal. In addition to training eager fighters looking to compete, they also welcome novices who simply love MMA and want to get in shape.

Kyle Freeman, an ordained minister for the Church of God, was working out for the first time at the Fight Factory last month. He said he enjoys watching MMA on television and wanted to try it himself.

“I’m worn out, but I’m having a blast,” he said.

He wasn’t alone: Grappling on the floor beside him was a professional chef. Sparring against Grunn was a car salesman.

“We get a weird variety,” Miller said. “Every day’s a different crowd. “You’ve got your athletes, but you’ve got your average guys, too. Even your average guys are tough.”

No matter how tough, all competitors at the Fight Factory are required to use gloves, a mouth piece and a cup.

But such protective measures weren’t always standard in MMA’s infancy.

“Weight classes were loosely enforced, if at all,” Lavender recalled. “Gloves were optional. It was a whole lot different than what it is now. You could head butt somebody, all kind of crazy stuff. Now, it’s developed into a legitimate sport.”

Despite stiffer safety regulations, the sport once described by Arizona Sen. John McCain as “human cockfighting” has had difficulty escaping its past reputation.

A CBS executive told Time Magazine in May he had qualms with the decision to broadcast MMA bouts on primetime, saying the network had a “social responsibility,” even if the decision made business sense.

Last year, Sam Vasquez, a mixed martial artist from Houston, became the first fighter to die from injuries suffered in a sanctioned MMA bout. American Doug Dedge died in 1998 after being knocked out in an unregulated fight in the Ukraine, the Houston Chronicle reported in December 2007.

“People can think we’re violent, and on the outward appearance, it looks like that,” Schrader said. “But these guys can get in here and hit each other and punch each other in the face, (but) nobody gets mad, upset. We’re all friends. Even the people we go compete against, you get in there and you’re literally trying to beat the guy until he stops. But when it’s over with, you go shake his hand, have a beer when it’s done, and there’s not really any hard feelings about the whole thing.”

Still, misconceptions surround the sport. Contrary to popular belief, eye gouging, for example, is not permitted in MMA matches, Schrader noted.

MMA competitors are often branded “street fighters,” a label that offends Hankins.

“That annoys me more than anything, because these guys out here are really training as hard as they can,” he said.

Indeed, Schrader believes there’s nothing unusual about those who willingly participate in MMA.

“There’s a reason to fight,” he said. “God’s given us aggression for a reason. Aggression is the thing that makes you get up and go to work in the morning. Aggression’s the thing that makes you want to go out and outperform the other guy that’s working with you to get that raise, to get more money.

“So why don’t we just recognize it, acknowledge it, and learn to control it and use it where it’s necessary? That’s a much more rational way of dealing with aggression than to just deny it and say, ‘Everybody needs to love everybody and get along.’”

E-mail Will Woodbery at sports@timesfreepress.com