Violence in combat: What MMA fighters say

Abstract

This paper makes a phenomenological analysis of the representation that MMA-Mixed Martial Arts-fighters have about their meaning and violence in their practice, having as a starting point their answers to the questions: "Do you consider MMA a violent modality?" and "What does MMA mean to you?". A total of 43 professional fighters, living in 8 Brazilian capitals, were interviewed between 2016 and 2017. The analysis, based on the intentional crossing, explores the basic strata of the MMA practice's own representations, indicating that the perspective of a sensitive object body is compatible with the attribution of violence, but the perspective of the operative subject body is not, which enables the understanding of the existentially positive meanings that MMA has for them.