De-sportization of fighting contests. The origins and dynamics of No Holds Barred events and the theory of sportization. International Review for the Sociology of Sport

Abstract On the basis of an empirical analysis of the emergence, spread and transformation of No Holds Barred fighting contests during the 1990s, we argue that Norbert Elias’s model of sportiza-tion represents a fruitful but not sufficiently differentiated framework for understanding the recent development of combat sports and fighting contests. Although the martial arts in the 20th century pro-vide striking examples of processes of sportization and para-sportization, the rise of No Holds Barred events in the 1990s represented an opposing trend, a process of de-sportization. The analysis of No Holds Barred contests demonstrates that both sportization and de-sportization trends depend primarily on the interests of the organizers, and in particular on the degree to which they rely on the perspectives of practitioners, spectators, or viewers. The decisive factor for the predominance of the latter perspective was the formation of a new and poorly regulated market for visual material, which emerged with pay-per-view television. This allowed media entrepreneurs to commercialize non-sanctioned events, which depend primarily on the demands and fantasies of viewers who are less interested in the specifics of particular sports or games than in the antinomian excitement produced by the transgression of the rules and conventions of ordinary life. The case of No Holds Barred fighting thus suggests that new markets for visual material are likely to become an important factor in th