NYT: 'The Fight Club Generation'

[Newsjock]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/15/fashion/mixed-martial-arts-catches-on-with-the-internet-generation.html

... To this generation, who came of age alongside the notorious sport, mixed martial arts has come to represent everything that boxing once did to their fathers and grandfathers: the ultimate measure of manhood, endurance and guts.

... Critics dismiss mixed martial arts as nothing more than human cockfighting. Numerous attempts to legalize it in New York have been thwarted by antiviolence advocates. But to the men who have followed M.M.A. from its first days as a no-holds-barred blood sport, who grew up playing “Street Fighter 2” and arguing whether Jean-Claude Van Damme could beat up Steven Seagal, it is the fairest (and coolest) possible fight.

... Birthday parties with M.M.A. themes are now popular with the under-10 set. “We cut the cake with a sword, which is always a big hit,” said Chad Weiss, an owner of Westchester MMA-Fit a school in Mount Kisco, N.Y., which also runs an M.M.A. summer camp.

... Robert Thompson, a professor of popular culture at Syracuse University, ... agreed that the impact of “Fight Club” could not be discounted; it became a manifesto for a generation of boys who felt estranged from their masculinity. “It became this kind of magnum opus, and it described a certain culture of this kind of sport,” Professor Thompson said. “This was their thing, and they defined themselves accordingly.”