ABSTRACT
Despite early assertions regarding the salience of emotions in sporting activity (see Ferguson 1981; Maguire 1991b), the study of emotions remains marginal within the sociology of sport literature (for notable exceptions, see Allen-Collinson 2005; Lilleaas 2007). Emotions are important as they lead persons to corresponding modes of action. Emotion is produced by situations and is experienced as transformations of dispositions to act (Barbalet 2001; Katz 1999; Collins 2004). In MMA, fighters cite various ways in which they prepare themselves to fight including ‘getting psyched up’ and, in some cases, such Cartesian sayings as ‘mind over matter’. Whereas getting ‘psyched up’ is part of many high performance sports (see Snyder and Ammons 1993), there is very little research on how fighters experience and habituate to the experience of intense emotions associated with fighting situations. In this chapter I emphasize the importance of emotions prior to and during MMA fighting contexts.
