Face the Pain: Christian Nationalist Masculinity, Violence, and Mixed Martial Arts.

Donald Trump and his administration are intimately tied to the sport of mixed martial arts (MMA), with the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s (UFC) “Freedom 250” event on the White House Lawn being the most obvious illustration. With Trump’s presence in the sport, his Christian nationalist supporters have sought to capitalize on this relationship and integrate MMA into their larger socio-religious projects. While previous scholarship has noted how Muscular Christianity appears within MMA, this paper explicitly argues that MMA has become a vital part of the larger Christian nationalist project’s masculine domination, populist rhetoric, and violence. To understand this dynamic, this paper makes the case for seeing the Christian nationalist embrace of MMA within an adaptive methodology on both the national and local levels. To conclude, this paper highlights how MMA requires greater attention thanks to its place within the larger extremist ecosystem.