In the midst of a popular boom in recent years, MMA remains a young sport in France as elsewhere. To understand the underside of the explosion of a sport first rejected before being adored, RMC Sport offers an original creation with an XXL and star-studded cast: “MMA Le Film”. An hour and forty-five minutes where the players in the discipline tell the story of the phenomenon from all angles.
“It’s the perfect sport for our times!” The most famous journalist on the MMA planet, Ariel Helwani summed up in one sentence an outcast who became a cash machine. Born a little over thirty years ago in its modern form, with the first UFC event in November 1993, MMA has swept away everything in its path in recent years. Until becoming the sport with the greatest popular growth across the planet. A phenomenon which took time to affect France, one of the last countries to legalize the discipline in 2020, but which quickly established itself as essential in the landscape of our country with an explosion of licensees, structures and events. And which deserved to be told and explained at length, mission accomplished in the latest original creation from RMC Sport: MMA The Movie.
>> Experience the best of MMA with RMC Sport offers
For almost two hours, an hour and forty-five to be exact, the story of a sport first rejected before being adored is told from every angle. A story that goes from the political-sporting underbelly of legalization in France to its media and popular explosion, with the examples Ciryl Gane and Cédric Doumbè, passing through its origin via the ancient pankration – and the relationship of human beings to violence – or the origin and development of the juggernaut UFC, a time on the verge of disappearing before becoming the largest organization in the world of combat sports with 1.3 billion dollars in revenue generated in 2023.
On the eve of the release of the first Netflix series dedicated to MMA, The Cage signed by director Franck Gastambide, MMA The Movie takes you behind the scenes of its filming with a focus on two very special actors: Jon Jones and Georges St. Pierre, considered two of the greatest fighters in history. The film is also interested in the darker sides of the discipline: the precariousness of fighters, like the French light heavyweight Nell Ariano who has to work at Decathlon because he does not earn a good enough living with his fights in the British organization Cage Warriors (for which he must take an RTT to arrive the day before), the physical dangers in the short and long term but also the battle against doping with very different intensity depending on the country in a sport where the bad apples remain present.
To recount the immense progress made by MMA in France as elsewhere, a dream cast has been brought together with more than fifty speakers interviewed in the four corners of the planet over the past two years. Other legends and great names of this sport accompany Jon Jones and Georges St. Pierre: Francis Ngannou, Khabib Nurmagomedov, Daniel Cormier, Royce Gracie, Randy Couture, Wanderlei Silva, Shogun Rua, Mark Coleman, Charles Oliveira, Michael Bisping, Alex Pereira, Michael Venom Page, Joanna Jedrzejczyk, Holly Holm or Alexa Grasso.
We also find the French superstar Cédric Doumbè and coaches, managers (including the most powerful in the field Ali Abdelaziz), pioneers of the discipline in France, leaders of the UFC (including the famous Dana White) and organizations French women, audiovisual managers, politicians, two former sports ministers, journalists, a sports historian or a sociologist. Without forgetting Franck Gastambide and Melvin Boomer, the star actor of the series The Cage. It’s a story that deserved its story. With a conclusion – embellished with a cinematographic reference – which tells of the present and outlines the future: “To all those who think of avoiding the wave… Good luck!” Hurricane MMA is not about to stop sweeping.
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