We analyze the fandom of MMA during the pandemic.
EAST LANSING, Mich. - March 11, 2020 will be a day that is remembered as essentially when the whole world stood still.
When the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 to be a pandemic on that day, sports, and life in general, had to stop without knowing when it might get started up again.
Not even two months later though, on May 7, the UFC held UFC 248, a Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) bout card - the first sporting event held on American soil since the pandemic started.
Credit Darin Baydoun
They took advantage of an opportunity to hold first serve on the entire sports market, but how many more fans did it gain from that? That’s the question we looked to explore on a local level in East Lansing, on the campus of Michigan State University.
Gutirrez looks to bounce back from loss, plus training and bouts hampered by pandemic.
EAST LANSING, Mich. – Mando Gutierrez has been through enough in his life to know losing isn’t something to worry about, especially for someone who calls MMA as his profession.
Gutirrez, a bantamweight fighter who was raised in Chicago and now fights out of Lansing, learned that lesson well recently.
Credit Mando Gutierrez
“Losses are inevitable in this game,” Gutierrez, 24, said. “I’d be lying, though, if I said it was sunshine and rainbows since my last fight.”
That last fight was Gutierrez’s first loss of his professional career, submitting to a rear-naked choke from Mo Miller at the Legacy Fighting Alliance (LFA) 90 event last September.
The student-run club has struggled during the COVID-19 shutdown of campus activities, but the love of the sport still burns.
EAST LANSING, Mich. – When Zachary Lockerman came to Michigan State University as a transfer student, he looked around his first Sparticipation event for a club that could align with his love for combat sports.
“I was trying to find boxing when I found the MMA (mixed martial arts) club stall, and they said to come check us out,” said Lockerman, who is a native of Delaware.
And the rest is history.
“I didn’t want to get into the wrestling aspect at first, but they said they do boxing, and I didn’t have to do anything else,” he said. “So, I took their brochure, and the rest is history.”