Have Asian Americans Arrived in Mixed Martial Arts?

By Jeff | Friday, July 6, 2012 | 8 Comments

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munozvsweidman Have Asian Americans Arrived in Mixed Martial Arts?

In 2008, this forum asked, “why so few Asian American in MMA? Four years later, Ben Henderson is the UFC lightweight champion, Mark Munoz is headlining UFC on Fuel 4, “Munoz vs Weidman,” Cung Le is on the main card of UFC 148, and Ed “the Filipino Phenom” Yagin recently beat a top contender in the featherweight division. Have Asian Americans arrived in MMA? I took at the UFC’s roster to find out, and here is what I found.

To gauge Asian American success in MMA, I took a look at the UFC’s roster as on June 30, 2012, figuring that the UFC has most of the world’s elite MMA fighters. I tried to figure out who was Asian American as opposed to Asian, and I included hapas like Ben Henderson and Charles Dodson in the numbers. In addition, I thought about Floyd Mayweather’s comment about MMA:

“And this is not a racial statement but there’s no white fighters in boxing that’s dominating, so they had to go to something else and start something new.”

While this statement is untrue (the UFC and Mixed Martial Arts have Brazilian roots), I thought that while I was looking at the roster, I might as well look at the number of African Americans too. My efforts generated the following table:

On a percentage basis, Asian Americans make up 4.2% of the total American fighters. That’s less than the Asian American 5% proportion of the U.S. population, but a lot higher percentage than the NBA (Jeremy Lin’s one divided by the total count of all of the players in the NBA). The UFC’s roster includes retired fighters like Randy Couture, Brock Lesnar and Chuck Liddell, so the actual percentages would be higher if I had excluded them. African Americans make up 7.1% of the total American fighters. That’s less than the 13.1% of the population, but definitely not the total whitewash that Mayweather claims, and the numbers should be higher if you take out those retired fighters. Also, two out of the eight current champions (including the interim welterweight champion, Carlos Condit) are African American, and with another champion, Brazilian Anderson Silva, clearly of African descent. Along with Brazilians of African descent, there are also African Canadians in the UFC.

Given those numbers, do I think that Asian Americans have arrived in MMA? With a current champion (Ben Henderson), contenders (Mark Munoz and Charles Dodson), and former champion (BJ Penn), and with the percentage of UFC American fighters close to their US population percentages, I would definitely say yes. Why is this so? I’d say that new lower weight divisions are one factor. Asian Americans can fight now at more comfortable weights – for example, Nam Phan had to fight at lightweight but now can fight at a more competitive weight of featherweight. I would also add that the UFC seems to see the value of being inclusive and marketing to ethnic communities. From having Cain Velasquez do Spanish language interviews and having Cung Le’s UFC debut in San Jose, the UFC seems to realize that there is value in inclusion.

(photo credit: UFC)

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WhiskeyJunkie

Nice article. Here’s my two cents.
Have Asian Americans arrived in MMA?
No. Why?
It’s simple. I’ll use a few examples from daily life here in my neck of the jungle in NYC.
-I’ve walked the entire length of 8th Avenue Brooklyn; a new vibrant mini Chinatown powered by new immigrants from various regions of China and SE Asia. Guess what?
Not one martial arts school by any of these newbies. Zero. Unless you count the school opened by an Latino *facepalm. The same thing occurs along the stretch of 86th St. Brooklyn.
-Uhgg….I was going to go on…It’s so depressing…Look in the parks. Observe the body types on the youths and adults on their daily routines. Ask around. I have. The responses are sad and chilling. Go ahead and ask if you dare: Name some of your favorite Asian American athletes.
Jeremy Lin is the most popular response. B-ball is the most favored sport. MMA or any other traditional (TMA) martial art is off the radar. Other favored activities outside of school or work? Card/video games, dance, making metrosexual social networking videos, etc.
Apathy, naivete, discouragement from family, and yes, cowardice are the reasons why AA’s have a VERY long way to go in the MMA. Encouraging teens, women, and adults in general about the benefits of any martial arts or ANY self defense training is usually met with blank stares, statistics, and condescension.
I was once asked how the Asian community in America would fair in the event of a race war….My response: “We should be fine. We have K-pop, Pokemon, Hello Kitty, J-Lin, and Far East Movement to protect us.”
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http://www.8asians.com/author/ancientone95131/ jeffat8asians

Glad you liked my article. My additional 2 cents. Examples to think why Asian Americans have arrived in MMA:

Driving to local mall in Asian San Jose – passed by a number of martial arts studios. Drove near little Saigon in San Jose – saw Cung Le’s Studio. Went to get a hair cut in heavily Asian Milpitas – sounds from Martial arts studios next door coming through the walls – looked at kids working out there – mostly Asian. Driving kids to school in the morning passing by the local park – group of Asians armed with swords doing Tai Chi.

Remember once watching an older Chinese lady in our local park practicing two sword forms (with real swords) while trying to watch her grandson, periodically stopping to make sure the kid didn’t wander off too far. Sorry lady, glad you’re practicing, but that’s definitely not quality time.

Asked Viet friend of the daughter with last name Le if she was related to Cung. She said, “I wish!”

A number of the Daughter’s friends (all Asian) studied jujitsu.

Line from Ryan Higa’s “Sh*t Hawaiians say”: “I can go ground, I watched BJ Penn on TV.”

We can cherry pick locations, but in some parts of Asian America, MMA and traditional martial arts are pretty big. BJ Penn is very well known in Hawaii. It’s worth noting that MMA is illegal in New York.
WhiskeyJunkie

Well Jeff,
Consider yourselves lucky. The Asians I’m surrounded by are…..no comment.
Everytime I hear of any Asians doing ANYTHING bodacious in “the arts”, most likely they’re located on the west coast. I just don’t know what gives.
Don’t get me wrong- This past New Years celebration I encountered a dragon
dance performed by teens of a Preying Mantis group. It’s good there’s some involvement- though I don’t see ANY hopefuls in the MMA department.
You see, I’ve asked myself what kind of solidarity exists in my neck of the woods. Most importantly, to what extent. Do we have more lovers or fighters? Being a lover is easy. Fighter? Well based on the MANY cases of victimization of AA’s and newbies, I’d comfortably bet the former.
Will a similar situation occur where prepared business owners band together to protect themselves (around my parts) and their property against scum, like what was done in Koreatown in L.A. during the riots.
My belief in the martial arts extends past MMA. It is a mentality. It includes
fisticuffs, arms, litigation, speech, poltics, and so on.
I eagerly await further news like you’ve written.
And yeah, Dana White IS working on NY. I’ve got my chopsticks crossed.
http://www.8asians.com/author/ancientone95131/ jeffat8asians

Regarding women in MMA (Tina’s question), the UFC itself doesn’t have a women’s division, but its Strikeforce division has a bantamweight division with 14 fighters, with 11 Americans. None are Asian American as far as I can tell. Gina Carano is on that list but hasn’t fought in a while as she is busy making movies.
mybiasbeatsyourbias

I think its a positive more asian americans are popping up. When I watched ufc fighting it was usually foreign asian male fighters. Most of them coming from japan. But I haven’t watched it for a while now. I figure an increase of thai,korean and japanese fighters would flood. Mma is on the rise in those nations. But also due to mma popularity a number of asian american should be the highest.
I don’t mind it one bit. I like korean zombie although he was a difficult time with his wieght class. That and a japanese figher. I can’t think his name but back home he was nickname sexy. Lol when fangirlness fails
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