MMA - mixed martial arts training

Fashion and mixed martial arts. I live in California. My fighters live in California. Whatever stereotype you have heard about Californians is probably true. Especially when it comes to looks. In California, everything is based on appearances. This is directly related to the entertainment industry which is largely based in southern California. Pretty much any one who lives in southern California either works, has worked, or wants to work in the entertainment field. To go along with that, you have to look your best at all times. You can be horrible at your chosen profession , but if you look the part, you are half way there already.

Sadly this need to look good has spilled over into mma. Especially mma in California, when everybody looks good around you, it is important that you do as well. It makes sense though, when you spend hours and hours in the gym, you tend to look "good", a fortunate by-product of training. Hopefully, your ears and face are not so punished that it takes away from the rest of you. With your body all squared away, the next part is the clothes.

Sadly, every fight team in the world feels the need to use black for everything. It’s cheap, it’s a "serious" color, and its totally played out. Now more and more teams are starting to train less and experiment more with color. At the last show I was at, WEC 7, there were some blue fight shirts, a couple of red, and of course black.

pic by Dustin Fielding

A while ago, one of the fighters I manage, Randy Spence, was over at my house and saw the SFUK shirt I had on my couch. He loved it, it had no sleeves, it was black, had a bold title, and better yet, no one in California has one. If there are people in Cali with a SFUK shirt, we haven’t seen them, and we go to every show.

The point is, any fighter , just like anyone else, cares to some degree, even subconsciously what they wear. Even dressing "down" is a statement, and you can tell a lot by a fighter by what he is wearing. Some guys go for the confidence statement, like Shonie Carter, Mr. International himself, quite possibly the best dressed fighter in MMA today. Shonie’s statement is that he is himself, and doesn’t need to advertise what he knows or who he knows. This guy enters a room and you have to take notice. At the first UFC in Vegas, Shonie let me in on a little secret. "Dressing up" he said ," is all about matching, a five dollar hat can go with a 200 dollar pair of shoes, you just gotta take the time to match it all up."

Linland, Couture, Miletich & Mir

Other guys go for the "iron-man" approach and have every sponsor they can on them at all times, which is great for the sponsor but hard on them. I have seen guys wearing hats and long sleeve shirts in 100 degree weather just to give their sponsor some exposure. That is dedication.

Of all of the fashion and clothing decisions, none are more important than what you wear into the cage. Wearing your team name on a pair of shorts is an obvious choice, the next obvious choice is your sponsor. In mma there are two classes of shorts, the vale tudo short or the "board short" . This is traced back to underwear, boxers or briefs. Guys that wear vale tudo shorts are confident, and into comfort, guys that wear board shorts are confident and into comfort but for some reason do not like to appear like they are undressed.

Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu guys who train no-gi have no problem wearing the shorts to fight, but a lot of the guys who wear those shorts to fight, wear board shorts to train.

Here is the reason for this phenomenon. Americans are obsessed with sex and violence as every one likes to point out, however, growing up we are told to be "proper" and not expose ourselves. Most of the guys you pull off the street to train, if you gave them a pair of short vale tudo shorts, they would walk out. It ,for whatever reason, is not okay for guys in our country to wear shorts any higher than our knee caps. Yuppies in the 80’s experimented with that , and now that’s over.

As bold as we are sometimes, we are still fairly modest due to our religious, social and comfort requirements. In my next editorial, I will explain the next evolution In fightwear….