The Inefficiency of MMA's Market System

The beauty of MMA is in its variety. Variety is why it feels like anything can happen. There are countless techniques and numerous martial arts to pull from. However, though variety is why a seven-course meal is exquisite, it's also why you can make terrible food combinations at a buffet.

Depending on the fighter, MMA is fine dining or a lousy buffet. That gap is what economists call "inefficiency." For example, in real estate, one house can go for a million dollars, and another home down the street can go for half that price. Why? The price discovery is inefficient.

A multicourse meal at a fine dining establishment might have hundreds of ingredients, so how is it different from a buffet? It's about what you do with those ingredients. Various martial arts create mixed martial arts, but how well they fit together is what makes good mixed martial arts. The discovery of good mixed martial arts is what's inefficient.

What is a buffet? It's a place where you can dictate what you want to eat. The default is to allow your impulses to dictate your decisions rather than maximizing food combinations and serving sizes for the best experience. The assembling of martial art combinations is similar to the open market of a buffet.

Though a seven-course meal and a buffet can have the same items, the main difference isn't quality but framework. For example, an excellent Italian meal might have a variety of plates, but rather than a random menu, it's all Italian cuisine. Likewise, good mixing of martial arts requires a consistent framework. The framework guides your decisions and constrains blunders.

Saying you train MMA is like saying, "I'm opening a restaurant." It's too open-ended to tell us anything. What's the theme?

For example, Stephen Thompson's framework is point karate. How he kicks, boxes, and clinches are informed by point karate. Wrestling to get back to his feet and creating distance is all dictated by his karate framework. Thompson is not working from unlimited options but a set menu for unlimited possibilities. This allows undivided attention for execution and variation.

For instance, Thompson's side kick is his answer for multiple situations and is never thrown the same way twice. He's never in a dilemma of deciding whether to block, flying knee, or spinning back-fist. He's always doing karate.

In muay Thai, a push kick isn't just a push kick, it's part of an overall system of defense and setups. For a boxer, it's the jab. These techniques don't appear randomly but by design.

A system (framework) leads to consistent results, both good and bad. Taken more broadly, if you don't like the results, attack the system, not just the results. If you want better results, look at your system (or lack thereof.)

Great MMA fighters are always studied. What's being studied? Their systems. Without a system, there's nothing to break down. There is no recipe to discover. Being unpredictable and hard to analyze doesn't make you a great fighter but a beginner.

Having a system or a consistent framework means your experiences don't go into a vacuum, it's building and perfecting a system.

Something as simple as a jab or push kick can stifle fighters who don't know what they want. If neither fighter has a system, then it's about physical attributes and unforced errors.

In boxing, you only have to worry about boxing. Most of your decisions have already been made for you. Now it's about who's best at the same system. But since MMA allows for various systems or no systems, your constraints and parameters are undefined. It's inefficient.

In boxing or muay Thai, your sport is your system. That's not the case for MMA. Rather than having your sport define your parameters, you must self-define your constraints and parameters.

Inefficiency in economic terms is the inability to get to a consensus. Other sports are more efficient than MMA because they have fewer variables. For example, the consensus in basketball is that three-pointers are critical for scoring points, and whoever scores more wins. But in MMA, there are multiple ways to win and score points.

Scoring points is subjective in MMA and constantly evolving. You can't come to a consensus in MMA the same way as you can for other sports. The closest thing to a consensus in MMA is that wrestling is important, which is different from what the UFC tells its fighters: to forget wrestling or defense and only go for knockouts. The political and economic forces in MMA disrupt efficiency.

More broadly, all markets are inefficient because there are forces invested in keeping markets inefficient. Capitalism is inefficient by design because the profit-motive contradicts efficiency. Efficiency would mean better things would constantly replace older things, but the accumulation of profit and the lack of self-regulation mean older things are so entrenched, rather than being replaced, they lead to the ultimate inefficiency: monopoly (dictatorship).

Regardless of who's running the US government, so long as it is capitalist, one could argue that Apple is the president of our reality because our reality is increasingly the Internet, and most of the US engages the Internet through an Apple product. Nearly everything runs through Apple.

There is a dominant belief that the best style for MMA is no style and that specializing early in generalization makes for the best MMA. But in reality, fighters with a bottom-up primary framework have an advantage over generalists. Rather than aimless MMA, a primary framework gives fighters a primary MMA language, allowing them to pull from other languages for strength and clarity. Without a primary language, it's hard to have cohesive thoughts.

In theory, a formless fighter has everything to draw from, but in practice, having a framework eases decision-making and gets more done.

Just because you can do everything doesn't mean you should do everything. For example, a pizza can have a near-infinite number of toppings, but when you actually put everything on it, you no longer have a pizza but a hot mess. A pizza with a good base of dough, sauce, and cheese, on the other hand, doesn't need much else.

Trying to wield all of martial arts is impractical. Imagine a sandwich filled with 20 items. It might sound good in theory, but do you have a mouth big enough to eat it? Let alone a palate that can differentiate that many flavors? Likewise, do you have the mind and body capable of juggling infinite moves when humans are notoriously bad at multitasking or remembering?

You can talk about being like water because being like water is a metaphor. But actually try to be like water, formless, and you'll be like Applebee's. A hot mess.

MMA allows for various methods for victory, but how do you plan to win? Are you building toward something, or are you laying down bricks at random?

Due to UFC's incentive system, grapplers often chase knockouts, but systems and goals work best when aligned. Georges St-Pierre used the jab to keep his opponents upright with their hands up to set up his blast double. Since his opponents feared the takedowns, the jabs landed. Since the jabs landed, his opponents were unable to defend the takedowns. His system reinforced his goal. A goal-aligned system paints your opponents into a corner. Aimless MMA has no corner to paint.

For St-Pierre, his primary system (framework) was wrestling, and his goal was to force his opponents to wrestle and lose by decision (or worse).

In systems-based MMA, everything matters, everything belongs, everything makes sense, and everything drives toward a goal. Aimless MMA, on the other hand, has loose ends, plot holes, and setups without payoffs. It's an explosion of bricks rather than a house. The absence of a framework.

Flukes are always a possibility in MMA, but consistent winning requires reliable and clearly defined paths to victory. Limitless decisions, on the other hand, lead to confusion, and confused fighters lose at the hands of opponents who know how they want to win.

The inefficiency of MMA's market system is the chasm of guessing vs. knowing. Knowing doesn't mean knowing everything. Instead, it means constraining the parameters until it is predictable and knowable. A framework.

⁂

(If you like my work, please support me on Patreon or make a one-time donation on Ko-fi. Find Southpaw at its website. Get the swag at Spring. Also check out Liberation Martial Arts Online.)