It's easy to forget, in today's world of UFC superstars, that in the early days of mixed martial arts there was a push from politicians to ban the sport. In the 1990s, Sen. John McCain (R–Ariz.) called it "human cockfighting," The New York Times editorial board called for the banning of its "extreme barbarism," and the state of New York even went so far as to enact a prohibition. This sort of no-limits combat, the argument went, was not a civilized form of sport or entertainment. It was just brutality.
Efforts to ban the UFC are only briefly mentioned in The Smashing Machine, the new movie about Mark Kerr, one of the sport's early pioneers. But the brutality is front and center. In the ring, Kerr demolishes his opponents, grappling them to the floor, pinning them down, and then pounding them into submission. The movie's title is his nickname, the man he became in the ring. But the point it tries to make, with varying degrees of success, is that there was no way to completely confine that brutality to the ring.
