Professor John Zilcosky from the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures and the Centre for Comparative Literature argues combat sports acted as a pressure valve in Ancient Greek society. 

Combat sports had a twofold purpose: to exhaust the athlete and, in doing so, fortify society. 

Combat sports in Ancient Greece

Gamified combat, or combat sports, have existed in communities recreationally for longer than our historical records can prove. In times of war, they were used as a training method, allowing those who won their duels to gain hero status. Tactics for war eventually changed, with battles being fought less as one-on-one, removing the possibility for the fame and glory warriors were once promised. 

With nowhere to quench their need for glory or to release their pent-up aggression, this posed a dangerous threat to the civility of Ancient Greek life. Around the same time, battle tactics began to change, combat sports became more popular in Ancient Greek society as a casual pastime. 

Instead of being internally frustrated ticking time bombs, combat sports took conscription-age young men to palaestrae — training grounds for combat sports — to exhaust themselves, form a sense of camaraderie with their peers, and compete for battle glory, erecting statues in their honour. 

Combat sports were first performed at the professional level in the ancient Greek Olympics. Events that were featured were wrestling, boxing, and pankration: a combination of the two former sports with no real rules. 

More commonly, everyday people participated in lower-level combat sports, including figures like Socrates, whose fighting abilities are often overlooked. While Olympians were professional athletes with sponsors, casual fighters were still able to let out any pent-up frustration and gain battle-glory, exhausting and placating them to act in a civil manner in everyday life. 

Does the pressure valve theory still hold up?

Combat sports are just as popular today as ever, and we borrow many of our current combat practices from the Greeks: a sense of honour in battle and a definitive ranking of winners and losers. 

In non-professional levels, many forms of combat sport have made their way around the world, we can see this with the opening of clubs for Brazilian jiu jitsu, judo, or anything else one’s heart might desire. Combat sports still act as a pressure valve in a similar way in Ancient Greece — athletes are exhausted, but they also are able to compete in a space with mutual respect, maintaining the Ancient Greek idea of “arete” or excellence, a pillar in combat sports.

On the professional level, the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) is more similar to what might have been practiced in Ancient Greece. While violent, the level of this combat is analogous to that of Ancient Greek athletes. Practitioners were just as willing to injure themselves — sometimes even die — for glory in their sport. 

Other outlets such as the World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) and celebrity boxing matches have taken on a life of their own, with much more spectacle. Combat sports today have mutated into different forms, just as everything does when it gains life in mass media and on the internet. It is televised and sensational, often an extension of internet engagement itself — whether it’s complex lore additions or publicized feuds. 

With fanship, the internet has completely changed the way we engage with combat sports. Many fan interactions and arguments on combat sports have moved online, which, according to Zilcosky, “might not… be fully satisfying because it’s all so remote.” WWE matches are often fixed, an aspect which is completely at odds with the Ancient Greek tradition. 

With all of these perversions of combat sport, can this new form of ‘combat sport’ still uphold the pressure valve theory?

Both the WWE and the UFC have deeply ingrained political connotations. UFC CEO Dana White spoke at the Republican National Convention last year, while President Donald Trump made multiple WWE appearances before his presidency. However, UFC matches have a dimension of reality that WWE fights lack, which “goes against Trump’s desire to control the political world,” Professor Zilcosky points out. 

“The fact that the fight is real means that you can’t control the outcome,” which is directly oppositional to Trump’s presidential model. 

On the other hand, the “WWE is a form of… soap opera,” argues Professor Zilcosky. “Because you can’t also say the melodrama of good and evil… is… not necessarily dangerous, but it opens itself up to the possibility of… the manipulation of human emotion: easily deciding who is good, who is evil, who’s on my side, [and who’s] the enemy.” 

He continues, “When it happens at WWE, it seems harmless, but if that model of the world is transported and transferred into politics, where the enemy becomes evil, then… you want not just to defeat him, but shut him down and not let him speak… it becomes extremely dangerous.” 

He concludes that the WWE in itself is not politically dangerous, but that it’s “open to political manipulation… [where Trump has] transferred a WWE model to famous campaign events where he tries to rile up his crowds.”

“I do see dangers in WWE that I do not see in, say, UFC.”

Being used as a political device, the WWE and similarly perverse combat sporting events rile up their audiences in a way that breeds aggression and contrarianism. In this way, the pressure valve theory — although functional on some levels — fails to account for celebrity boxing matches. 

The KSI versus Logan Paul boxing matches bred some intensely aggressive middle schoolers. Although WWE is not necessarily reflective of the future of combat sports, it still marks an important distinction where the pressure valve theory folds in on itself.