MMA has managed to claw its way into movie pop culture, but only in small doses. Allow me to be your tour guide through a brief history of an unfortunate fad.
Pop culture has been best described as a "contradictory mixture of the authentic and the manufactured", to quote the scholar Stuart Hall. Whether in film, music, or literature, there is as much imitation as there is inspiration. It's taken awhile for MMA to slither its way into the pop culture consciousness, but it's there in small doses.
Initially I wanted to do something a little more "academic" with respect to "MMA culture" until I realized that it's well above my paygrade.