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While the sport of MMA has been around for over two decades now – emerging initially as a spectacle in 1993 with the advent of the first UFC show and then slowly developing into a true sport over the following years – it only truly broke into the mainstream when the first season of The Ultimate Fighter took off in 2005.
Suddenly, MMA was everywhere you looked and fighters like Chuck Liddell and Randy Couture became bonafide celebrities. And naturally, one of the telling points that the sport had truly entered into the public conscience was the release of various movies about – or at least heavily involving – MMA soon after.
Here are 5 MMA-based movies that any fan of the sport needs to see.
#1 Never Back Down (2008)
It took three years to give or take after the beginning of the TUF boom for the first real MMA-based movie to arrive, but when it did, it came with quite a bang.
2008’s Never Back Down was essentially a re-telling of 1984’s classic The Karate Kid, just with an updated setting and with MMA to replace the karate.
The movie tells the story of teenager Jake Tyler (Sean Faris), who, along with his mother and younger brother, has been uprooted from Iowa to California.
Upon arriving Jake is soon greeted by a love interest, Baja Miller (Amber Heard) and a new rival – high school bully Ryan McCarthy (Cam Gigandet), who happens to be the champion of a local underground MMA promotion known as ‘The Beatdown’.
Well, you can guess the rest. Jake takes a beating from Ryan in the opening third of the movie before finding his way into a legitimate MMA school ran by modern-day Mr Miyagi Jean Roqua (Djimon Hounsou), a Brazilian Vale Tudo veteran with some secrets of his own. And you’ve probably never watched a movie in your life if you can’t work out that in the end, Jake beats the villain, wins the girl and earns the respect of everyone – including Ryan himself.
Sure, Never Back Down is chock-full of cheesy lines (particularly from Gigandet’s Ryan), a bunch of plot holes (it’s never really explained why high school kids are able to fight in an underground MMA promotion) and it’s not as good as The Karate Kid, but for the most part it’s a lot of fun.
And the fight scenes, for the most part, are pretty solid – one even went viral on Youtube prior to the movie being released as if it were a clip from a real MMA show – meaning it’s worth a watch for any MMA fan. Just try not to think too deeply!
#2 Redbelt (2008)
Released shortly after Never Back Down, 2008’s Redbelt couldn’t be much further away from that movie if it tried, despite both sharing the MMA theme.
Written and directed by famed screenwriter David Mamet, while Redbelt is a movie that involves MMA, it also involves a hell of a lot more, which is probably why it wasn’t a massive success at movie theatres, despite gaining solid reviews from most of its critics.
Essentially, the movie’s plot is hugely convoluted, to say the least. Centred around Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu instructor Mike Terry (Chiwetel Ejiofor), it tells a story of corruption, greed and honour and involves a great number of characters and side characters whose motives aren’t explained all that well, such as Terry’s Brazilian wife Sondra (Alice Braga) and her MMA champion brothers Bruno (Rodrigo Santoro) and Ricardo (real-life BJJ whiz John Machado); attorney Laura (Emily Mortimer) and ageing Hollwood star Chet (Tim Allen).
To properly explain the plot is almost impossible, but it all comes to a head with Terry clashing with Ricardo in a backstage brawl during a big MMA tournament in which Ricardo is scheduled to face Japanese champion Taketa Morisaki (PRIDE legend Enson Inoue), and ends with Terry defeating the Brazilian to claim the red belt of the title, presented by elderly MMA expert ‘The Professor’.
So is Redbelt worth watching? As a movie, perhaps – although you’ll have to concentrate heavily in contrast to Never Back Down. In terms of the fight scenes though, probably not. Despite having Inoue, Machado and Randy Couture (who plays a bit-part) to help with choreography, the fights are filmed in such a way that it’s hard to really tell whether they look the part or not. In the end, it’s an MMA-themed movie that arguably tries to be too smart for its own good.
#3 Warrior (2011)
Undoubtedly the best of all of the MMA-themed movies released thus far, 2011’s Warrior received rave reviews from the critics and even saw Nick Nolte nominated for Best Supporting Actor at 2012’s Academy Awards for his portrayal of recovering alcoholic Paddy Conlon.
Perhaps the best thing about Warrior is the fact that while it’s a movie centred around MMA, the story it tells is one so much deeper, about the importance of family, forgiveness and the depth that some scars can run.
The movie tells the story of estranged brothers Brendan (Joel Egerton) and Tommy (Tom Hardy), their relationship fractured due to Tommy choosing to leave town with his mother rather than stay with their abusive alcoholic father Paddy (Nolte).
By the time the movie begins, Brendan is a high school physics teacher while Tommy is part of the US Marine Corps, but both men find themselves thrown into a winner-take-all, multi-million dollar MMA tournament.
And both men need to win, too – Brendan to provide the money needed to save his family’s home, Tommy to provide money for the widow of his dead Marine Corps friend.
Perhaps the one point of contention with the movie is that it’s a cliche for the tournament to come down to brother vs. brother, but then it’s the only logical way to conclude the story.
The fight scenes in the movie are fantastic, as real-life UFC stars like Nate Marquardt, Anthony Johnson and Roan Carneiro – as well as legit referee Josh Rosenthal – are all involved, meaning the fights come off as hard-hitting, and realistic too.
One pivotal match between Brendan and Russian champion Koba (Kurt Angle) in particular is phenomenal.
Essentially, Warrior is a must-see movie for any MMA fan, and even doubters of the sport would probably enjoy it. The movie was so good that 2015 saw it re-made in Bollywood, titled Brothers and basically following the same plot as the original. And unsurprisingly, it was a hit there too.
#4 Here Comes The Boom (2012)
Up until 2012, MMA movies had always been deadly serious affairs – even Never Back Down was only ever unintentionally funny. That all changed with the release of Here Comes The Boom, a comedy-drama starring longtime MMA fan Kevin James – a man who can often be seen in the crowd at big UFC events.
The story of Here Comes The Boom is a relatively simple one. James plays Scott Voss – a former Division I collegiate wrestler and now a biology teacher, desperate to raise $48,000 to save the music programme at his school. This leads him to a scheme involving a former MMA fighter (former UFC champ Bas Rutten) training him to fight – and lose – in a UFC fight, earning $10,000 in the process.
Of course, things go a little awry and it turns out Voss needs to win the fight to earn a $50,000 purse instead. Naturally, you can guess which way the fight between Voss and UFC fighter Ken Dietrich (Krzysztof Soszynski) goes, but while the ending is more clichéd than even Warrior’s final scene, the fights in the movie are a lot of fun and despite clearly being out of shape, James pulls off his role well.
The only problem? The movie isn’t as funny as it would hope to be, meaning a lot of its impact is lost behind the loud music and fight scenes. But with official UFC endorsement – the final fight takes place on a fictional UFC 176 card – and Rutten playing his role brilliantly, it’s probably worth a watch for MMA fans.
#5 Bloodsport (1988)
Okay, so Bloodsport – a Jean-Claude Van Damme classic from 1988 – pre-dates the generally accepted beginning of MMA by at five years. But try watching it and then denying that it’s essentially an MMA movie – if not one of the inspirations for the premise behind the original UFC tournament. The story follows Frank Dux (Van Damme), and his quest to win an underground tournament known as the Kumite to honour a dying promise to his sensei.
From there, of course, it’s classic MMA fare. The movie gives us basically everything that the original UFC event offered us – fighters from around the globe using different styles and different techniques in a winner-take-all, anything-goes tournament in Hong Kong.
Of course, there’s a healthy dose of Hollywood drama too, centering around the villainous champion Chong Li (Bolo Yeung) and his efforts to stop Dux from claiming his crown – including injuring his best friend and fellow contestant Ray Jackson (Donald Gibb). And a subplot involving Dux’s army superiors trying to track him down for going AWOL is largely pointless.
As for the fights? Sure, it’s not true MMA as we see in Warrior or Here Comes The Boom, but it could be argued that Van Damme’s fare is now more realistic than ever thanks to the efforts of flashy fighters like Edson Barboza and Anthony Pettis bringing in some of the wilder techniques to the Octagon. And the setting is certainly more MMA-based than Redbelt.
To be quite frank, if you’re an MMA fan and you’ve never seen Bloodsport, then you’re missing out on one of the most important martial arts films of all time.
What do you think about our list? Sound off your opinions in the comments section below!
