Race, gender and MMA fandom – imagining Asian masculinities in the online forum of the UFC fan club

Abstract The growing visibility of male Asian Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) fighters and the cultural affinity between martial arts and Asianness call for reassessment of dominant racial and gender stereotypes. This study examines online UFC fans’ discursive formulation of four dominant scripts surrounding Asian masculinities and mixed martial arts (MMA) fighting – the othering script, the inferior script, the martial artist script and the hypermasculine script – which contradict each other internally and externally with the cagefighting bodies of male Asian fighters. While fans often construct male fighters’ Asianness as a source of athletic inferiority and otherness, they also celebrate these fighters’ achievements to act upon UFC’s hypermasculine script of MMA. The heteronormative underpinnings of these accounts, however, render the ‘selective authorisation’ of Asian masculinities problematic. A new conception of normative manhood independent of toxic hate, physical domination and heterosexuality is needed to envision genuine emancipation for marginalised and subordinated masculinities in sports.


Introduction
Sport cultures reinforce normative social divisions through the regulation of differentiated 'expectations' about sport performance tied to body, race and gender. In physically demanding sports in the US, Asian men are often subject to what Wertheimer (2006) terms 'the soft bigotry of low expectations' (cited in Park 2015): Their physical bodies are posited as inferior, their invisibility is taken for granted, and their athletic success comes as a 'surprise. ' Successful Asian athletes are often constructed as anomalies to dominant stereotypes, which characterises their troubling presence in the 'unexpected places' of professional sports as 'unnatural' and 'exceptional' (King 2011). Nevertheless, this perceived mismatch is increasingly questioned and complicated in the expanding sporting realm of mixed martial arts (MMA), notably represented by the promotion of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). Since martial arts have long been a marker of Asianness in Western societies (Bowman 2016), the mediated spectacle of MMA easily invites promotional cross-references from popular imageries of ' Asian' martial arts. Since the acquisition of the Japanese MMA promotion Pride by the UFC's owner Zuffa in 2007, there have been growing numbers and media visibility of Asian fighters in the UFC, such as the male Japanese Brazilian former light heavyweight champion Lyoto Machida, the male South Korean featherweight 'fight of the night' king Chan Sung Jung, and the female Chinese strawweight champion Zhang Weili. The 'hypermasculine' cagefighting bodies of these successful Asian fighters call for a discursive reworking of dominant stereotypes surrounding race, gender and martial arts. The UFC is constituted as an ambivalent site representing sporting Asian bodies, where Asian masculinities are not simply the 'other' of a normative ideal but rather objects of 'selective authorisation' (Hirose and Pih 2010) that simultaneously empowers and denies: an open-ended, asymmetrical process demanding critical examination.
This study highlights this race-masculinity nuance in the UFC by examining the construction of Asian masculinities in online fan discourses. It begins with a general discussion of the UFC's perpetuation of gender and race in its mediation and promotion campaigns and proceeds to the topic of MMA fandom and dominant narratives about Asian masculinities in the US vis-à-vis sport and martial arts. Next, it offers an analysis of the discursive construction of three popular male Asian fighters on the official online forum of the UFC Fan Club by focusing on how these fighters' Asian masculinities are negotiated in relation to four racial and gender scripts that inform their imageries inside and outside of the cage.

Perpetuating masculinity and race: the UFC's mediation, promotion and fan culture
As argued by Bowman (2020, 398), 'the very existence of MMA as a discursive entity was primarily determined by its media existence. ' While the UFC is not the earliest 'mixed' martial arts contest, it is the most important in constructing and popularising its imageries through pay-per-view (PPV) events, reality shows, video games and multimedia promotions. In the 1990s, the UFC marketed MMA as a form of 'no-holds-barred' combat that incorporates brutality and hypermasculinity (Downey 2014). In response to criticisms of its violence, a system of rules, regulations and protections was later applied, while the promotion began launching media campaigns to expand to a 'mainstream' audience (Mayeda and Ching 2008). The TV broadcast of the reality show The Ultimate Fighter (TUF) in 2004 marked a turning point, initiating an explosion in the UFC's PPV buys and media visibility. With growing commercial success, the UFC eliminated competition by buying out other promotions, establishing its dominance as 'the largest Pay-Per-View event provider in the world' (The UFC 2020). Despite its regularisation, the UFC continues to emphasise ideas about the 'authenticity' and 'realness' of violence in mediations (Downey 2014;Walters 2020), which can be easily aligned with subjectivities of 'toxic masculinities' (Spencer 2018). To boost PPV buys, the UFC perpetuates the gladiatorial spectacle borrowed from boxing and wrestling (Wertheim 2010) to exaggerate a raw, unmitigated masculinity resembling American 'working-class' ideals (Hirose and Pih 2010). While the UFC began headlining female fights and engaging female fans in promotions after the first women's UFC in 2012 (McClearen , 2018, women fighters continue to struggle against the masculinised caricature that subjects them to a heterosexist economy (Jennings 2015;Weaving 2014).
The UFC's mediated perpetuation of racial differences is also problematic. As part of its efforts to mainstream and expand viewing markets, the UFC highlights fighters' racial identities to create impressive images that are simultaneously 'different' and streamlined . These mediated images largely follow preexisting, stereotypical caricatures in combat sports, such as white working-class manliness (Rhodes 2011) and black people's inherent athletic ability (Fischer and McClearen 2020). Regarding the decline of boxing -a sport currently dominated by racial minorities -Cooley (2010) mentions how MMA successfully attracts flocks of white boxing fans with its superior skill at branding white champions. This economy of racial differences is often bound with toxic expressions of excess, malignancy and aggression. For example, much of the UFC's thrill derives from the mediation of 'bad blood' between fighters, who exchange denigrating and often racially loaded verbal attacks in prefight promotions (McClearen 2017). The white Irish UFC champion, Conor McGregor, is the most well-known racist 'trash talker' in this regard (Butler 2017;Davis 2017), calling the Mexican American Nate Diaz a 'cholo gangster from the hood' , shouting to the Brazilian Jose Aldo 'I would invade his favela on horseback and would kill anyone who wasn't fit to work' , and taunting Floyd Mayweather to 'dance for me, boy' in prefight conferences (Callahan 2017). The enormous commercial success to which McGregor contributed 1 exemplifies the UFC as a sport institution 'where the racial identity of the champion is big business' , promising lucrative monetary benefits (Beydoun 2017).
While previous studies have examined the UFC's perpetuation of race and gender through mediation and promotions, little attention has been paid to how racial and gender representations are negotiated by fans. Fandom is not passive or peripheral but rather productive and essential in sport spectacles (Arnaldo 2020;Carter 2008;Grasmuck 2005), being constituted by and actively constituting ideology, culture and social relations (Hills 2002). The UFC has over 300 million fans worldwide; 75% of them are male, and 88% are aged 18-44 years old (IMGArena 2021). Within three decades, UFC fandom has formed a unique subculture with its own values, aesthetics and stratification (MacDonald, Lamont, and Jenkins 2019). Considerable factions of fans are drawn to MMA by spectacles of violence and bloodshed (Abramson and Modzelewski 2011), while the sport's embedded racism and toxic masculinity appeal to white-supremacist fascist groups in the US and beyond (Zidan 2018(Zidan , 2019. Since MMA fandom is geographically dispersed, online engagement and collective media consumption are essential for participation (MacDonald, Lamont, and Jenkins 2019). UFC fans have a salient internet presence, with 78% of them regularly consuming sport online (IMGArena 2021). There has been 'a natural affinity between the UFC and Internet-based communities' since the UFC's 'dark age' in the late 1990s, when it had no access to cable television and relied on the internet for promotion and distribution (McClearen 2017, 3233). Current UFC promotions place particular emphasis on multimedia campaigns on the internet by hiring PR trainers to improve fighters' online self-branding, awarding bonuses to fighters with a high impact on social media (Hampton 2017) and contracting with internet celebrities as professional fighters in cages (McClearen 2017). Due to the cultural significance of online fandom for the UFC, an online fan-based approach is suitable for analysing the UFC's racial and gender cultures.

Asian masculinities in the UFC
Although the UFC's enactment of racial ideologies has been criticised, this debate mostly follows the white-black divide without considering Asian fighters. As an exception, Chin and Andrews (2016) analyse caricatures of female Asian American MMA fighters in online media. The former Invicta atomweight champion Michelle Waterson, for example, is described as the 'Karate Hottie' in a stereotype that blends Orientalist projections of hyperfeminine Asian women with imageries of 'dangerous' Asian martial arts. Nevertheless, Chin and Andrews narrow their attention to female Asian American fighters without examining male fighters from outside the USA. Given the hypermasculine images of MMA fighting and the media visibility of non-US male Asian fighters in the UFC, an examination of Asian fighters' racialised masculinities is needed to understand the UFC's perpetuation of race and gender imaginations.
In US popular culture, imaginations of Asian masculinities are characterised by three interrelated master narratives. The first narrative depicts Asian people as effeminate 'nerds' , who have narrow interests in scholarship and are disinterested in physical and social activities (Paek and Shah 2003). As opposed to their supposed intellectual talents, the physical bodies of Asian 'nerds' are imagined to be passive, inferior and asexual (Lu and Wong 2013;Ono and Pham 2009). The second narrative constructs Asian people as 'perpetual foreigners' who are unable to assimilate in American society (Zhang 2010). It embodies an Orientalist view that renders Asians monolithic and othered, thus effacing their diversity (Lowe 1991). The third narrative imagines Asian men as physically and mentally virile 'martial artists' with violent bodies (Ono and Pham 2009). While this imagery establishes Asian men's hypermasculinity, it often corroborates their otherness by exaggerating racial differences for dramatic/comedic effects (e.g. Balaji 2011;Park, Gabbadon, and Chernin 2006). The three master narratives provide discursive scripts that can be selectively emphasised and combined by online fans to imagine the masculinities of male Asian fighters in the UFC.
In the following sections, this study analyses the racial and gender constructions of three male Asian fighters in the UFC: Lyoto Machida, Yushin Okami and Chan Sung Jung. Machida is a Japanese Brazilian fighter who competed in the UFC from 2007 to 2018, reigning as UFC light heavyweight champion from 2009 to 2010 and contending for the championship in 2011 and 2014. In addition to his Japanese heritage, Machida is tied to ' Asianness' by his nickname, 'The Dragon' , his trademarked Shotokan Karate and his iconic 'crane kick' knockout. Okami, nicknamed 'The Thunder' , is a Japanese fighter who produced an impressive UFC record from 2006 to 2013 and 2017 to 2018. His outstanding performance earned him two contending opportunities and one widely broadcast championship fight with the legendary fighter Anderson Silva. Jung, nicknamed 'the Korean Zombie' , is a South Korean UFC fighter well known for his entertaining style. Although Jung has not been a UFC champion, he was tied for the most 'fight-night bonuses' in the history of the UFC Featherweight division, which earned him a solid fan base in the US and beyond. As these three fighters have diverse national, ethnic and cultural backgrounds, referring to them monolithically as ' Asians' can be stereotypical. While alert to this pitfall, this study concurs with Anderson and McCormack (2010) that social categories, no matter how problematic, have a 'real' impact on people. Thus, considering the three fighters ' Asians' is more politically productive than discarding this category because it sensitises us to the shared exclusion and stigmatisation experienced by otherwise unrelated people. Moreover, this study argues that the diversity of the three fighters offers the opportunity to examine the complex ways that identities contingently converge or split to reinforce/challenge dominant views. For example, it enables us to ask the following: in what circumstances is the category of ' Asian' utilised, problematised or rejected by fans; for what purpose; and with what consequences?

Method
The study data are sourced from the UFC Forum, the fan discussion website affiliated with the UFC Fan Club. Both the UFC Forum and the UFC Fan Club are official platforms set up and managed by the UFC. The UFC Forum is chosen for the following reasons. First, unlike Twitter, Facebook and other social networking sites, the UFC Forum is used exclusively by members of the UFC Fan Club. This means that its users are committed MMA enthusiasts rather than average Twitter and Facebook users commenting about MMA. This makes them more representative of the fan culture of the UFC in the Englishspeaking world. Second, unlike those on Twitter and Facebook, discussions in the UFC Forum are moderated and censored by senior members of the UFC Fan Club, who are elected by club members. As such, it reflects the 'bottom-up' spontaneity of fandom without third-party intervention. Third, unlike Facebook and Twitter, the UFC Forum does not have additional social functions, such as networking with nonfans, thus providing ideal anonymity and invisibility that disinhibit otherwise sanctioned expressions. This unique feature enables the researcher to examine gender and racial utterances inaccessible in other settings.
Specifically, this study examines a) all discussion threads in the UFC Forum containing names or nicknames of the three UFC fighters in their titles and b) official discussion threads about fights featuring these fighters from 2010 to 2019. All discussion threads are analysed using the discourse analysis (DA) approach, which emphasises the productive and consequential quality of language (Silverman 2015). Rather than seeing language as the mechanical reflection of reality, DA draws attention to the specific version of the world, identity and meaning produced through discourses, thus analysing 'the politics of language' (Rapley 2007). One concern in DA is the analysis of discursive 'script formulation' (Silverman 2015). Script is a type of ideology that describes the 'routine' features of things. It can be formulated differently in language in relation to its consistency or discrepancy with the 'reality' -or what is perceived as such (Edwards 1997). The event being described, for example, can be constructed as an example, an abnormality or a rebuttal to the dominant script through linguistic choices. Unlike inductive thematic analysis, this study departs from a deductive approach by examining how preexisting scripts about Asian masculinities and MMA are actualised, negotiated or refuted in language across contexts. Based on the three master narratives about Asian masculinities discussed above, three corresponding scripts are identified: a) the 'othering script'related to the 'perpetual foreigners' narrative (Zhang 2010); b) the 'inferior script' -related to the narrative about Asian men's physical incapacity (Park 2015); and c) the 'martial artist script' -related to the stereotypical ' Asian martial artist' (Ono and Pham 2009). A fourth script -the hypermasculine script -is added to address ideological preconceptions of professional MMA fighters as hypermasculine (Hirose and Pih 2010). As shown, the four scripts are contradictory both internally and externally with the cagefighting bodies of male Asian fighters, which renders online fan imaginations of Asian masculinities ambivalent, contestable and contingent.

The othered: bantering Asianness
This study first examines how the Asian identity of the three fighters is constructed in relation to the 'othering script' . In line with previous studies on the construction of Asianness in sports, the three fighters' racial and cultural identities are repeatedly marked off and highlighted to signify an image of 'perpetual foreigners' (Kurylo 2012;Zhang 2010) who are biologically and culturally different. Discursive othering of Asian people and fighters is often realised through jokes and banter, of which 47 instances are identified. As shown in excerpt 1, speaker 88 employs cultural and biological stereotypes to evoke the ridiculous image of Asian fighters as doing math, sticking together and having small penises, thus signifying a caricatured image of inferior others through 'light-hearted' banter.

Excerpt 1
Speaker 88: The Asian fighters are not really worried about the racism that is shown against them by the UFC cause you see they all get together after their fights and go drifting in their Honda Civics on the way back to their Dojos where they complete their maths homework then to call each other on their state of the art Nokias to talk about why they all have extremely small penises.
Most anti-Asian banter appears in prefight instead of during-or postfight discussions. This pattern correlates with the UFC's regular promotions that mediate prefight 'bad blood' to build up the 'hype' for the match and end the conflict episode by showing the fighters reconciling after the fight 2 . As shown in the data, online fans are involved in this mediated ritual of 'hype-building' by dramatising their fight anticipation with inflammatory language. For example, speaker 5 in excerpt 2 exaggerates a predicted loss of Chan Sung Jung against Jose Aldo with multiple racial stereotypes. By invoking the Hiroshima nuclear bomb, well-known North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, Chinese fast food chain Panda Express and the made-up Chinese name 'Sum Ting Wong' (Something Wrong) 3 , speaker 5 conjures up racist caricatures of Asians as othered and radically alien to 'us' in political, cultural and language terms. Ironically, none of these stereotypes relates to Jung's South Korean nationality. Chin and Andrews (2016) point out how online MMA media efface the individuality of female Asian MMA fighters by perpetuating an exotic, homogenising gaze that renders them othered and de-individualised. This Orientalist gaze is reproduced towards male Asian fighters in the UFC Forum but more explicitly thanks to the site's anonymity and exclusivity, which disinhibit otherwise sanctioned expressions.

Excerpt 2
Speaker 5: (Title: Jose Aldo Will Nuke Korean Zombie For 'Merica) He's (Chan Sung Jung) gonna get Hiroshima' d. In fact, it's going to be so bad that Kim Jong Il will start talking about taking out Brazil next, which will start talks of a new world war … The only way he wins this fight is if Aldo gets a stomach ache from eating too much Panda Express before the event and ends up getting diarrhea and running out of gas while letting out gas, or if Captain Sum Ting Wong ([Captain] Something Wrong) forgets how to fly a plane and crashes his flight.
While most racist comments go unchecked, 16 posts of anti-Asian banter are policed, with two of them leading to prolonged debates. In excerpt 3, speaker 76 appeals to the moderators to delete a thread presenting an exaggerated depiction of an invading 'yellow tide' of Asian 'nerdgins' . This critique is attacked by speakers 77 and 75, who label speaker 76 'mad' and ' Asian/Chinese. ' As speaker 76 responds that s/he is 'no Asian, just a good citizen, ' speaker 77, citing Jackie Chan, claims that ' Asian people make fun of Asian people all the time, ' and that the critiquer should 'learn how to take a joke sometimes' . This thread shows how racist joke makers can fend off critique by redirecting the blame to the 'humourless' challenger (King 2006). Notably, speaker 77 mentions Jackie Chan to counter accusations of racism, which echoes critiques of Chan's problematic characters in films that normalised racialised, anti-Asian comedic schemas (Balaji 2011;Park, Gabbadon, and Chernin 2006). This instance illustrates the easy transferability of cinematic depictions of caricatured Asian men to online MMA fan discourse. In this light, the UFC Forum is not merely 'mundane' conversation between sport enthusiasts about frivolous matters but rather reflects and reproduces widely circulated assumptions about race and gender that permeate deeply in media representation and sporting cultures.

Excerpt: 3
Speaker 76: Well this thread is most definitely racist, which is very much against this forum's terms of service, not sure why you thought you would be able to make such a thread and get away with it, I hope you enjoy your ban you racist, ignorant, imbecile. Speaker 77: [name of speaker 76] must be Asian. He seems gotten to. Speaker 75: lmfao this guy mad Maybe he's Chinese? Speaker 76: I'm no Asian, just a good citizen, and how dare you disrespect your people by participating in this thread. You are unbelievable. Speaker 77: Who said that I wasn't a good citizen? You have to learn how to take a joke sometimes … Asian people make fun of Asian people all the time. Just like how whites do it with whites and blacks do it with blacks … Jackie Chan gets it ^^Â s demonstrated in this analysis, the othering script of Asian masculinities is explicitly formulated in the UFC Forum without being challenged in most instances. This finding supports previous arguments about the internet's 'disinhibitive' effect on racist expressions (Kilvington and Price 2019) and the problematic relationship between MMA and racist, white-supremacist ideologies (Zidan 2018(Zidan , 2019. The next section, furthermore, shows how the othered bodies of male Asian UFC fighters are simultaneously tied to their sporting abilities in fan appraisals of their athletic performance.

The inferior: racialising athletic success and failure
Seventy-eight instances are identified where users of the UFC Forum discuss fighters' cagefighting performance with reference to their Asian ethnicity. A recurrent theme in these conversations is the invocation of fighters' Asian heritage as an explanatory factor for their past or anticipatory loss in MMA fights. As shown in excerpts 4 and 5, online users complain about the poor athletic performance of Asian fighters who 'cannot keep pace, ' 'give free wins' and fail to deliver visible damage to opponents. By racialising the results of athletic performance in the MMA cage, these instances highlight the Asian body as inferior and incompatible with the UFC's hypermasculine expectations.

Excerpt 4
Speaker 52: Honestly there just needs to be an Asian fighter who can actually keep pace, con-sistently… no wonder the Korean Zombie is getting depressed, he got caught by a devastating Kick that would shake anyone's foundation, but it seems like all of the Asian fighters end up like that.

Excerpt 5
Speaker 80: They (racial differences in fighting) don't exist for a reason. Closest was Okami vs. Franklin but he lost a lopsided decision. Thing I can't stand about Asian fighters in the UFC is that they give free wins to fighters and make them look a lot better than they really are.
Obviously, there is a mismatch between the stereotypical 'low expectations' of Asian fighters and their powerful bodies in hypermasculine elite cage fights. On the one hand, this mismatch is highlighted by users to refute racial stereotypes tied to their supported Asian fighters. For example, speakers 81, 83 and 88 in excerpt 6 react to the thread initiator's question, 'Why do Asian fighters suck?, ' by presenting the counterevidence of 'The Korean Zombie' Chan Sung Jung, who is praised for his entertaining performances, impressive finishes and fight records as the 'P4P (pound-for-pound) most exciting fighter' in the UFC. In these instances, the 'scarce resource of reality' is employed to expose the inflexibility and essentialism of stereotypical thinking about Asianness.

Excerpt 6
Speaker 80: (Title: Why do Asian fighters suck?.) Half doesn't count since Brazilian blood overrides Asian blood like a bully … Speaker 81: Korean Zombie will prove everyone wrong. P4P most exciting fighter has gotta mean something. Speaker 83: Not only Lyoto but also Chang Sung Jung is doing pretty good, he's broken 2 records in his first couple fights, He pulled off a twister spinelock and KO' d Mark Hominic in 6 seconds. I think he's going places bro. Speaker 88: The Zombie says **** you haha (joke) On the other hand, the stereotypical dilemma is 'worked out' by positing Asian fighters as exceptions to the 'inferior script' . In some instances, the 'overperforming' Asian bodies are made exceptional as anomalies requiring extraordinary attention. This is shown in excerpt 7, which imagines Machida as a 'true legend' and 'one of the few Asian men to escape the sweatshops' , and in excerpt 8, where speaker 2 imagines 'the Korean Zombie' as 'the only decent Asian fighter' worthy of fan support. In other instances, fans highlight Asian people's internal differences to make 'mixed-race' Asian fighters exceptions, as repeatedly observed in instances about the Japanese Brazilian Lyoto Machida. In excerpt 9, speaker 92 responds to the inferior caricature of Machida's ' Asian genetics' by framing his 'Brazilian mixture' as a positive factor, echoing the previous excerpt 6 that asserts that 'Brazilian blood overrides Asian blood like a bully' in race mixing. Likewise, excerpt 10 'does not count' Machida among unsuccessful Asian fighters because he is 'basically Brazilian' and not fluent in Japanese. These accounts demonstrate how racial stereotypes are reproduced not only by homogenisation, as per the conventional Orientalist gaze, but also by a pluralistic conceptualisation of 'others, ' where some are authorised and included.

Excerpt 7
Speaker 39: Machida has made a career out of dismantling legends and laying them down to sleep. He is 1 of the few Asian men to escape the sweatshops. True legend.

Excerpt 8
Speaker 46: I got Lamas by Ground and Pound TKO in the third round after Zombie tires from the takedown/grappling. Speaker 2: wow the only decent Asian fighter, and you want him to lose.

Excerpt 9
Speaker 62: If he (Machida) was black, he might be able to win some fights. ****ty Asian genetics don't win fights.
Speaker 92: True but his Brazilian mixture does.

Excerpt 10
Speaker 122: Asians have never done very good in the UFC. It's more like a battle for mediocre. Stun gun would be the best in my opinion. And Machida isn't Asian. His Japanese isn't fluent. He's basically Brazilian with Asian blood, so I don't count him.
The online fan constructions of male Asian MMA fighters' 'inferior' bodies exemplify the tenacity and plasticity of ideological scripts in dilemmatic contexts. As argued by Sneijder and Te Molder (2005), a 'successful' script requires discourses of 'error accounting' that naturalise counterevidence. By rendering successful male Asian fighters abnormalities and exceptions, online fans 'account for' possible variations while maintaining the inferior script's essential assumption about Asian people's inherent racial disadvantage in physically demanding sport.

The 'martial artist': modern sport, traditional arts
Surprisingly, the imagination of violent and physically and mentally virile ' Asian martial artists' appears only sporadically in the forum compared with the 'physically inferior' stereotype. Since the popular conception of martial arts has long been bound with Asianness in the West (Bowman 2016), this finding comes as a surprise. Research on MMA's spectacle-making identifies explicit cultural cross-references from Asian martial arts imageries, whereby the UFC appropriates Bruce Lee as 'the father of MMA' and encourages 'real-fight' cinematic emulations by strategic contracts-/bonus-awarding and rule adaptations (Bolelli 2014). One possible explanation for the lack of association in the data is the adoption of the 'modern,' 'hybrid' MMA styles by most Asian fighters. Both Okami and Jung cross-train in multiple disciplines, such as wrestling and boxing, which obscures the ' Asianness' of their styles. This means that the UFC can promote their media image more easily with the script of 'the elite athlete' than 'the martial artist' specialising in traditional Asian styles. 'The Dragon' Lyoto Machida is one of the few Asian fighters whose media image is explicitly associated with Asian martial arts. He is promoted by the UFC as a Shotokan Karateka with fancy techniques, such as the iconic 'crane kick' from the martial arts film The Karate Kid (Bolelli 2014). In the UFC Forum, this stylistic affiliation is repeatedly mentioned by fans. In excerpt 11, speaker 104 praises Machida for 'actually using those Karate stuff ' successfully in the cage, while speaker 107 claims that Machida has satisfied her or his 'Karate fix' . Speaker 94 in excerpt 12 further racialises Machida's fighting ability by emphasising his 'speed and martial arts prowess of an Asian' that combines nicely with his Brazilian 'training/background' . There are also instances that differentiate Machida's fighting from 'modern' MMA styles. For example, both excerpts 13 and 14 demarcate Machida as a rare 'martial artist' among 'mixed martial artists' in the UFC, thus fitting his fighting body onto popular imaginations about 'the martial artist' being different from MMA as a sportified, rationalised practice.

Excerpt 11
Speaker 104: I just saw a highlight of machida and what made me a fan of machida is that he is actually using those Karate stuff to actually beat an opponent. So far it is shogun that has beat but in reality do u guys think that machida karate is superior to muay thai in general. Speaker 107: I used to like Machida … he basically is the guy that satisfies my karate fix.

Excerpt 12
Speaker 94: Machida has all of the speed and martial arts prowess of an Asian while, like Silva, also possessing the training/background of a Brazilian.

Excerpt 13
Speaker 93: There are very few 'martial artists' anymore. Plenty of 'mixed martial artists' . He seems to be one of those fighters that people either love or hate. There aren't too many people that I have talked to that are lukewarm on the Machida subject.

Excerpt 14
Speaker 41: Lyoto is a great MMA guy, but he's also an MA (martial arts) guy who fights like he's got all night in a park to finish the guy he's up against. His mindset going into his fights is that he's up against a puzzle and he has as long as it takes, i.e., a real fight.
This stylistic imagination, however, is not accepted by all fans. In excerpt 15, speaker 23 argues that karate is only part of Machida's MMA arsenal, which in fact 'mesh(es) everything together'; the understanding of Machida as a karateka, therefore, is only a matter of UFC promotions. Excerpt 16 also problematises the symbolic equation between Machida and karate by framing this association as 'a complete marketing scheme' . Notably, fans in these excerpts display disdain for the UFC's promotion strategies that reduce Machida's hybrid skills to a single discipline, thus creating a 'real understanding' of MMA in contrast to the promotion's hyperbolic representations. This attitude shows how the UFC's promotion strategies, catering to a 'mainstream' audience accustomed to martial arts fictions/films, fall short among 'hardcore' fans in the UFC Forum, who quickly identify reductive fallacies when complex 'realities' are condensed by the UFC into simplified, memorable media impressions.

Excerpt 15
Speaker 23: But everyone needs to understand that they're usually a lot more than karate. GSP used his grappling a lot more than his karate. Machida has a BJJ black belt, wrestling training, Muay Thai training, etc. It's not karate that makes him who he is, it's his style of mashing everything together. Them promoting Machida as a karate is the UFC's only hook on him. If they didn't have that, they would be lost as how to promote him.

Excerpt 16
Speaker 93: I think they are using styles as marketing tools, like Lyoto said. Before his fight with shogun, he said 'this isn't Karate vs. Muay Thai, it's an MMA fight, ' Karate vs. Muay Thai was a complete marketing scheme.
The general lack of reference to the ' Asian martial artist script' echoes what Channon (2012) terms 'a paradigm shift' in martial arts from being 'Eastern' artistry to a modern, rationalised sport since MMA's advent. Although 'Eastern' martial arts continue to be appropriated in UFC promotions and mediation, their exclusive tie to the Asian body is problematised by fans. Asian male fighters are increasingly appraised not by their enactment of an ' Asian martial artist' ideal but by their athletic achievement in the realm of Western 'macho' sport, which will be examined in the next section.

Policing cagefighting masculinities: penetration discourse
This final analysis explores how the three Asian fighters are imagined by fans in relation to dominant discourses about cagefighting masculinities in the US. In the UFC Forum, the three Asian fighters' masculinities are authorised or delegitimated to various degrees by their ability to perform the heterosexual script of fighting in the cage. A noticeable language practice in this regard is the 'penetration discourse' (Fair 2011), of which 69 instances are identified. Fair (2011) initially coined the term 'penetration discourse' to describe a homophobic vernacular in American high school wrestling that likens bodily domination to heterosexual penetration. In the data, the penetration discourse repeatedly serves as a selective authorisation of the masculinity of Asian fighters who perform as desired in the cage. For example, speaker 16 in excerpt 17 uses the same term 'banging' to refer to two different behaviours inside/outside the cage -dominating one's opponent and having sex with 'hot jap chicks' after the fight in Japan. The verb 'bang' can be understood as a pun, establishing imaginary connection between things through homophonic, homographic or, as in this case, homonymic expressions (Redfern 1984). Speaker 16 plays on 'bang' as both 'to strike something violently' and 'having sex' to link MMA combat with sexual intercourse, where defeated fighters and penetrated 'hot jap chicks' are assigned the same undesirable position. In this sense, the penetration discourse perpetuates dominant notions about homophobia, heterosexuality and misogyny through the linguistic establishment of metaphorical associations.

Excerpt 17
Speaker 64: (Title: Okami vs. OSP, Shogun hurt.) Okami gonna lay on that black can for 5 (rounds). Speaker 16: OSP went from an easy fight & getting to bang hot jap chicks afterwards to now he's gonna get banged for 5 rounds by Okami Note: the UFC Fight Night: Saint Preux vs. Okami under discussion is held in Saitama, Japan. Several instances apply the penetration discourse to Asian fighters in prefight banter. In excerpt 18, speaker 46 uses the metaphor of 'face rape' to describe the brutal strikes Machida is predicted to land on Dan Henderson. In excerpt 19, speaker 61 uses the metaphor of 'dry hump' to describe Okami's anticipated domination of Héctor Lombard; this is followed by speaker 61's counterprediction that Hector will turn Okami's 'ass into sushi' . In this instance, 'sushi' connotes dual meanings as both an Asian fast food reference and slang for the female vagina (Jmartinache 2010;Montell 2021), thus racialising and sexualising Okami's metaphorical defeat at the same time.

Excerpt 19
Speaker 61: (Title: HectorLombard: 'Yushin Okami has no chin. ') Okami (winning) by dry hump. Speaker 62: Hector will turn his azz into sushi As shown in these examples, UFC fighters' masculine virility is not a static given but is constantly reimagined, re-related and re/disclaimed. This dynamic conception of masculinities complicates traditional stereotypes that conceive Asian men as invariably inferior and asexual, enabling discursive opportunities to assert Asian fighters' violent virility through penetrative tropes. This nuance is shown in excerpt 20, where speaker 57 uses the penetration discourse to justify support for 'the Thunder' Yushin Okami, who is racially ridiculed by speakers 58, 59, and 49 as the ' Asian GSP' 4 . By highlighting Okami's 'guts' to 'clinch strike rape' UFC champion Anderson Silver, speaker 57 characterises Okami as a fighter with an aggressive, hypermasculine and 'heterosexual' style that deserves fan support. In this sense, the penetration discourse serves as a discursive means for what Hirose and Pih (2010) term the 'selective authorisation' of marginalised groups, where selected attributes of subordinated masculinities compatible with the normative ideal are ratified to reinforce the hegemonic status of core ideological constructs.

Excerpt 20
Speaker 57: Okami, so sucks that Jacare's first fight is against someone i like because it means i cant cheer for him:/Its not gonna be easy for Yushin and i wouldn't be mad if Jacare did win. But i gotta pull for THUNDER!! Speaker 58: So you don't like GSP but you like asian GSP.: -? Speaker 59: Lmfao! Speaker 49: bahahahrrrahahaah…wait…what?!?!?…grrrrrrrr >:P Speaker 57: Lol i have to like Thunder anyone who knows their striking is terrible and still attempts to clinch strike rape ANDERSON SILVA has guts in my book. Also he's very respectful and genuine. Just likeable. GSP strikes me as being a rapist.
While some fans valorise Asian fighters' ability to act upon the UFC's hypermasculine and heterosexual script, the other side of the penetration discourse parallels these same fighters' undesirable performance with homosexuality. In excerpt 21, for example, speaker 120 labels Machida a 'running can' with 'gay as(s) style' and 'gay **** fans, ' whereas speakers 115, 116 and 66 in excerpt 22 complain about Machida's boring, 'running' style and nickname him 'Gayoto Runawayda' . Paradoxically, Machida's mobile, reactive style enables him to dominate aggressive opponents in the cage and become a champion in a hypermasculine sport. This ambivalence is highlighted in excerpt 23 from the same thread as excerpt 22, where speaker 119 identifies Machida as a cage fighter who 'fights monsters for a living' to refute homosexual caricatures of his style by fellow users.

Excerpt 22
Speaker 115: He (Lyoto Machida) was scurred. He ran and don't begin with … what a little **** stupid boring fighting style the running dragon showed himself again tonight. Discuss. Speaker 116: He really rustled your jimmies, didn't he? Speaker 115: By running and not fighting, yes Speaker 66: Gayoto Runawayda

Excerpt 23
Speaker 119: Fighter bashing. Let's first acknowledge that he (Machida) is in fact a fighter that gets paid to go and fight ****in monsters with full license to destroy him, inside a locked cage. You could be Chuck Norris. but there's also a good chance Lyoto would ****in kill you in 30 seconds, if he felt like playing with his food.
The controversy surrounding Machida's fighting body exemplifies the complexity of racial and gender imaginations in the UFC Forum, where male Asian fighters are authorised and effeminated, identified and excluded in competing fan discourses. As such, Asian masculinities are constantly 'disputed' (Arnaldo 2020) in the UFC Forum, contingent upon changing applications of the penetration discourse that constitutes fighters' different positions in a fantasised script of combative penetration and penetrative combat. The UFC's hypermasculine and heterosexual script of MMA, however, is never thoroughly challenged in the discursive valorisation or denigration of racialised masculinities.

Concluding thoughts
In her book Straitjacket Sexualities, Shimizu (2012, 242) writes about a conversation that she had with the Asian American actor Bee Vang in a seminar about the film Gran Torino. Talking about his 'emasculated' role in that film as Hmong American Thao, Vang said that Thao 'should have a girlfriend, not just a dog and a car at film's closing. ' Shimizu, however, questions Vang's underlining message that hegemonic masculinity, disregarding race, is invariably tied to the 'straitjacket' of heterosexuality. The imaginative body of male Asian UFC fighters in online fandom reflects the same dilemma posed by Shimizu. While UFC fighters' Asianness is often constructed as a source of inferiority and otherness, UFC fans also celebrate their individual achievements to successfully act upon the UFC's hypermasculine and heterosexual scripts. The racialised masculinities of Asian fighters are at times 'selectively authorised' (Hirose and Pih 2010) in online fan discourses, whereby their violent prowess in the symbolic act of 'penetrative' combat establishes favourable positions of the 'physical strength, commercial success, (and) supposed heterosexual virility' characterising elite male athletes (Messner 1989, 85). While such usurpation of the hegemonic position by conventionally subordinated men can be empowering, it inevitably perpetuates the dominant discourses that bind hegemonic masculinity to physical violence and heteronormativity. As such, discursive reassertions of Asian men's hegemonic masculinity invite new oppression that undermines emancipatory implications.
In this dilemmatic context, what masculinity should Asian men pursue if not following the hypermasculine script dictated by the UFC as a realm of toxic hatred, physical domination and heteronormativity? As an alternative to Vang's proposal, Shimizu suggests an ideal for Asian men that celebrates lack instead of gain (in hegemonic masculinity) as gender and racial emancipation. Instead of asserting the heterosexual virility of Asian men, Shimizu advises carving out an Asian manhood that rejects compulsory heterosexuality and physical conquest but embraces caring for others, vulnerability and progressive self-change as masculine. This model of ethic manhood, this study argues, points to a more promising ideal of Asian masculinity in MMA and combat sport. Rather than celebrating Asian men's superior achievements in MMA as a violent homosocial contest, we should redefine the very meaning of MMA and combat fighting as a means of social inclusion, mutual support and cross-cultural bonding. Masculinity, in this understanding, is not measured by physical domination, aggression and heterosexual display but depends on the dignity of both athletic success and non-success; rejection of violence; embracing of vulnerability; inclusivity of participation; and caring for disadvantaged, marginalised and stigmatised individuals in and through sport activities.