In writing Fighting Visibility: Sports Media and Female Athletes in the UFC, Jennifer McClearen brings together her positionality as a feminist media scholar and as an athlete practicing martial arts for fourteen years within a community that includes MMA fighters and fans. Her research takes into account the surprising inclusion of women in the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) while also exploring how UFC functions as a millennial sports media brand. Central to McClearen's study is her concept of “branded difference,” denoting the marketing strategies used to brand particular UFC fighters on the basis of their visible and articulated differences of gender, race, ethnicity, and sexuality.
Branded difference marked a significant shift for UFC, which, upon its launch, marketed itself as a means of testing an athlete's masculinity across various martial arts. Brutality was promoted as a key attribute, and while much has changed since its founding in 1993, UFC...
