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The scene of the event: Frankfurt’s Waldstadion. © ROLF OESER
The “biggest MMA event of all time” will take place in Frankfurt on Saturday in front of almost 60,000 fans. The fighters and two female fighters fight each other until they faint.
A few tickets were still available these days. No longer the cheap ones for 29 euros, but there are still a few for 3999 euros – yes, almost four thousand euros – right on the ring. Sorry, not at the ring, at the octagon. That’s the name of the octagonal cage in which two men will punch and kick each other on October 12th, and that’s also the name of the association that organizes the whole thing: Octagon. Nothing less than “the world’s largest MMA event of all time” is planned, it has been said for weeks. In Frankfurt’s Waldstadion, in front of almost 60,000 spectators. Including live broadcast on the streaming channel RTL+.
MMA is the abbreviation for Mixed Martial Arts, in German: mixed martial arts. The fans and the online encyclopedia Wikipedia call it a sport. “All fighting distances – kicking, punching, clinching, throwing and ground fighting – are combined with as few rules restrictions as possible” (Wikipedia). The aim is to “defeat the opponent by having him give up by being knocked out, knocking him out (fainting) or having the referee stop the fight”. And all of this in front of an audience like that at Frankfurter Eintracht football games.
“King of Germany, that’s what it’s all about on October 12th,” says the moderator in a video conversation with the two opponents in the main fight. “It will be incredible, we will make history.” The opponents are: Christian Eckerlin, local hero, who says: “The stadium is the right place for a battle like this.” And Christian Jungwirth from Stuttgart, who has already announced with music the rock band Böhse Onkelz entered the arena.
For both fighters, “a childhood dream has come true,” they say. Another childhood dream was to become a professional soccer player, also for both of them. Now they have risen to prominence as kicking, punching and clinching prowess. “My biggest motivation is to make the sport socially acceptable in Germany,” says Eckerlin, meaning MMA.
Jungwirth also found his home in this fighting discipline, a source of stability after a period of certain disorientation that led him to inscribe tattoos such as “All Cops Are Bastards” and a long quote from the Nazi war criminal Rudolf Hess on his body allow. Jungwirth told Südwestrundfunk that he didn’t think about it at the time. “I have nothing to do with this ideology.” He had both covered. In the SWR article, a martial arts YouTuber says about Jungwirth: “There are a lot of beatings, and at the end you go home with a big grin and say: What a hot guy.”
In ten more fights on Saturday, Frankfurt’s “Mad” Max Coga and the “Croatian Killer” Antun Racic will compete against each other. A women’s duel between defending champion Katharina Dalisda from Bavaria and the American Mallory Martin for the strawweight belt is also on the program.
“It’s a sport,” says stadium manager Patrik Meyer. “Harder than boxing. But aggressiveness in the audience also occurs in football.” MMA fighters adhered to a code of honor, to an athlete’s honor. And if someone once got lost in a Nazi saying: “You have to admit to people that they have recognized a mistake.”
Almost 60,000 in the Waldstadion watching a lot of people beat each other up, possibly until they fainted: The former chairman of the Bundestag’s sports committee, Peter Danckert, once compared MMA on Spiegel TV to the “gladiator fights in ancient Rome Times of persecution of Christians. Occasionally, fighters die while practicing their sport in the octagon. In an interview with the FAZ, boxing commentator Werner Schneyder called MMA “madness” that had to be banned. Otherwise you accept “crippleness and fatal consequences”.
But apparently it is an event with the potential for mass enthusiasm. What does the mayor think as head of the sports department? “There are certainly different views on MMA events,” says Mike Josef (SPD) when asked by FR. These views have changed somewhat in recent years, as can be seen from the increasing audience popularity.
“But it is certainly not the job of politicians to judge this,” Josef continued. “MMA fight evenings are usually organized by private organizers. They are also not prohibited by law.” The city of Frankfurt, whose holding company is Sportpark-GmbH, has not itself concluded a contract for this event.
