From Medical to Social Exceptionality: Media, Disabled Masculinities, and Integrated Combat Sports

Media spectacles of integrated combat sports, where fighters with disabilities compete against able-bodied athletes, challenge stereotypes about ability, masculinity, and “civilized” violence. This study analyzes how online representations of two amputee fighters, Nick Newell and Jake Peacock, contribute to these processes. Theoretically, this study proposes a realignment of the notion of “exceptionality,” a term that hitherto has been dominated by studies informed by the medical-scientific model of disability, with critical disability studies. Through dialogues with Agamben and Schmitt, we propose a social model of exceptionality that encompasses both juridical and evaluative dimensions. Instead of being a static construct, exceptionalities of integrated combat sports and their participants with disabilities can be closed, layered, and reversed in the media, producing a zone of indifference between normality and abnormality. These dynamics underscore the need for a cultural complexity perspective to understand the relationship between disability and gendered identity in combat sports.