Kenton Oxley knows that MMA fans can sense when a movie doesn’t feel authentic to the sport.
In 2025, ‘The Smashing Machine’ became the latest MMA-themed movie that attempted to capture what makes fans so passionate about combat sports.
While Benny Safdie’s movie told the story of UFC legend Mark Kerr, ‘Killa Bee’ highlights the contradictory life of Bryony Tyrell, who competed in MMA while being a nurse.
The film’s director, Oxley, has praised star Gemma Arterton’s dedication when transforming into an MMA fighter, but this isn’t the only way that the project is trying to translate the sport onto the big screen.
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Kenton Oxley believes some MMA movies lack the fluid nature of the sport
Kenton Oxley told Bloody Elbow that his opinions on MMA have changed significantly during the process of making ‘Killa Bee’.
He recalled watching “pretty much everything” when researching how the sport has been portrayed by other movies, highlighting 2011’s ‘Warrior’ as a particular standout.
Oxley noticed that “there is actually a really big problem with MMA” and how it’s translated, believing that this comes from directors approaching the sport and the fight scenes by using boxing as a benchmark.
“I think what’s fundamentally wrong about some of the ways that MMA is shot is that we forget that it’s on so many different layers in terms of where the action takes place,” he said while shooting ‘Killa Bee’. “Within boxing, most of the action will take place between your head and your lower abdomen and it will be all on the same plane and you’re very rarely down low.
“Whereas with MMA, it’s so fluid, and that’s what makes the sport so interesting is that fluidity and the ability to be up one minute, down the next, trying to get out of something, pushing yourself up against the cage. This creates a far more dynamic sport and I don’t think that many films have done that well and it’s something that we’re really, really working hard to get right.”
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Considering how ingrained boxing is as a sub-genre of the sports movie and how young MMA is in comparison, this isn’t necessarily surprising.
The fight scenes are obviously an important part of the project but as Oxley himself said, the time that a fighter…
2026-06-04 21:00:00
