Spencer Kornhaber: What was your reaction when Meryl Streep mentioned MMA?

Kerry Howley: I just thought it was odd. She couldn’t have chosen a worse sport to represent American provincialism.

The implication was that you could expel foreigners from the country and you wouldn’t have Hollywood but you’d have MMA. Of course, if you expelled foreigners from the country you would destroy MMA, which is as Brazilian as it American—and Irish and Japanese and Russian and Korean and Belgian.

I think her implication was bigger: It was that MMA fans are inward-looking, provincial people who are offended and confused by the cosmopolitanism of Hollywood. And that’s a more disturbing kind of ignorance: ignorance about people rather than ignorance about the dynamics of a particular sport.

I’m not sure how much you know about MMA…

Kornhaber: I really don’t know anything!

Howley: Originally, MMA was brought to this country, in the early ’90s, by a Brazilian family who had studied a Japanese art form. The sport has never lost its international flavor. Fighters and fans are completely aware that this is a cosmopolitan sport. Just list the martial arts you need to be successful in mixed martial arts: Muay Thai, Judo, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Taekwondo. Do those sound American?

If you’re a Brazilian fighter, you might come to the U.S. to study boxing and American wrestling. But otherwise you’ll be seeking wisdom from other cultures. Fighters are constantly going back and forth to training camps in Brazil. Many of them study Portuguese so they can more effectively understand their instructors. And it bleeds into a real interest in the culture.

You couldn’t turn it into the kind of inward-looking white American phenomenon that Meryl Streep seems to think it is. If Americans wanted to not have to deal with other cultures they could go watch American wrestling or do something else.*

Kornhaber: What about the implication that the fandom, at least, is a lot of people who supported Trump?

Howley: I can’t comment on the mass of fans. But the fighters I write about in Thrown and all the fighters in this one fight camp I spent years with—which is in Iowa, it’s not in New York City—are searchers. They’re nonconformists. They’re artists who absolutely embrace the cosmopolitan aspects of the sport. They think it’s bigger than this country, and they’re completely dismissive of the provincial attitudes that Meryl Streep was complaining about.

I mean, think about it: If you were a strong natural athlete and also a conformist who was uncomfortable with difference and with change, what would you do? You would try football, or basketball. You wouldn’t choose the stigmatized, relatively un-renumerative sport. You wouldn’t learn Portuguese so you could learn under Brazilians.

I don’t know if most MMA fans are Trump supporters. I have no idea. But whatever part of them is interested in MMA is not the part of them that celebrates white supremacy or inward-looking provincialism. We know that [Ultimate Fighting Championship president] Dana White is friendly to Trump, but Dana White is not the mass of MMA fans.