Final Post

This was a pretty interesting assignment.  Although I had frequently gone to this website I generally stayed away from the forum because I imagined it would be similar to the  comments on Youtbe, which is pretty much of a cesspool of idiotic comments.  The few times I did go to the forum and read some fanposts, I had never approached my usage of it from a perspective of analyzing digital citizenship.  I was honestly pretty surprised at how many displays of positive digital citizenship versus negative there were on this website.  There was very little negative examples.  I later discovered that is because the website owner gives moderator privileges to certain users that can delete comments and ban certain users if they post comments that violate the rules.  The rules are pretty extensive and include 'fighter bashing' which can mean a whole host of negative comments against certain fighters.  It is this type of moderation that prevents many instances of poor digital citizenship.  If you compare it to say, twitter.  On Twitter, people say all sorts of damaging and ignorant comments because there is nobody there moderate it.  On this forum, however, many members had the ability to do this and it really helps create a positive, entertaining, and informative atmosphere.

This assignment showed me that no matter the topic, the internet can actually be a place where positive digital citizenship is displayed.  Despite the fact that the posters are totally anonymous, many are generally respectful and insightful.  There are a few people who make comments without thinking about what they say, but the same is true is in the real world!  I imagine that a big part of why many posters on the forums are on the best behavior has to do with the fact that people know they will not be able to get away with saying certain things.

Thanks for reading!

I want more money!!!

One issue that is always sure to cause heated debate, and one that is likely to create a few bad of examples of poor digital citizenship is the issue of fighter pay.  So I decided to make a post that addressed fighter pay for my 2nd to last blog that would spur some discussion.  I used this quote to base my argument that fighters who complain about fighter pay are whiners, just to stir the pot a little bit :)

"I try to fight three times a year. I'm in the middle tier of fighters. I make between $20,000 to $28,000 to show and $20,000 to $28,000 to win. That's terrible pay when you think about how many millions these guys [UFC ownership] are making.

This was an anonymous fighter quote (as he fears repercussions from speaking out) from a recent MMA article that basically said fighters are underpaid, and the UFC should pay them more.  Now, as a disclaimer.  I am both a conservative and a capitalist.  That last line is particularly annoying to me as it represents an entitlement mentality that you deserve something because your boss makes a lot of money.  I personally think a minimum of 60k (that would be losing all 3 fights and winning none, and essentially a poor performance on the job) is quite good and a max of 144k (good performance) is even better.  The notion that your boss should pay you more because the makes a lot of money is so backward.  Should Bill Gates pay his secretary a million dollars because he makes a ton of money?

After making this post, I got all kinds of responses about how I am an idiot and that the UFC can afford to pay the fighters more so they should pay them more.  Well of course they can pay their fighters more.  Every profitable company could pay their employees more.   The current owners of the UFC bought the company for 2 million dollars.  Four years later they were reportedly 44 million dollars in debt and attempting to sell the company for 5 million dollars (they probably wouldn't have been able to sell it anyway) taking about a 40 million dollar loss.  The owners are two brothers, who own casinos in Vegas, were on the verge of selling it and one brother convinced the other brother that they shouldn't sell.  It was only after taking a huge risk in creating a reality show.  They produced the show themselves because no networks had faith in them.  that cost them another several million dollars.  It was only after the show that they started to make a lot of money and the company is now worth several billion dollars. 

Through all of that.  Tons of risk, tons of debt.  After untold hours of hard work, they are going to give a person an avenue to make a living, and then he complains he should make more because the bosses make more?  Something about that is so backward to me.  He should feel grateful for a job.  If he is a mid tier fighter like he said, he needs the UFC, the UFC does not need him.  We are not talking about a wal-mart cashier making 8 bucks an hour and can barely survive.  We are talking about a guy complaining that he makes between 60-144k a year, depending on his job performance (he also gets a fair amount in sponsorship money and a potential 50 extra thousand dollars per fight if he has the fight of the night, knockout of the night, or submission of the night).  For some reason these guys, and some fans, think that this is the NBA or NFL and all of the fighters should make disgusting amounts of money.  I don't see it that way.  If they don't like how much they get paid, they can leave.  Although a few people (who by the things they type sound like they want communism) went on a few political tirades about all corporations, particularly Wal-Mart, being basically greedy and evil.  Most people tended to agree with me, that the fighter pay issue is overblown and the people making very little money are almost worthless to the UFC.  They have 250 fighters under contract.  Some guys have been fighting for years and have records like 1-2 in the UFC.  They should be grateful to have a job, not complaining about their pay.  If they were more valuable to the company, they would make more.

*Their recently retired(?) star GSP said on the record that he makes 5 million per fight counting his endorsements, sponsors, etc.

If I have converted any of you in MMA junkies, there is a really good article from ESPN that discusses the issue that has a different take than I do on the issue.

http://espn.go.com/espn/otl/story/_/page/UFCpay/ufc-fighters-say-low-pay-most-painful-hit-all

Trashing the old boss?

Recently, a UFC superstar name Georges (the correct spelling of his first name as he is French Canadian) St. Pierre decided to take a little time off from MMA.  I wrote about this controversy in a previous blog, and the UFC boss Dana White made some disparaging comments that he could not take time off, that he either had to continue defending the belt or retire.  Well Georges or 'GSP' did take time off, and never said that he is retiring.  He has been sort of a recluse and few journalists have been able to get a hold of him for the past few weeks, until now.

He did a french interview up in Canada and made some pretty critical comments of the UFC.  He said that they were a monopoly and that they don't strictly enforce the ban on performance enhancing drugs as much as they could.  That is a pretty serious charge for someone to make, especially if he has any intention of returning to the UFC.  These statements have made quite a stir in the MMA community.

These have both been frequently debated issues on MMA websites for years.  Many are praising GSP for his comments, while others are upset at him for waiting until he is no longer fighting to come out and make these statements.  Some rightly defend him saying that he was scared to come out and say what he really felt while he was fighting because he was afraid he would lose his job.  This is unlikely because he was/is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, star in the UFC.  No matter what he said the UFC would likely welcome him back with open arms should he decide to return.  He is only 32 years and many consider him to still be in his fighting prime.  Many are hoping that he not only returns, but demands that the UFC take stricter countermeasures against the use of performance enhancing drugs.

Although some MMA community members were critical of GSP, and made some very inconsiderate remarks.  The majority, and myself included, praise him for his willingness to speak out.  Hopefully he continues to do so because only someone with his stature would be able to influence sweeping changes into the way the use of performance enhancing drugs are dealt with in MMA.

I post on the forum

I recently decided to make a post on the forums asking the other participants if they felt partly responsible for the head trauma that MMA fighters receive and if they felt any remorse about it?  Now, I intended the question to be a sort of loaded question and already implying that we are all partly responsible for some of the brain damage that these athletes incur in their chosen profession.  I expected to get some push back from the other fans and that many would say it is a free country, or that these are grown men and they can do what they want etc.  I was surprised at the result.

Many people said just the opposite.  Many agreed that they did indeed feel bad about the mental state of some of the athletes retiring from MMA (as well as boxing and football).  Most people think that there should be more stringent oversight and that athletic commissions should do a better job of forcing fighters to retire at certain points.  A famous case is one man who has been knocked out completely unconscious four times while fighting in professional MMA, and he still wanted to fight.  He eventually did decide to retire but it was refreshing that many of the fans and MMA journalists encouraged him and his management team that he should retire, and they had no interest in watching him fight any more.  Although it is entertaining to see two trained men engage in a technical chess match is fighting, it seems that very few people actually want to see people hurt, which may sound paradoxical to an outsider.

Should women fight?

In my last two blog posts I referenced an Australian journalist who heavily criticized MMA.  One of his quotes was the fact that women are allowed to fight was a 'disgrace' (and another reason it should be banned in Australia).  Whether or not you agree with the assessment that allowing women to fight is a disgrace, it brings up an interesting point that many MMA fans were eager to discuss.  To the average person, MMA might seem like a sport that is too brutal or too violent.  The fact that women also fight in the UFC might just turn those people completely off to the sport and never give it a chance.  The UFC only recently allowed women to fight after the president of the UFC had claimed that women would never fight in the UFC a mere two years prior to women being allowed to fight.

Some were critical of this decision because they felt that it would be a step in the wrong direction and would turn off too many people to the sport.  Even some high-profile champions have claimed that they do not find women fighting appealing because they don't like to see girls get hit, which they took quite a bit of criticism for.  I admit that I too was a little put off at watching women fight at first.  However, after watching nearly 20 women fights I don't think I have ever seen a woman get knocked out.  Most of the women that enter the sport come from grappling background.  The champion of the women's division is a bronze medalist in Olympic Judo and her next opponent is a silver medalist in Olympic wrestling.  Female matches are often incredibly exciting and technical grappling matches, as are male fights at lower weight classes because 125, 135, and 145 pound fighters rarely have knockout power.  It is for this reason that female fights have already became a popular and exciting addition to the sport and many fans and journalists welcome their addition to the UFC.

Too Brutal Part 2

In my last blog post I mentioned a fight where an Australian journalist called for the sport to be banned in his country.  He also mentioned that fighting does not take skill.  For part two I will focus on the reaction of the MMA community to his writings and not the writing itself.  Many in the MMA community expressed outrage and pointed to factual errors made by the article.  Others resorted to childish name calling on twitter.  Some people even tweeted the author of the article calling him a slew of bad names, most of which attacked his masculinity.  He then cited this as evidence on his own twitter page that MMA fans are idiots and the sport itself appeals to those kinds of people.  Now barring the obvious terrible rationalization that anything you read on twitter in any way represents any group of people, the majority of the MMA community were much more measure in their response.

The forums were filled with people who, while not defending what he wrote (because quite frankly what he wrote is not defensible and was extremely foolish), were quick to point out that no matter how hard some people try to make it seem, that MMA is indeed an extremely violent and extremely brutal sport.  Many people thought that rather than attacking the journalist and sending him nasty messages on twitter, it would be much more productive to recognize that his line of thinking is actually defensible given how violent that particular fight was, and that this sport will simply not appeal to as many people as games like baseball, football, or soccer.  As MMA fans it is up to us to educate people and show them that while the sport can be violent and bloody, often times it is not.  Often times fights are won and lost on the ground where very little damage occurs to either fighter and you essentially have a game of speed chess with two individuals acting as the pieces.

Sadly those types of fights and those types of fighters are not as exciting to  the 'casual fan' who would rather see two men stand up and hit each other until someone falls over because they don't understand the intricacies of the grappling aspect of the sport.  So, maybe there is some truth to the author's words that many MMA fans are bloodthirsty.  For myself, however, that is not the case.