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.
I can remember reading your last post and understand why MMA fans would be upset by the comments of this journalist who clearly did not know what he was talking about, though it is sad that it seems like many MMA fans resorted to negative digital citizenship to make a point of the factual errors in the article. I appreciate your comment about it being the responsibility of MMA fans to educate others about the truth of the sport. I am interested to read about posts in your forum where fans are able to do this in a positive manner.
ReplyDeleteI can see how some people enjoy the sport for it's violence, but I think true fans like yourself, really have a different perspective. You see MMA as a sport, while others don't really care much about the hard work and dedication that goes into it, instead they watch it to see how one of the opponents damages the other. I am not a huge fan of MMA but when I have watched in a blue moon, I can clearly see how hard these people train to be in the position they are in.
ReplyDeleteI think the comparison of MMA to other sports is fair, but a bit difficult to make. MMA is far more violent in my opinion that other sports like football. It seems to me in my admittedly limited knowledge of MMA that the entire purpose of the sport is to take out your opponent. Even in football, which can be violent, there is another goal, to score a touchdown. I think for many people this is what causes them to view MMA as so violent.
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