Ultimate Fighting was the beginning, now this damn fight club's moving away from its underground underpinnings, and it's called mixed martial arts.
Mixed Martial Arts— a sport that combines grappling and striking techniques—is gaining big-time mainstream popularity across America and around the world.
Ultimate Fighting relates to an MMA organization known as the Ultimate Fighting Championship.
Mixed Martial Arts refers to a fighting style that incorporates wrestling, Muay Thai boxing, Jiu-Jitsu, Judo, and other fighting techniques used in professionally sanctioned fights.
An "ultimate fighter" is an award given to the winner of a UFC-based reality T.V. show on Spike TV, known ironically—or not—as The Ultimate Fighter.
We know the newspaper medium is outdated and dying, but the New York Times is supposed to be to the best of the best. All the news that's fit to print.
This is not the first, and it won't be the last time, NY Times' columnists have spoken unintelligibly about the sport of mixed martial arts—all the sport that's safe to sell.
NY Times columnist, Virginia Heffernan's recent piece spoke about her husband's new interest in what she calls "ultimate fighting," and her shame to tell all her desperate housewife friends about her husband's new obsession with such a bloody-bloody sport.
To her credit, she enjoys the sweet science of boxing, which she believes is what matters most when judging man's highest achievement in hand-to-hand combat sports. But boxing too has been around as long as newspapers.
Maybe as a sports writer, she grew up as a fan watching the sport, and now can't accept mixed martial arts replacing her beloved boxing as a generation's new fight.
As newspaper must compete with the Internet, boxing must compete with mixed martial arts. Both must evolve to survive.
Still her misconception that all mixed martial arts happens in the "Ultimate Fighting" Championship further perpetuates the ill-convinced notion that "ultimate fighting" (actually MMA) is more dangerous than boxing ever dreamt.
Is this why mixed martial arts, not boxing, remains banned in states across America?
In boxing, repeatedly hitting someone when they're down and rendering them helpless on his back, is not allowed. When a fighter outlasts a standing 10-count and recovers, his opponent rewards him with even more repetitive blows to their respective domes.
Whereas, such rules literally define the bloody sport of boxing, not even all mixed martial arts fights involve fighters merely throwing punches—there's ground-and-pound assaults, submission attempts, and leg kicks.
In mixed martial arts, most refs recognizes when a fight needs stopping immediately. Other times, accomplished refs like Yves Lavigne at UFC 95 in February, no-calls resume fights and allow a fighter, Mike Brown, to beat and bloody the defenseless, Pete Sell
Is that why?
Mixed martial arts is as legit a sport as American football. The Ultimate Fighting Championship is an organization, much like the National Basketball Association.
When you order an MMA pay-per-view, you may—or may not—be ordering a UFC PPV, but the chances are increased. The UFC may be the most known brand, but Strikeforce, Affliction, M1-Global, and even Zuffa-owed WEC are ALL mixed martial organizations.
We know all the letters and numbers confuse some people so we won't fault her for those shortcomings. We know it's hard to know the difference among all them so we don't blame people for viewing MMA from the perspective of Heffernan.
The sport's evolution has come a long way in a short time, and still has not reached the level of popularity as Major League Baseball or the National Football League.
Sooner or later, with the help of the UFC, mixed martial arts will increase in popularity to a mainstay in the American sports lexicon.
Heffernan distastefully reminds us her column that her middle-aged housewife friends refer to mixed martial arts as "the thing where they actually kill each other."
Please, let us meet the person who this quote should be attributed too, we've love to interview them on the record, of course.
Seriously, that has to be the most idiotic and asinine statement we've ever read.
She further insults her readers intelligence by constantly reminding them of this most obvious of facts.
Yes, Virgie, we know the fighters from your hubby's new "ultimate fighting" viewing hobby, do not actually kill each other.
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