Georges St. Who? Lyoto McWhat? MMA isn't mainstream (yet)

With the Lyoto Machida vs. Rashad Evans bout just two days away, this week’s MMA blogs, from Sherdog to the Bleacher Report, were filled with references to the two men and their apparent lack of notoriety.

Why isn’t Lyoto Machida a household name? Why isn’t Rashad Evans given proper respect at the American dinner table? The answer is that the UFC’s core demographic—white males between ages 20 and 40—don’t have kitchen tables, much less houses.

They live in apartments, alone or with their buddies, and those lucky few who do own homes consume their burgers and burritos on the living room floor, with a drum set to their left and a very young girl in a Joy Division T-shirt to their right.

The fact is, folks, there are no superstars in MMA, no household names or even bar stool names, because it’s not a mainstream sport. Dana White has said so himself—ironically enough—in a CNBC documentary titled “From Bloodsport to Bigtime.”

He said (to paraphrase), “Shaquille O’Neal is a household name. If you were to walk up and down the Vegas strip, not everyone would know what the UFC is….” He’s right, and that’s in Vegas, our sport’s capital.

The sport is beginning to grow, yes, which is awesome, but the fact remains: more people know who Kimbo Slice is (and far more people have seen his 30 second backyard brawl YouTube clips) than legitimate UFC champions such as George St-Pierre and BJ Penn.

More people know who Tiger Woods and Brett Favre are than all of the UFC champions combined, multiplied by a hundred to the 10th power. If you disagree, try a social experiment.

Pick someone at random off the street, or in your office, whatever, and ask them if they know who George St-Pierre is? “Is that the guy who nationalized the health care program in Canada?”

Now, the real question is whether or not we even want the sport to go mainstream? That’s a philosophical question I’ll take up at another time.