Does Steve Cofield Actually Follow MMA? *Updated*

As an avid fan of the sport of MMA, I follow the blogs on many different websites.  Mainstream reporters are never really expected to be as knowledgeable as their hardcore counterparts, but is Yahoo! 's MMA blogger Steve Cofield even remotely qualified as an MMA writer?

Two recent posts in Cofield's Cagewriter blog from the Strikeforce:Evolution coverage leave me with serious doubts.

First, and perhaps more understandably, came an observation about Muhammed Lawal, otherwise known as King Mo.

Anybody who has been paying attention to the sport over the past couple of years should be very familiar with King Mo. He's quite simply one of the brightest prospects in MMA.

Cofield said, "So that's why the guy was a five-to-one favorite and Strikeforce's Scott Coker referred to him as a first round draft pick."

He went on to express surprise in the way Lawal was able to defeat a veteran like Whitehead. Despite Whitehead being a veteran, the result should have surprised nobody.

Mike Whitehead had a serious size and experience advantage when he got dominated by Rashad Evans in 2005 on the Ultimate Fighter. Muhammed Lawal has much better wrestling credentials than Rashad Evans, and unlike Evans at the time, Lawal has already displayed a penchant for knockouts.

The result was very much expected by most educated observers, and was seen by most as being a mere tune-up and stepping stone for Lawal on the way to bigger fights within Strikeforce.

I can understand Cofield's desire to underscore Lawal's victory, but the way he wrote about it made me think that his surprise was due more to ignorance than to a genuine attempt at making the story seem more interesting.

My suspicions of Cofield's ignorance were reinforced when I read his summary of the fight between Ronaldo "Jacare" Souza and Matt Lindland.

First of all, Cofield wrote that "Lindland more than held his own in the grappling department," despite the fact that he was utterly dominated on the ground by Jacare.

Cofield once again displayed his complete ignorance of the sport with his remark, "Souza is a Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt so it was no shocker that his ground game was excellent."

This is nothing less than a tremendous understatement of Souza's skills. It was unintentional.

Souza is a BJJ world champion, perennial ADCC contender, former ADCC champion, and is widely regarded as one of the finest submission grapplers in the world.

Anybody who has a true love of MMA should know about Souza by now, since he is one of the greatest competitors in a sport (grappling) known to carry over very well into MMA.

I don't expect every MMA fan to care about or even know about the results of ADCC, but an MMA journalist should know. An MMA writer not knowing about Jacare at ADCC is kind of like an NFL commentator not knowing who won the Heisman Trophy.

**** Update ****

I emailed Cofield regarding what I took to be a great understatement of Jacare's skills.  He responded:

"I was aware of Jacare's background. It's difficult to include everything as the fights are moving along. The fight night blog is more of a quick hitter. Also understand, Yahoo! is viewed pretty heavily by a very casual fan base. So we often write basic terms. That said, I could've included one more line to describe how accomplished he is in BJJ."

Fair enough.

On the other hand, if what he says is true, and he did know of Jacare's background, I still don't think that it is necessary to bring down the level of the article to the lowest common denominator.

People who don't understand what "BJJ world champion" means can still follow the main point of the article, while stating it would prevent people like me from mistaking him for an uninformed hack.

Part of the job of being a journalist should be to educate the public about the interesting details of the sport.  I think that part of the thing that makes MMA a real sport is that there are nuances and technical details.

Ignoring the technical aspects of MMA is the kind of thing that makes it so that casual fans don't realize how technical the sport as become.

In my initial article here i wrote:

After keeping consistent tabs on the Cagewriter blog for the past few years, I'm convinced that Cofield does not have any interest in the details of the sport.

As a result, he is completely ineffective in actually informing the public about MMA.

Yahoo! is one of the mainstream media outlets that can help bring MMA to the mainstream, but I don't see how it helps to employ hack journalists who don't know or even care about the finer aspects of the sport.

Maybe I'm being a little bit harsh, but I think that we need to hold our MMA journalists to a higher standard.  Presenting more interesting informative coverage of the sport is only a good thing in my opinion.