MMA Gives Traditional Martial Arts a Black Eye

I just finished reading the comments on the Top 10 Trash Talkers, and with what I witnessed last night...I can honestly see it happening myself.

I love to talk trash with my brothers and friends...I do not find it childishly offensive...when it is the right place and time.

I was attending a local MMA event, and a man I had gone to high school with was there.  I had heard that he had gone on to be a professional kick boxer and he had gotten into a motorcycle accident which put his career on hold.  I am going to call him John...just incase someone happens to read this that knows somebody that had something to do with this and I am put on some hitlist...So if you think you know what I am talking about I am talking about John...and if this happened with a guy named John it is a fake name, so it is still not the same guy...so there...I am 29 years old and I am way too old to be doing some Daniel LaRusso training to extract revenge.

I have never gotten to see a match John had ever been in, so I am not sure if what I am hearing about his skills are the real deal or just the locals building him up because he is from around here...he has always be tough, so I am really not going to put much question into it...he is a professional kick boxer, whether he is going to recover from his accident and become the next Rick Roufus does not matter if I think he can or not.

We were catching up on old times on the out door balcony of this club we were watching the fight at...because it was incredibly hot inside and there was an intermission.

The door opened and a guy interrupted and said that Steve just called him a bitch...John said "he said I was", and the instigator said "yeah".  My friend replied back with, "I don't even know who that is man."  We went back to our conversation.

The door swings open again and he starts talking to some guy and I can here him saying something about chute boxing...then he was demonstrating certain moves and saying something along the lines of that is how close I get to MMA.  He went on to continuously say "there is nothing wrong with MMA it just isn't really what I like to do, I am a striker".

The second guy seems to be getting upset, and I am trying to stay out of the conversation as much as possible, because it was none of my business...then I realized that this is the guy that called my friend a bitch...and I know my friend knew it too, but he wasn't about to let that bother him.

Ol' Stevie then got directly up in John's face telling him how he was going to beat his ass and go ahead and swing...then he had some girl screaming knock his ass out Steve and just adding to the dramatics of the evening.

By that time the entire balcony was full of people and the two were seperated...John told me, "I don't know what his deal is he asked me if I did MMA, and I told him I was a kick boxer and he got up in my face".

Apparently the problem was when Steve called him a bitch earlier and he didn't know who he was...well it turns out that he did know who it was.  The entire argument was started over nothing, and it should have been over at that.

Of course when you are at an event such as MMA, and alcohol is being served...testosterone is at a high.  I never saw either one of them again that night.

I did on the other hand hear of all of Stevie's fight club members telling of how Stevie would have torn him apart and how close it was to being a total massacre...the norm.

That escalated in true Cobra Kai style to how they were each going to beat John down and how John had never even wrestled and they were going to each make him their bitch and so on.

So I begin thinking that Fight Club is full of pricks...then I hear other Fight Clubs talking about how they wish there would have been a fight so they could see the big pro kick boxer get beaten down...and I realize that pretty much all of them there were pricks.  They did not respect his martial art training at all...he said that there was nothing wrong with MMA, but it is not for him.  He did not disrespect them for doing what they do...hell he paid money to go watch them do their thing.

Now I can see how the trash talk and everything is against what traditional martial arts stood for...it is not about finding some other martial artist you have heard of and getting jealous and trying to fight over it...I will still laugh when I hear Rampage tell Rashad to lick him if he is a sucker then...I will still root for Nick Diaz if he were to fight KJ Noons again, but I do see where everyone is coming from with their comments about how there is no place in MMA for trash talk.