Get a Little Perspective on This Murder in the Octagon Stuff

(Brock Lesnar might be worth killing, but Kongo? He's barely worth an assault charge. Photo courtesy of Fight Magazine.)

In the wake of Frank Mir’s apology for saying that he’d like to kill Brock Lesnar in the Octagon, many people have paused to take a step back and recall that Mir isn’t the first person to invoke death when speaking about a former opponent. For instance, there’s B.J. Penn, who told Sean Sherk he was dead and later assured Georges St. Pierre that they’d be fighting to the death. There’s also Lesnar himself who, as Zak Woods points out, actually said he wanted to “murder” Mir at UFC 100. And yet no apology followed. No public outcry. So what’s the difference?

Some would say it’s the specificity of Mir’s remark. Not only did he detail exactly how he wanted Lesnar to die (something about a broken neck), he also said he wanted Lesnar to be the first person to die from “Octagon-related injuries.” You could argue that it was Mir’s attention to detail that got him in trouble, but then again, Lesnar said murder. As in, the type of killing that is always a crime. That’s why there’s a word to differentiate it from kiliing in self-defense, or an accident, or war, or an execution. Everyone from the Romans to the Victorians to the dudes poking one another’s eyes out in the Code of Hammurabi generally agreed that murder is bad and should be avoided.

So why no outrage or forced apology?

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