The Bliss Of Ignorance: Why People Hate on MMA

The UFC continues to put record buy rates up pay-per-view after pay-per-view, EliteXC has a network television deal, and Affliction has shown some promise in putting together some big fights.

In the media's eyes, this means jack in the sense of MMA being accepted as a "real" sport.

Before I get on my soapbox about how I'm tired of people that may have seen a few MMA fights in their life being qualified to comment on the sport, I'm going to give you a little history on myself and my love of MMA.

The first fight I ever saw a UFC match was Tank Abbott v.s John Mutua at UFC 6. 

I heard a little about the UFC from my brother, who was 19 at the time, and I was excited to see what it was all about. 

Early one summer morning, I popped in the VHS tape and watched UFC 6 with my father. 

If anyone has ever seen that fight, they know it ends with Mutua eating a few big bombs that Abbott earned his reputation on and was violently and chillingly knocked out. 

His arms were stuck in the air and his body was as rigid as Fedor's personality. I remember thinking that I just witnessed this guy's death and even my dad, who grew up in the deep south during the civil rights era and has seen his share of disturbing things, had a look on his face of "wow."

That was my introduction into MMA.

As the years went by, I found myself not becoming overly excited for fighters like Abbott, Kimo, or other fighters who were thirty seconds of fury and then went about the fight like they just ran a marathon. 

Instead, I found that I enjoyed the intricacies of the fights and the philosophy of building a game plan and going about executing it in the octagon. 

Oleg Taktarov, Dan Severn, Ken Shamrock, and of course, Royce Gracie were guys I was impressed with. They were beating faster, stronger, bigger guys with technique and skill and that was something I could relate to, always being small for my age until I hit a growth spurt my freshman year of college. 

Even though I was baptized by the brutal knockout, I worshiped the skill of MMA.

In the past five years, I have become the high priest of MMA. I love the sport and it's gotten to the point that when someone disrespects it, or talks about it without knowing what they are talking about, it upsets me. 

Maybe some of you reading this can relate to me on this.  If someone is curious about MMA and are just uneducated and they know it, I love trying to show them the small things that make me so passionate about the sport. 

I'm all for discussing the debate on MMA and if it is legit or not, but if someone comes at me with incorrect information, ignorance, or the inability to understand what mixed martial arts are about, I take it personally. 

This brings me to the No. 1 enemy of the MMA fan: the media personality who watches one fight and declares it violent and not suitable for anyone to watch in society.  I love these types.

The UFC, the world's largest MMA organization in the world, has never had anyone die due to in-ring combat. No one has ever been paralyzed in the UFC. No serious head injury has ever come out of the UFC.

Apparently, those facts never come up in the homework these "haters" prepare before they write an article, produce a video segment, or do a radio show on how violent MMA is. 

Most of these types, not all, but most, are from the school of boxing.

The sweet science. The fight of kings.

Jim Lampley, a well-known and respected boxing commentator has been in this group and has commented in the past on how boxing is a real sport and the UFC is not, even going so far to say that mixed martial artists are not athletes.

How can I show myself shaking my head in words?

I'm not going to get into the defense of MMA in this article, I'll save that down the road and I'm guessing that anyone that comments on this article agreeing with Lampley, will have to deal with all my fellow MMA writers and their backlash. 

I do want to hopefully educate anyone who thinks that mixed martial arts is going to kill boxing and that's why they have so much resistance to mixed martial arts becoming mainstream. 

Here's a newsflash: Mixed martial arts isn't going to kill boxing, boxing is going to kill boxing, and if you want to hear my reasons why, I'd be more than happy to explain in another forum.

I like boxing and I think that each of the two sports has its own niche. 

I just feel that mixed martial arts niche is going to become much more and that scares all of the boxing purists. 

If you have viable and insightful reasons why you think mixed martial arts is bad for society, I am all for that discussion and I am open-minded. 

But here's a warning. If you come at any MMA fan with ridiculous, outlandish, false, arrogant, close-minded statements, we will defend our passion and our sport. 

 I think a quote from Ice T can sum up what I might say to someone: "Don't hate the player, hate the game."