interesting article-i hate when my da says mma is savage!!

cowzerp

Some boxing types have a firm grasp on mixed martial arts, understanding there's plenty of room in the fight game for both great sports. But some are simply going to get more bitter as MMA continues to gain in popularity.

An example of the latter was found in Wednesday's Chicago Sun-Times, where Rick Telander wrote a column looking down on mixed martial arts. In it, Telander selectively focused on the most visually jarring moments of Tuesday's Ultimate Fight Night -- such as when Matt Hamill had Seth Petruzelli all cut up as they were fighting on the ground -- and attempted to use this to show MMA's alleged barbarism.

Telander claims the fighters were "trying to kill each other," that MMA is "nearly pornographic," and assumed Ed Herman would have been "choked to death by his foe" had he not tapped.

Yes, we're still getting this type of talk from major-market columnists in 2006.

Well, two can play at this game. Let me tell you all about my first memory of boxing as a child: I was nine years old. It was a Saturday afternoon and I was watching television. Ray Mancini was fighting Duk Koo Kim for the lightweight title. This was on live national network television, on daytime TV when a nine-year old could watch.

I saw Mancini literally kill the 23-year old Korean in the 13th round. It was basically a real-life, televised murder.

Remember the infamous Larry King Live episode on UFC in 1995, the one in which Sen. John McCain decried MMA as "barbaric" and "human cockfighting?" The week before that aired, boxer Jimmy Garcia was killed in a match in Las Vegas that was broadcast live. John McCain was in attendance for Garcia's fight. The carnage must have slipped the Senator's mind as he was talking about UFC's brutality, I guess.

Then there was the 2000 ESPN2 boxing taping at the Roxy nightclub in Boston. Boxer Bobby Tomasello of Somerville, MA died from injuries sustained on Friday Night Fights. (On a side note, last year, the City of Boston stopped an MMA show that was slated for the Roxy. But they never stopped running boxing events in the venue, even after a fighter lost his life.)

That's three boxing deaths on live television just off the top of my head. And MMA is "Brutality TV," as this column was titled?

The hypocrisy is astounding.

But it doesn't stop when the cameras shut off. Last year, both a boxer and an arena football player died in action in the Staples Center in Los Angeles. Yet when the hearings came up to legalize MMA in California, it was MMA being called brutal by some Golden State legislators and pundits at the same time athletes in other sports were dying right under their noses in their own jurisdictions.

Fact: There has never been a death or crippling injury in a commission-sanctioned show in North America.

Fact: The worst injury to occur in the UFC since Zuffa LLC bought the company was Tim Sylvia's broken arm.

Fact: MMA fighters rarely end up with the long-term head trauma associated with boxers, because you can only throw so many punches with MMA gloves.

Now is this to say that a death or crippling injury couldn't occur in MMA? Of course not. Odds are in a combat sport, someone is eventually going to get hurt. As boxing has demonstrated.

That's why you put safeguards in place, from weight classes to time limits a laundry list of prohibited moves, to using knowledgeable officials like John McCarthy who know when to stop a fight. No one is being forced to step into competition against their will.

Mixed martial arts represent the evolution of the fighting game, not the devolution. Boxing is a sport with a rich and proud history and is an important part of the MMA skill set. Too bad some within the boxing game feel compelled to tear it down rather than attempt to understand it.

john kavanagh

whenever i here a boxer complain that MMA is 'barbaric' i just ask him how he would explain to somebody that thought boxing was 'barbaric' and should be banned. now take that same argument and apply it to MMA

cowzerp

i used to box and my da loved it and ma just tolerated it-but now im doin mma thay both hate it-i tell them the facts but they just dont listen. i personally blame companys like cage rage and ufc as they love the negative publicity!

Clive

Nearly pornographic? Must work harder...

47MartialMan

I had no complaints as I was doing MMA before the coined term.

gymrabbit

wing tsun isn't mma

cowzerp

i agree-mma is a mix of all the best parts of different arts..not 1 maybe in theory it tries to-but it is still 1 art

BobbyOLeary

These kind of MMA is awful arguments always make me smile. I remember telling a friend I was going to start some BJJ because I wanted to learn to fight on the ground, his words to me were: "J*sus Bob, you could get hurt doing that kind of thing!"

What makes me smile is the fact that this same guy was the fella who I climb with on a regular basis and who sees nothing dangerous about scaling 40ft stone walls.

I suppose though that politicians have to come across as "caring about your health". Pissing off the MMA community won't cost them a lot of votes, it'll probably gain them loads of conservative ones!