Irish martial arts body opposes recognition of MMA

Blackthorn Fight School

I am not sure if there is just a lot of trolling going on in this thread or if people just like to type their opinions without looking into anything. I have trained in a whole lot of martial arts both TMAs and MMA and competed in both.

First off if you dont like MMA thats great dont watch it dont spend your money on it and dont comment on this thread it is fine to not like something but dont use your opinion to try affect other peoples pastimes and livelihoods. I dont like soccer but I am not going to attack people for liking it.

So this IMAC issue is pretty straight forward MMA here has made huge efforts to regulate itself far more so than many other sports such as kickboxing, at every MMA show I have been too there are medics on standby and medical checks done before and after getting into the cage. I have not seen the same level of checks at boxing or kickboxing shows at all. The point is the MMA community wants to have regulations put in place, to do this they need a recognised governing body. To do this they need to be part of the ISC they told the MMA community to go to IMAC and IMAC said no. Not only that but they came out with some horrible comments on it based on no facts or evidence. They refuse to recognise many other sports including BJJ and others.

MMA takes huge skill there is no argument on this it is why most competitors train for a decade or more before reaching the big shows.

Trying to say all people who train MMA are thugs or similar is ridiculous I train with barristers, doctors and everything in between down to students and hard working guys and girls who only want to train. I have never had any altercations training at all but have when training soccer and rugby on and off the pitch. Also I have spent evenings with good wine talking techniques with people so to say this does not happen is also silly. I dont know if people are aware but the MMA community here have had lectures with the royal college of surgeons to help make the sport safer which at the time was the only ever such event which I have not seen many other sports do. Ireland has some of the most educated and responsible people in its MMA community world wide.

The only real argument I keep seeing over and over is that ground and pound is inhumane or some sort of attempted murder. From a purely scientific point of view there are only two options remove it or allow it. Simply put ground and pound makes MMA safer. In the Aldo vs CMG fight he took 2 punches after being dropped. The alternative would be we allow a ten count as in boxing in which case he would be stood back up and continue to suffer brain damage. Or we dont allow any which would result in grappling with no strikes and the same effect would happen as he would have time to recover and allow his brain to be injured further.

To judge a sport on its fans is silly there are hundreds of soccer hooligans and even films on them look what happened at the euros a few months ago. I have not seen any reports of MMA fans rioting and shutting cities down. In any crowd you will have a wide variety of fans. It is why you will see fans booing ground work and others getting excited as they are educated fight fans.

On deaths in MMA there have been 4 in sanctioned MMA fights over the past 20+ years many of which were due to underlying health issues. Compared to boxing with an average of 8 a year or marathons with an average of 12 in the US alone each year then why not call for running to be banned?

To make MMA safer it would actually be better to remove the gloves altogether in the US in the 200 recorded years of boxing before gloves there were 2 deaths and one of these was possibly due to a slam as wrestling was allowed. Within the first ten years of gloves being introduced there were over 30.

The only other issue is weight cutting but that is a separate thread in itself and a problem in many sports.

Also where are all of these TMA clubs teaching classes on discipline, enlightenment etc? I have been in many clubs and never seen any of this being done. To say MMA does not require discipline is insane. Fighters of any art wont do well without it.

If you dont like MMA dont watch it simple but dont try to interfere with those who are doing amazing work trying to make the sport safer for those involved.

jizzer316

smash wrote: »

I don't believe that for 1 second. Not because it's MMA, but because of human nature. Even in Soccer or Rugby or literally any sport at all, if you've been involved in it for over a decade you'll encounter a plethora overly aggressive assholes.

Oh so just ban all sport then? you undo yourself, sit down.

jizzer316

_oveless_ wrote: »

m&a is trash it's just 2 guys pretendting to do boxing for a minute then they grab onto each other and fall on the floor then roll around on the floor for 45 mins a good streetfighter would kill any of them

Ah ok you have never been in a fight and have no martial arts experience, weak, beta male.

jizzer316

I deliberately searched for this topic on boards after seeing it pop up elsewhere, just so I could enjoy the unfortunate responses from the idiotic, triggered, mental midgets.

Luckily MMA will be going nowhere as the UFC brings in a lot of revenue when it hits Dublin every year or so, the debate surrounding MMA is so typically Irish, its basic and uninformed and stuck somewhere around 1993, I mean a poster here actually said a good streetfighter would take out mma fighters,

sorry to bust any ego's here but any female well trained in MMA would easily neutralize a "good streetfighter"

prinzeugen

MMA/UFC is not a sport. Connor McGregor said himself its cage fighting. Skip to 6 mins.

smash

jizzer316 wrote: »

Oh so just ban all sport then? you undo yourself, sit down.

jizzer316 wrote: »

Ah ok you have never been in a fight and have no martial arts experience, weak, beta male.

jizzer316 wrote: »

I deliberately searched for this topic on boards after seeing it pop up elsewhere, just so I could enjoy the unfortunate responses from the idiotic, triggered, mental midgets.

looks like there's only one triggered mental midget here.

wonderfullife

HardenendMan wrote: »

If it such an unsafe sport then how come the largest platform, the UFC, doesn't have any deaths?

I think softy folk in here just think it's barbaric because they can't imagine being able to compete relatively safely at such a sport. Rugby, horse riding etc are far more dangerous.

lertsnim wrote: »

You can't find one. You are the one that posted

I'm gonna start by saying i'm a massive MMA fan.

Right, that's out of the way.

The UFC has had no deaths SO FAR. There's plenty of reasons that is the case. The single most important factor is regulation.

Regulation has steadily improved since the Fertitta/White era of UFC (last 20 years).

By regulation i don't just mean the laws of the sport. It encompasses everything.

Medical screenings for any conditions pre-fight.

Dan Hardy was diagnosed with an electrical abnormality of the heart (Wolff-Parkinson Syndrome) in 2013 at a screening and prevented from fighting. Irelands own Paddy Holohan was recently enough forced to retire due to an admission post-screening that he had a rare blood disorder (Factor XIII deficiency), which made blood clots more likely.

These are just 2 examples among many. Stopping fighters from fighting when they're not medically fit to do so is a good starting point.

Logistics

While it may seem complete common sense, the logistics of the UFC on fight night are second to none.

A regulated environment means they always have the logistics right. Doctors are seated in the right seats cage-side. Defibrilators on standby. EMT's on standby, Triage area backstage. Ambulances parked in the right spot. A plan of action for the nearest hospital to go to.

Smaller, unregulated MMA organisations either can't afford to do all this - it costs a fortune. So the promotions that have seen deaths generally have multiple things not right. No ambulance or parked too far away. Doctors in wrong seats. No emergency plan etc.

The UFC runs it perfectly.

Referees.

The UFC have the best of the best. Like in boxing, this is key on the frontline to prevent a fighter taking un-necessary punishment and damage. They don't always make the right calls - a fight in March this year in the UFC featured a sickening incident where a fighter received over 100 unanswered strikes to his head and body before the referee stepped in.

Drug Testing

Whilst this is a transitional thing, the link-up with USADA in drug testing all fighters for the most part minimises the risks to the fighters themselves and their opponents by aiming to prevent them fighting while on prohibited substances.


They are among some of the reasons why there has not been a death in the UFC so far.

HOWEVER -

MMA fans who point to this as a badge of respectability or proof of the safety of the sport are frankly delusional.

There WILL be a death in the UFC.

100% it WILL happen.

It may be months or years from now. Even decades.

But deaths WILL happen in that organisation.

You can have all the rules, regulation, drug testing, medical screening, refereeing you want but a death or multiple deaths will occur in the UFC at some point.

This is just a certainty. You're dealing with elite level athletes in a combat sport. The human head and skull is not designed to be kicked, elbowed, kneed or punched. It just isn't. Whether it's MMA, boxing, rugby, whatever - when you have serious impacts on the head, it's only a matter of time before one of them leads to a subdural or subarachnoid hemorrhage and fatality.

There have been 14 deaths in MMA to date. 4 sanctioned events saw a fatality, 10 un-sanctioned events. 8 of those deaths came by subdural/brain hemorrhage. Blunt force head trauma.

It will happen in the UFC. Matter of when NOT if.

More to the point, as with a lot of other high impact sports, nobody truly knows the long term consequences of repeated head trauma.

People commenting on the safety of the sport would be wise to bear in mind, like boxing, a lot of these fighters could end up with serious life-threatening problems down the line from their fighting careers.

Subcomandante Marcos wrote: »

Most brazilian jui jitsu practitioners could do more damage to a man from underneath him on the ground than a professional boxer could standing up.

Just because someone is on the ground doesn't mean they aren't or can't fight, ground fighting is one of the most effective forms of attack imaginable.

From underneath a person on the ground a good bjj practitioner could break an arm, rip a knee apart or literally strangle a man to death with their thighs.

In MMA the action is instantly stopped when a man can't or won't try to defend himself intelligently, unlike boxing where people are boxed senseless and given a standing count and then sent straight back out to take more brain damage.

That's the theory.

But you should know better than anybody that "instantly stopped" isn't the practice or reality. By that i mean the 1 or 2 or 3 seconds between the ref calling the contest off and it actually being called off.

Dan Henderson v Michael Bisping.
Freddy Serrano v Syler.
Conor McGregor v Jose Aldo.

I could name up to 50 fights off the top of my head where an unconscious man received serious blows to the head from an opponent.

Michael Bisping was unconscious when Hendo landed a full force elbow on him. Syler was unconscious when Serrano delivered a head shot. Aldo was unconscious when Conor landed the 2nd hammer-fist.

Referees are human. Fighters are fast. A referee may be 10 feet away from an unconscious man and in the time it takes him to make up those 10 feet, multiple serious blows can be landed.

Ground fighting is, absolutely, a part of MMA. Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is beautiful to watch.

Let's not kid ourselves on the Ground and Pound situation though. The fact that Ground and Pound is legal means that fighters can land blows to unconscious men before the ref can separate them. If Ground and Pound, in it's current format, was illegal then all of the above cases wouldn't have happened.

Also, In boxing the 2 boxers are standing. If someone punches you in the head, your head is free to move in many directions to absorb the blow.

In MMA, a grounded fighter on his back, in guard or mount; being pounded by hammer fists and elbows, has the canvas below him. That's not a free range of motion for the head.

The head absorbs more damage when you can't absorb or dissipate the force of blows because it's being pounded into the canvas.

It's completely disingenuous to argue that Ground and Pound is a fundamental part of MMA that couldn't be adjusted. It may well take a fatality to implement a drastic rule change with regards to striking from Guard or ground positions.

MagicIRL wrote: »

Ryan Hall. Jacare Souza. Damien Maia. Brian Ortega. Fabricio Werdum.

Pure BJJ fighters having immense success in MMA.

You're talking pure scutter.

Ryan Hall has beaten nobody. Artem and a couple of others. Saul Rogers dismantled him on the feet and floor in TUF 22.

Damien Maia has looked impressive lately but let's face it he comes up short against any elite strikers and wrestlers.

Brian Ortega hasn't displayed much of his Gracie jiu-jitsu in the UFC. One submission win.

Werdum and Jacare are amazing but have phenomenal striking.

Of course the crossover from BJJ to MMA is POSSIBLE and very possible to become a champion.

But just like Freddy Serrano, Henry Cejudo and others have shown - it's well and good being Olympic level wrestler or judoka (or even BJJ phenom), it's a tough tough transition to MMA if you haven't got excellent boxing fundamentals.



Bottom line,

Tom McGurk is of a different generation and is clueless when it comes to MMA - but the reality is he's just voicing what a large % of the population is thinking.

We still don't know why Joao Carvahlo died.

We may never publicly know. He may have had an underlying heart defect. He may have had any number of things wrong with him before the fight. They may, or may not, publicise the Post Mortem. They might have an inquest. I don't know.

All things being equal, it's safe at this point to assume that the cause of his death was being beaten the sh*t out of by a superior fighter, not helped by a negligent referee, and died as a result of brain trauma.

That's a safe bet right now. He walked into the cage hydrated and well. He left it and died.

So when Tom McGurk is outraged that a man was beaten to his death, all he is doing is voicing what most sane, fair minded people would voice.

What they don't need is to be sneered at, mocked, abused for their ignorance.

What they don't need is someone pontificating at the lack of deaths in one organisation, when deaths are inevitable given time.

What they don't need is condescension from the MMA community explaining the skill levels of these fighters, or extolling the virtues of the different martial arts and using fancy terminology that nobody understands. The general public don't give a monkeys if you want to waffle on about Anaconda Chokes, Butterfly Guards to guillotine rolls...... even that sentence reads like gobbledy-gook.

Call a spade a spade. Boxing and MMA are 2 "sports" where the objective is to use speed, skill, timing to inflict concussive damage on to another human being.

You can argue whatever you like about rugby, horse racing or whatever. The objective of rugby isn't to inflict damage on your opponents. It's to score points. The objective of horse racing is to get from point A to point B the fastest.

It's disingenuous to compare sports solely on the by-product risks of the sport.

MMA and Boxing the objective IS to inflict damage on your opponent.

That's the sole objective to winning the contest.

MMA and Boxing are not sports. They're fights.

Accept the difference and then it's possible to debate the subject.

Blackthorn Fight School

Ok your post above while it has some good points there is a lot of stuff that I think your missing out on.

Yes many MMA fans points to the 0 deaths in the UFC as it is the gold standard for the sport as you pointed out the number of checks they have in place make things very safe for the fighters. Of course with time the likelihood of death will increase as more people become involved so does the likelihood of a death thats just basic math. But every step that can be taken to prevent this is being done so just holding out the fact that a death might happen as its a fight is pretty disingenuous. I could say that about any sport I will take one at random say ping pong no known deaths but statistically it will happen. As I said I am not saying it wont happen but even in events as crazy as Pride there were no deaths and their rules were considered a bit more extreme than the current rule set of the UFC.

Again you give out to people on here for using MMA terms to explain things yet then you use medical terms such as "subdural or subarachnoid hemorrhage" To say brain trauma people are just trying to explain themselves using the terms they know.

Of the 14 deaths you mention while those 8 were due to head trauma there are most likely a number of contributing factors to this as you pointed out with Joaos death these are likely the same and in unsanctioned events there are far more things that can and will go wrong.

We are also getting a pretty good glimpse of what sub-concussive impacts do to the brain now known as CTE or Chronic traumatic encephalopathy. Also the science on this points that blows that do not knock you out are actually more harmful than the ones that do. As one a person is KO'd the brain shuts down while numerous blows build over time and essentially bruise the brain which is a reason why the deaths in boxing are so high.

Yes I totally agree it is a sad fact of the sport that long term health issues will affect fighters down the line even if just from things such as arthritis in the hands from repeated punching / broken fingers. I myself know I will have issues for this very reason. However it is essential to educate athletes in any sport of the risks which is why these discussions are so important and why the MMA community here has teamed up and is working with the Royal College of Surgeons to educate themselves and young fighters on the risks they face so they can decide to take that risk or not.

Againand I am going to spell this out What is your solution to ground and pound?????

Seriously what on earth is it? As i said in my post the only real point that gets brought up here is the ground and pound issue. What is the alternative?

If we remove it any fighter wobbled would simply lie down and recover in guard which would be a longer version of the boxing 8 count. So what is your alternative?

You mention fights where people have landed 2 or more shots before a fight is stopped. I could link a number of boxing matches where people have died from being hurt and then given time to recover. The reason why ground and pound makes the sport safer is that once the ref sees a fighter cant defend himself it will be stopped I could list 50+ fights where the fighter was not out cold but the fight was stopped for this reason. So again you are only showing one side of the story here. Yes it might take time but in boxing it would be realistically 20-30 seconds to recover stand back up and continue fighting and blows taken after a knockout do far more damage to your brain.

Your explanation of how impact to the brain works is also incorrect again I could link many boxing matches where fighters were boxed to death while standing in the corner. Where does this force magically go when the boxer is standing?

When on the floor the impact is transferred down and out yes the force of the impact is worse on the head but not on the brain. Simple test you can do put and egg in a jar of water put it on the floor and hit it as hard as you can likely the egg will remain intact. Now pick it up and shake it as hard as you can. The egg will slosh about and shatter this is how the brain works its free moving in liquid. This is why we tend to see more cuts on the floor but more KOs from standing. Also more force can be generated while standing than while sitting or kneeling. Impact to a conscious fighter on the floor can be worse than an unconscious one as their head can bounce off the floor if out cold if goes down and out. Which is why in some Muay Thai fights and MMA in asia you will sometimes see the ref diving to catch the persons head to stop it bouncing off the floor when KOd

"Tom McGurk is of a different generation and is clueless when it comes to MMA - but the reality is he's just voicing what a large % of the population is thinking."

You hit the nail on the head with the above he is voicing what a large number of uneducated people think about the sport so leave it to people who know what they are talking about. Why should an uneducated person be paid to talk about something they know nothing about. I know nothing about football should I be paid to go on RTE and talk about how terrible I think it is?

Also your making some pretty drastic claims about Jaoas death while it may have resulted directly from the fight obviously this was a major factor other issues could have been involved but to call out a referee as negligent when all I have heard is that he was not is false and damaging to this mans reputation.

Also we do not know if he walked into the cage hydrated and healthy we may never know as you said yourself there may have been underlying issues.

All of your points here show why we need a commission and a means of regulating the sport here which again comes right back around to the IMAC refusing to recognise a sport that is desperately trying to regulate itself so that this wont happen again. Simply calling it a barbaric and pornographic sport wont stop it and will only allow unsanctioned and unregulated fights to continue. The whole point of this thread is that people are trying to make this sport safer but uneducated people are allowed input on something they know nothing about and the result is that the athletes suffer nobody else.

Also yes he should be mocked I am sorry but his comments were terrible and damaging to a sport that is trying to prevent this happening and he is making wild uneducated claims about a sport he knows nothing about.

This whole thing of "the point is to knock him the hell out" is also a load of balls it is one way to win yes but there are many other ways unlike boxing which has 3 stoppage, KO or decision. Have you watch Ben Askren fight he simply holds his opponents down and wins yes getting the KO is part of the sport but not the 1 and only aim.

Also yes it is perfectly valid to compare risk the death rate in MMA is still very low valid point rugby is not to injure yet injury and concussion rates are very high so why pick on a sport where the participants are fully aware of the risks.

Final point everyone on this thread stop trying to say boxing and MMA are not sports if they were fights they would happen on the street mates and weapons would be involved and there would be no rules these are highly regulated and competitive sports simple as.