UG fighting

nirish

have any of you guys seen footage of the Gannon V Kimbo fight from last month.
it was an underground bare knuckle fight in miami.
Gannon is a golden gloved and MMA champion and Kimbo is a street fighter.
despite it being underground some papers in the states got hold of it and are labeling it barbaric.
what are your thoughts? will this damage the image of MMA??? is it a good idea to hold unsanctioned fights??
the link to the footage i saw has been removed but here are some images.

http://www.whoopass.tv/

http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=57023

http://www.martialartsplanet.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8706&page=31&pp=15


let me know what you think

StephenInsane

Yeah i heard of this. I knew about it before the press did. But I never actually saw the fight. Gannon is an idiot, i remember him promoting the fight on underground mma forums. bad for the sport no doubt. Altough some diehard MMA heads are saying no publicity is bad publicity, altough i doubt it.

nirish

i gotta tell ya i was kinda expecting a little more. my goal was to try to generate debate about the public perception of MMA fights and fighters.
i know alot of people who automaticaly think that because i train MMA i beat the head off of some poor bas#$rd a couple of nights a week in training,and are surprised to hear about the amount of skill, training and preperation that goes into MMA.
from reading other posts on this forum i can see that the TMA/MMA debate rages but what about people who have no idea what is involved. joe on the streets who sees an article like the above or an MMA fight billed as "to the death" or some thing along those lines.
what is it going to take for the public perception of the sport of MMA to change???? and what will it change to???

just curious???

Colm_OReilly

nirish,

Where'd you train at? Do we know each other?

Colm

I think its kind of funny that a lot of the talk about Gannon/Kimbo damaging MMA is actually drawing attention to the event and therefore damaging MMA!

Itll take a public educated in grappling (either a judo or wrestling or BJJ curriculum in schools) to understand that MMA is a skillful sport and not just random violence. Look at Japan where kids are taught Judo and school and as a result have a good understanding of the ground game- resulting in Pride having quite a large mainstream audience (and also Japanese pro-wrestling being quite realistic).

For the time being I think we have to hear less of the cage to be perfectly honest. I think the idea of two blokes fighting in a cage conjures up pretty harsh images that the sport should be trying to distance itself from. I think the ring is the way to go (whatever about the strategic differences) as it doesnt have the same stigma attached. I think the current MMA rules used in Ireland are pretty solid and I think events like the MMA League are very good for making the sport more popular outside the realms of just high performance athletes.

Clive

What I saw of Kimbo vs Gannon was pretty poor and boring.

I think things like this can have a bad effect on MMA in general, simply because it is completely disorganised.

Kimbo-Gannon was supposed to be a bare-knuckle boxing match, yet nobody would see it as a poor reflection on the sport of boxing. This is because boxing is organised and well able to present a solid media face and tell the world such things have nothing to do with them.

MMA can't do this. There's nobody who can speak for MMA.

To be honest I think that the main things stopping MMA going mainstream are:

Lack of organisation - no NGBs, no regulation etc
Boring fighters being rewarded - Tito Ortiz, Matt Hughes, Randy Couture, while they are fantastic athletes, and incredibily skilled, to the average person they are also incredibly boring. Getting a takedown, then pinning someone for the rest of the round, while trying to open a cut or get a decision, with small, unexciting strikes will turn someone off MMA instantly.

People want to see Wanderlei and Chuck - exciting electrifying fighters.
Look at Mino vs Fedor for how a ground battle should look. Huge ground n' pound, constant sweep and submission attempts (roll on December 31st!).

No TV coverage - remember when the UFC shows were being aired on Sky before UFC London. Twice I sat on the bus and listened to people talking about the UFC - people who didn't train and hadn't known about it before.

nirish

afraid not colm. while my interest was piqued about MMA in ireland i have since moved to the states for a couple of years and am currently training over here. i have only been at it a year but loving it so when i move home next year expect to see me at your gym, if the offer from the other thread is still open?.
i stumbled across this forum a few weeks ago when a friend of mine told me he had competed in the MMA league. i took a look at the table and googled a few things i found and here i am.

nirish

i agree that one way to enhance the public perception of the sport of mma is increased television coverage. however it seems to me that mainstream tv networks are afraid to touch it due to the stigma attached. catch 22??

how are MMA fights regulated in ireland??
what i know is in the united states all MMA fights are controled, regulated and refereed by the state boxing commision. this means old guys who were semi-pro boxers 20-30-40- years ago are now refing fights. the point is that they so not know the rules or care and think that all the fighters are nuts basterdising their precious queensbury rules.
example: a gut i train with choked out his opponent with a rnc and got up with his hands in the air, the ref asked wht he had stoped fighting and bill pointed out that he was out cold. the ref was baffeled cos he had never seen anyone knocked out other that by a punch and went to the scorers table to see what he should do. all the time he is refusing to let his corner in the ring. he finally awarded the fight to bill not becaus he had submitted him but because the other guys corner would not stay out of the ring.

the point i am trying to make is that it seems to me that it is not only the public who need to be persuaded that mma is a ligit sport but the people in charge. and as colm ok said there is nobody currently able to "speak for MMA"

Colm_OReilly

nirish,

Offers always open man.

That sounds like a very badly run MMA event. Why wasn't the ref someone who trained in MMA? Anyways as far as I can tell it's the state athlete commission (not boxing commission) that regulates MMA, and it's only in a few states at the moment (Nevada, New Jersey, California?)

Colm

California isnt yet. A lot of states wont allow pro rules but allow amateur! Massachusetts has MMA as far as I know! What about Oregon?

nirish

the reason that the event was run so badly is that mma in Massachusetts is governed by the state boxing comission and as such they appoint the refs for the night. granted the above story was several years ago and there is now a ref who has a background in mma but it is a crab shoot and you will never know what you will get. it is not unusual to see a score keeper get up and go to the bar for a drink in the middle of a round. they have little idea about the techniques used in mma and alot of the time a decission will be given on a thrown punch count cos they do not know what else they are seeing.
saying that the promoters do a good job and the facilites are always good and the cards are nearly always evenly matched. there is a good fight card put together every 2 - 3 months and there is a very good comunity with about a dozen really good gyms around the place.
i really do not know about any other states and what their practices are but i will try to find out. i do know that earley UFC could not be held in several states including nevada because the boxing commision would not sanction them and therefore alot of those events took place in casinos on indian reservations which can pretty muck do what they want.


take it easy

nirish

i must add that all events that i am talking about are amature and you do need to be licensed by the state which includes a phyiscal, blood tests and an EKG.
even though it is amature the fighters can come away with anything from $300- $3000 for their night from different sources.