as usual, quinn is one of the few people i know who can really argue well. kudos. you make a lot of good points, and i won’t claim you can come to some immutable conclusion on the merits/demerits of ufc and mma.

my point is simply this: by turning violence (sanctioned or otherwise) into a spectacle, we suggest to the audience that being better at beating someone up is a worthwhile and valuable pursuit. i don’t think it is.

sure, you can claim mma and ufc connect to the roots of human nature, but the whole human project is about transcending/conquering that nature in pursuit of something better.

oh, and there’s a world of difference between gangsta rap and ufc. one involves talking about an act, while the other involves doing the act. there’s a clear line there, and if frank mir and his opponent showed up in the ring and just talked about what they were going to do to each other, i don’t think we’d be having this discussion.

and that’s all i have to say about that.

blownspeakers:

Audience:
Sticking only to other things I enjoy, what about, say, metal? Or rap? Gangsta rap?

Participants:
Speaking of rap, for every KRS One or Chuck D, there are now a hundred dime-a-dozen MCs talking about how much coke they move, how many guys they’ve shot, etc. 90% of them come across as total thugs who thought they could make a living talking about the illegal and immoral shit that they’ve done. On a similar note, is it wrong to enjoy Led Zeppelin because of the things they’ve done (and documented doing) to women?

Also, I don’t know Frank Mir or what he’s like as a person, but after this photo was taken and the fight was stopped, he wept, held up a photo of his wife and kid to the camera with a goofy looking smile on his face, commended his opponent as “the best heavyweight ever,” and admitted he was scared of him. I doubt he went home and capped his evening by finally polishing off those last 50-pages of the Pynchon novel he’d been reading, but that doesn’t exactly ooze machismo.

On that note, what do you think of James Murphy? He does this purely for his own enjoyment when he’s not making music and/or losing his edge.

I wouldn’t put it past Tyson if he didn’t know boxing was even nicknamed the Sport of Kings, but the incredibly well-spoken (and it’s not just the Brit accent) Lennox Lewis certainly did. He’s also, apparently, quite a good chess player. And for interest’s sake, he knocked Tyson out.

Gretzky:
True, I think the Great One fought maybe once in his career, but Lemieux fought in his first home game (and scored as well, I think) and quite a few times after that. Sometimes, it was to stand up for himself, but sometimes he just got mad and picked them. While not the greatest, Bobby Orr called him “the most talented player” to ever play. Gordie Howe was equally feared for his scoring ability and because he was a mean SOB… and kind of a dirty player, actually.

What about hitting? Scott Stevens is regarded as one of the best defencemen to ever play, in large part due to his physical presence. He’s probably concussed more people than Mir.

And for the record, even though there’s no striking in judo, I got bloodied by inadvertent contact quite a bit (though nothing major), broke my nose, screwed up one knee, had one or two concussions, and was choked unconscious. And I think we both know, that while I’m a miserable, ill tempered, asshole, I’m not a “goon.”

And on the topic of traditional martial arts, what about something like Muay Thai? You think they stop a fight as quickly in rural Thailand as they do in UFC? Is that okay because it’s ancient? Or because they do a dance and say a prayer before they try to grab each other by the back of the head and whip knees at each other’s faces? Or because they’re Asian?

elainecorden:

An excellent point re: the audience. I suppose this kinda does stoke the fires of meatheadery (which, to quote, less impressively, Billy Joel, has been always burnin’ since the world’s been turnin’) . And I haven’t spent a lot of time watching whatever this is (UFC?), but sure, they could all be big ol’  mean monkeys that I probably wouldn’t want to spend time with. Or maybe they are people seeking to channel all their excess alpha male energy into something that challenges them, blah blah blah first rule of Fight Club etc.

However, when you open the slithery can of worms as to what does and doesn’t constitute a sport, you kinda lost me. Why pole vault? Why slam dunks? Why anything?  At least combat has roots in a natural human behavior.

lukesimcoe:

yeah… but the problem isn’t so much with what mma means to us (literate types who may be able to quote hemingway on command), but what it means to others, especially those doing it and those who idolize those doing it. admittedly, i have fairly limited experience watching this stuff, but every time i have, 90% of the participants come across as total goons who thought they could make a living out of the skills they picked up starting fights at bars.

you think mike tyson thought he was participating in the sport of kings? ol’ mikey thought he was beating the shit out of someone in the ring and that’s what this is. sure these guys go through intense training and have the level of dedication that other athletes possess, but the end result of all that work and passion is being better at beating someone up. just because someone worked hard to achieve a goal doesn’t mean that goal was worth achieving.

you can try and call it sport, but the bottom line is that guy in the photo is cold-cocking another guy in the face… that’s called violence. and i’d lump boxing and hockey fighting in there too; there’s a reason why we hold Gretzky — and not Domi —up as the greatest hockey player of all time. he was an athlete, not a goon.

while i think the guy trying to put quinn into a box is a knob, i would ask quinn how many times he came back from judo with a broken nose, a concussion, a pair of black eyes or sporting his own or someone else’s blood. there IS a difference between traditional martial arts and this shit.

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