Michael Schiavello on the state of the art, East and West

ONE Championship play-by-play announcer Michael ‘THE Voice’ Schiavello recently highlighted differences between the UFC in the West and ONE Championship in the Far East.

The name-calling, the crazy stunts, throwing things through windows at each other, threatening each other on Twitter. That’s how you sell PPVs to a largely western audience, which is sad, said Schiavello to Jason Burgos for Sherdog.com. Are a lot of the UFC guys fighters or martial artists? There’s a difference between the two. That’s not how true martial artists act. That’s how fighters act.

Speaking to Demetrious Johnson, something he found very refreshing in his One Championship experience so far is that now he can portray those qualities he’s always wanted to as a martial artist.

Schiavello also bemoaned the use of PEDs across the sport.

These are guys people look up to, people put on a pedestal,” he said. “We pay money to watch, and then to have the disappointment of someone testing positive for PEDs is just deflating as a fan. Of course, it hurts the sport. It hurts any sport. It’s not just MMA. Drugs are rampant in a lot of sports. There’s a lot of drug and PED taking that we don’t hear about, or isn’t reported, or isn’t even tested for, but you know it’s happening in so many sports.

However, despite the negatives, Schiavello sees MMA today as being the strongest ever, noting that UFC, One Championship, Bellator MMA, Professional Fighters League, Rizin Fighting Federation, and Combate Americas are among the groups staging world-class events.

I think we are probably experiencing … I don’t know if you would call it a golden era, [but] it’s getting there, Schiavello said. We’re experiencing more mixed martial arts now, worldwide, than we ever have before. Call it whatever era you want. Maybe we’re experiencing the global era of MMA for the first time ever.