Mixed martial arts was born as a spectacle, a war of the worlds, where representatives from different martial arts used their techniques until one man couldn’t go on. It didn’t even have a name, although soon Vale Tudo and NHB were used to described what was going in without gloves, and with, respectively.
Eventually it became a sport, with government regulation, weight divisions, prohibitions, and more. Because of that, MMA eventually became enormously popular.
However, progress is not a steady line upwards, it is an up and down, that trends upwards over time. The sport was recently subjected to two downs.
On an amateur card in Colorado recently, a game 68-year-old woman named Ann Perez de Tejada got stopped in the first by 2-2 amateur Laura Dettman, who is not 68. It is not a slight again Ms. de Tajada to suggest that the fight should not have been made. Ms. de Tejada is awesome, in fact, for being willing to step up. But there should have been fairer matchmaking, and far more medical tests required.
That fight was seen live by a small audience, but some 800,000 more people saw it on YouTube. That number is crushed, unfortunately, by the 3,000,000 people who tuned in to watch Bellator 149, headlined by Ken Shamrock vs. Royce Gracie and Kimbo Slice vs. Dada 5000. It was the most watched MMA show this year in North America.
The viewers nearly saw a woefully undertrained man die in the cage. Dhafir Harris’s heart stopped after the fight, and he went into renal failure. He spent nearly two weeks in the hospital, and, mercifully has recovered. However, given the huge success, there will be more “fun fights” coming from Bellator MMA.
The blame does not ultimately fall completely on the Viacom-owned Bellator. Bellator 145 was awesome, with Daniel Straus unseating ‘Pitbull’ Freire to become a two-time league champion, and Michael Chandler getting a tremendous KO. But it got maybe 800k viewers. The freakshow, or if you prefer “fun fights” got three times that number of viewers.
Bellator is in the business of business. If three times the people want to see freakshows, they will do freakshows. And that is our fault.
WSoF title challenger Brian Foster spoke recently with Shaun Al-Shatti for MMA Fighting, and said he is not impressed.
“It set us back, man. It really did,” said Foster. “People who had no idea what our sport is about, to watch that for the first time, what the hell do you think they would think? It’s just horrible, man. To see my sons training their butts off everyday and working towards a goal to become what their father is, and to have s*** like that happening and dilute the future, it’s horrible, man. It’s very, very horrible to a person who has children like that, who look for something like it. I don’t know. It just hurt, man. It hurt. It was unsatisfying. It pisses me off.”
“[My son] sends me the link [to the 68 year old woman fighting] and I watch it, and I was just distraught. It hit me on the wrong note, man. That’s not what this sport is. Are you going to allow a 68-year-old woman to put on shoulder pads and a football helmet and get out there with the NFL and try to practice? No, you’re not. Are you going to give her a bat and have a pitcher throw a f***ing 90-mile-and-hour fastball at her f***ing face? No, you’re not. Why would you approve of her getting in that cage, man? It makes no sense to me. It makes no sense for the future of the sport.
“What the f*** is that? And she’s fighting someone half her age? I couldn’t even finish the video. When my sons asked me why is granny getting her ass whooped? Who permitted this? I’m scared to tell them: I’m fighting for the same commission. I’m fighting for the same doctors.”
“I’m not going to hold my tongue because I do have sons and they want to be fighters, man. They want to be gladiators, so I want the future of this sport to be awesome and I want them to be labeled as professional athletes themselves. And for s*** like that to happen, it does not show a good step in the right direction.
“Some people still look at [MMA] as barbaric and everything else, but every person who fights that I know, they fight for a reason. To be looked down or belittled under those other sports, … something about MMA breeds confidence and self-esteem and everything else, and when you can do that and you take fear out of the equation completely, you can do the impossible, man. It’s amazing. I’m not saying that 68-year-old woman didn’t have a dream. But man, had that woman died or something bad would’ve happened, that conversation with that s*** would’ve been completely different, and it would’ve tarnished the sport. Commissions would’ve gone crazy. The fans would’ve just gone nuts.”
“It comes down to the promoters and the commissions, them understanding what this sport needs to become versus what it was. We’ve got to continue to grow. We’ve got to continue to evolve. That’s it. We’ve got to continue to get safer. I understand [the ratings] part of it all, but that’s not safe. That’s not safe. It’s not. Had something happened to any of them, it’d have been really bad for our sport. And it didn’t. [People] applauded when they got up and s***, and it’s awesome that they were able to get up, I would clap too, but I was just disgusted by the videos in general. It just wasn’t appealing.”
Brian Foster fights WSoF lightweight champion Justin Gaethje at WSoF 29 on March 12. It will be a good fight.
You can catch the weigh in right here on the UG, at 8:30 p.m. ET.
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