Mixed martial arts has historically suffered from public criticism. Sen. John McCain called it “Human Cock Fighting” and the characterization very nearly ended the sport.
On Sunday Meryl Streep took a backhanded swipe at MMA.
“All of us in this room, really, belong to the most vilified segments in American society right now,” she said. “Think about it: Hollywood, foreigners, and the press. … Hollywood is crawling with outsiders and foreigners, and if we kick ’em all out, you’ll have nothing to watch but football and mixed martial arts, which ARE NOT THE ARTS.”
The reaction from the MMA community was scathing. However, Ty Robinson took a contrary approach in his latest Ty Robinson Writes blog, excerpted below.
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Meryl Streep, arguably the greatest actress to ever live, mentioned MMA at the Golden Globe Awards, which is an international gathering of Hollywood’s elite, viewed by millions. Any press is good press, and that is quite a lot of press. She didn’t call it UFC or human cockfighting. She referred to it properly as mixed martial arts, and on an enormous platform. That is huge.
Moreover, Streep chose to use MMA instead of any other sport, pairing it with the NFL, a money making leviathan and worldwide presence. Not basketball, not baseball, not hockey. MM-freaking-A. Put on par with the biggest sports organization in America, and as an example of what would be left with out the arts, which once again, is the bigger picture here. She said nothing negative about either sport, made no mockery of its participants. She merely defended her own profession by using another as a point of reference.
The biggest oversight by all those who’ve come unglued at Streep’s speech is that, within its context, MMA was the only sport that fit into the verbal scheme she was working with. Saying you’d be left with football and bowling, which are not the arts lacks the nice ring that using mixed martial arts does. It was a transitional phrase, one which, as a writer, I have to recognize was well done. She threw a deft, well-timed combination rather than winging, clumsy arm punches.
I doubt that Meryl Streep is a big fan of MMA. I’m equally doubtful she has anything against it. The truth of the matter is likely that she (or the person who wrote her speech) knows enough about the sport to use it in that situation, and with confidence the millions of people watching would all know it as well. It didn’t need to be qualified and no one in the audience yelled out, mixed martial what? They took it in stride. I wish I could same the same for the MMA world.
What Streep did on Sunday night was not an attack on mixed martial arts. She did not belittle those who give their lives to the sport, didn’t castigate the practice as inhuman, and certainly didn’t profess to knowing anything about it other than to say it exists. We should consider the possibility that Meryl Streep has accepted MMA into her her life, and in doing so, spoke for the world at large. MMA is a so much a part of our social fabric it can be used by an aging spokeswoman of an enormous industry that is completely removed from combat sports and everyone understood.
It is time we put away the notion of MMA being an underdog sport. For better or worse, mixed martial arts is a part of popular discourse. Meryl Streep knows it. Now we must embrace it.
