French Judo instructors barred from teaching MMA

The UFC is a forward-thinking company, and offers support to various amateur combat sports including folkstyle wresting in the USA, and Judo in Europe. It is an old adage, but you can’t help someone who won’t help themselves.

The UFC sponsored the European Championships in Scotland, but the European governing body balked. Then they moved the entire event out of Great Britain, in part because of ties between the British Judo Federation and the UFC.

Now the French Judo Federation has sunk even lower, prohibiting all Judo coaches in the country from teaching MMA, on pain of expulsion.

French Judo Federation president Jean-Luc Rouge outlined the new policy in an interview with the French language L’Equipe.

“All those (in judo) who teach MMA will be removed from the French Judo Federation,” said Rouge on Friday, via Google Translate. “MMA is illegal in France. All those (in judo clubs) who teach do not have the right and are liable to be written off. They put the Federation in trouble, and if there is serious injury, I’m responsible.”

“These new combat sports (MMA) seem like they come out of a video game. These guys are stupid enough to kill each other in front of everyone in a cage and they are well paid, so they would accept. Sport is not war! We must be able to shake hands and go have a beer together in the end.”

There have been eight deaths in MMA since its inception in 1993.

Sport are dangerous. 28 people are believed to have died running, in marathons alone, in the USA alone, just from 2000-2009. In 2005 four people died in a single half marathon in the UK. Cheerleading killed 42 people between the fall of 1982 and the spring of 2007.

But no sport has a death rate like Judo. In Japan alone, among school children alone, there have been over 100 deaths from Judo in the past 30 years.

So Rouge’s remarks about stupid people killing each other are ignorant at very, very best.

UFC women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey offered a useful perspective.

“The #IJF isn’t judo,” she tweeted. “The judoka are the soul of the art, not the bureaucrats.”

Ironically, mixed martial arts was born from a ban by the powers that be in Judo. Judo champion Mitsuyo Maeda sought to test his art in mixed rules contest. The Kodokan ordered that he not use the word “Judo” in conjunction with these bouts. So Maeda called in Jiu-Jitsu instead, and taught Judo to Carlos Gracie, who taught his little brother Helio, who taught his son Rorion, who co-founded the UFC.

So maybe some good will come of Mr. Rouge’s narrow-minded, surrender-monkey attitude, and hopefully it doesn’t take 100 years.

And not for nothing, but bro, do you even trane anymore?