Mixed martial arts, coming as it does from the DNA, enjoys a fanbase that crosses national boundaries. The three arguably most popular fighters in the sport’s history are a Russian, a Brazilian of African extraction, and a French Canadian. The newest star currently being birthed is Irish.
To the American ear, they all talk funny.
UFC middleweight champion Chris Weidman appeared recently on Ariel Helwani’s The MMA Hour, and expressed puzzlement that US fans do not cheer louder and harder for US fighters. Weidman has experienced the phenomenon directly when fighting Lyoto Machida and Anderson Silva, twice. Each time, the Las Vegas crowd was more notably more supportive for the foreign-born opponents.
“I feel like smaller countries, other countries, they cheer, they support their people no matter what,” said Weidman as transcribed by Dave Doyle for MMAFighting. “We need to get a little bit more supportive of our people.”
“I’ve fought all these top Brazilians. They’re all supporting their people, Anderson Silva, they’re supporting him. Lyoto Machida, they’re all supporting him. I didn’t have the full support of America. Not everyone American was rooting for me because I’m from America. If they were rooting for me, it’s because they were a fan of me. There was a lot of fans from America who were cheering for Anderson Silva and Lyoto Machida.”
Weidman was cageside at UFC 178 in Las Vegas on Sept 27 as the fans for the Irish Conor McGregor drowned out those for the American Dustin Poirier.
“For him to have so many more fans than Poirier, over here in America, I mean, Americans are cheering for him and then you have all these Irish guys coming over cheering for him too,” said Weidman. “So America is the one country that, they don’t cheer for their own. They won’t just stick with Americans. I feel like Americans need to get better with that.”
“I feel like, we’ve got so much going on, we’ve got so many people to support that, sometimes, we really are good at a lot of different things. We have a lot of great stars and so many different things, some of the other countries don’t have that. So when they get somebody, they support them to the death. America, I kind of think we take it for granted sometimes.”
So what do you think UG? What country are you from, and who do you yell loudest for?
