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Luke Thomas’ words of wisdom on MMA personalities and radio

By Zach Arnold | July 30, 2010

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From the man himself:

Reminder of how wimpy everyone is in MMA: just left Capitol Hill meeting where journalists, advocates slammed fed govt reps to their face.

Try that in MMA and someone’s feelings get hurt. Unreal.

@sonochamp Members of fed govt I’m talking about aren’t elected. And the issue isn’t mechanism. It’s a willingness to accept criticism.

@clean_dean I don’t do bullshit Internet podcasts. My show is on terrestrial radio. Those are the consumers whose needs I need to meet.

@clean_dean You talk Japanese MMA over the air on terrestrial radio and before too long, you’ll be doing Internet podcasts. Makes 0 sense.

Press release in my inbox: KING MO SAYS HE’LL MAKE “REFRIED BEANS” OUT OF RAFAEL “FEIJAO” CAVALCANTE – TONIGHT ON HDNET’S “INSIDE MMA”

Props to King Mo for naming a food that is actually Mexican in origin when trying to get after a Brazilian. Real bright.

Topics: Media, MMA, Zach Arnold | 16 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |

16 Responses to “Luke Thomas’ words of wisdom on MMA personalities and radio”

  1. Gordon Bombay says:

    Best part of this is Feijao means “beans” in Portuguese and Mo was making a play on words. He wasn’t getting at him for being a Brazilian whatsoever.

  2. So basically, MMA journos are pussies who won’t challenge the status quo. However, “reporting” (ostensibly defending, as it has been for most of the last umpteen years) on the status quo is what keeps journos making money writing about a pseudosport instead of investing time in real jobs. Its not really a surprise that self comes before the sport when you make it a business, is it?

    Ed. — Is boxing a pseudosport?

    • Jason Bennett says:

      MMA journalists mostly are weak and have no idea how to report or invetigate stories. Or at least they refuse to. Psuedosport with psuedo-journalists. Start with Kevin Iole (amongst many others) being the mouthpiece for Zuffa press releases and token message bearer (Bellator lawsuit). Then take it down all the way to Sherdog, MMA Weekly, MMA Junkie and any other major site for total failure to report the Pride fall/Yakuza scandal – only the biggest, juiciest and most significant story in MMA history that would go on to become the pivot point in the history of MMA. Nothing has been the same in the US or Japan since then business wise and yet no story at all. But this is no different than almost all journalism anymore in sports or politics, everyone lives in fear of reporting what is really happening because they could get cut off or cut out. What, you think CBS news did a great job researching the sport on thier piece a few years ago?

      Zach, as for boxing, it’s even less of a sport. It’s borderline to being as worked as pro wrestling. I know many people who watch MMA, but when boxing comes up in conversation, everyone mentions how rankings and outcomes are fixed and how the best refuse to fight each other due to dirty business.

      • Philosophically, there isn’t much difference, however the scale is completely different. How often do you see ESPN write an article about how great David Stern is on the front page of their website? Not nearly as often as we see reinforcement of Dana White’s superiority over every other mere mortal.

        As for the difference with boxing: Lots of MMA people have deluded themselves to believe its way more legit. Its really incredible, actually.

        • Isaiah says:

          There’s also a difference in expectations. In boxing, if a promoter pays off a sanctioning body for a higher ranking and title shots, it’s a major scandal. In MMA, there’s no need for that because there are no rankings that matter and the promoters just give title shots to whomever they want. And so on. There are a lot of things that are just the normal course of business in MMA that promoters would get crucified for if it was boxing. There’s no logical justification for the difference; it’s just that boxing is covered by a real media, while MMA is covered by fawning shills.

        • edub says:

          “In boxing, if a promoter pays off a sanctioning body for a higher ranking and title shots, it’s a major scandal.”

          You really don’t think that is day to day stuff in boxing already. Champions take on challengers all the time. I mean Pacman and Margarito are fighting for a title at 154 when Manny has never fought there, Margarito hasn’t fought (or won for that matter) there for years, and they aren’t even fighting at 154. It’s not like that is an exception either. When’s the last time Ivan Calderon has fought a worthy opponent?

          Again boxing is in a lot worse off a shape than MMA at the moment…

        • edub says:

          “It was supposed to say champions take on unworthy challengers…”

        • Isaiah says:

          No, I don’t think it’s normal activity. Look into the IBF ranking scandal that broke, I think, in 1999. It happens, but it’s recognized to be a problem and sanctions are taken when it is discovered. By contrast, in MMA it’s done openly and is not seen to be any kind of a problem. So by simply changing the definition of corruption, MMA promoters can claim to be free from it! That kind of nonsense only works because there is no real independent, informed MMA media to say anything about it.

        • edub says:

          But that’s just one sanctioning body, and it’s the only one that has 1 “champion” per division. The WBC has a panel that makes their top ten lists, so you have guys that continually vote for “their guys” instead of who actually worthy challengers are.

          Bad Left Hook has a great artilce on their website delving into the process for ranking and selecting fights in the three main sanctioning bodies…

    • Boxing has lots of terrible things wrong with it just as MMA does. The difference between the two and the media for them is that boxing media demands change and MMA media reinforces why its good that the terrible things wrong with it happen.

      • edub says:

        That’s just because boxing is a hell of a lot more F*ckd up than MMA is right now. MMA you have pretty much 2 divisions where the best hasn’t been fighting the best: LW and HW.

        Boxing you’ve had the best fight the best at 135,168 and …. where else? Arum holds off JML/Caballero/Gamboa. Floyd and Manny won’t fight each other. A guy who loaded his handwraps less than 2 years ago is about to get the biggest payday of his career. The Klitschko’s can’t get anyone of value in the ring with em’. Paul Williams and Sergio Martinez could be fighting to see who the best in the world at 160 is, and that’s not happening anytime soon. Bernard Hopkins has been holding the top spot at 175 hostage for what seems like an eternity now. We keep getting catchweight fights in a sport where most of the classes are seperated by 7 pounds.

        MMA is in a hell of a lot better shape than boxing right now.

  3. Mark says:

    Reminder of how wimpy everyone is in MMA: just left Capitol Hill meeting where journalists, advocates slammed fed govt reps to their face.

    Try that in MMA and someone’s feelings get hurt. Unreal.

    The mainstream media fears getting their access cut off to politicians as much as MMA writers fear getting their access cut off to UFC. Sure, you can talk trash to Senators and members of the House. But it’s a whole different story with Presidential administrations. Bush/Cheney publicly cut off access to the New York Times for what they felt was an overly negative assessment of their administration, and Obama/Biden have done the same thing with Fox News. So that’s why various issues that get handled poorly (don’t want to get political by naming stuff) get ignored by some news organizations in the mainstream press the same way the top MMA writers ignore a lot of the issues regarding controversial business practices when discussing UFC and are more than happy to report fluff stories. How much different is ignoring Dana screwing with Fedor’s TapOut deal to talk about the press release banning vuvuzelas from UFC shows than ignoring the economy/unemployment still being terrible to talk about Obama saying he didn’t know who Snooki was on The View but he made some joke about her that someone wrote for him that he didn’t remember making?

    But talking trash about members of Congress is closer to saying critical things of Strikeforce, Bellator, DREAM, ect. They need the media outlet to survive (Congress if they want to increase their national notoriety, smaller MMA orgs if they want publicity for their shows) so they’ll take the abuse those at the top can afford to strike back at the media because the media needs to cover them more than they need to be covered.

    Also, since you’re usually talking to spokespeople when you deal with Government and members of the media are talking directly to Dana White, it’s a little bit different. The same people who chew up Robert Gibbs act totally different when Obama is giving the press conference. So maybe there would be a difference if UFC had a press secretary instead of having White do all the media.

  4. Fluyid says:

    Who is Luke Thomas?

    • RJ says:

      He’s editor in chief at bloodyelbow.com an (mma blog) who’s been known to scold, talk down to and ban people for the hell of it when he doesn’t like their comments.
      His comments here regarding people in mma being babies are beyond hypocritical.
      The man was describing himself basically.

  5. Dave says:

    I can’t remember, what kinda questions did Luke ask in the Dana interview?

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