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Reaping what you sow
By Zach Arnold | March 17, 2006
By Zach Arnold
On this week’s FOR show, Rob Sayers and I addressed the Wall Street Journal article by Peter Sanders on MMA in America. Rob’s response can be found here. However, on the radio show, I addressed a more important theme and question regarding what UFC President Dana White wanted to see as far as media coverage.
In past interviews with Mr. White, he has made it clear that he loves the attention from the mainstream media. While the “hardcore” MMA media writers will always cover UFC, he wanted to expand the coverage on a national and international level. On the radio show, I said that Mr. White should be careful for what he asked for because the majority of the “mainstream” media coverage would be negative towards the industry.
I now introduce to you “example A.”
Example A is an article written today by Southern California freelance writer Greg Crosby. The first time you read the article, you notice that one of the inspirations or key factors in writing the article was based on the WSJ article.
In today’s article, Crosby romanticizes about the time he spent with his father watching boxing fights on television every week. Crosby starts off with the theme about boxing fading and MMA taking over.
Here’s the bad news. Another sport appears to be taking its place – a far more brutal sport. It’s called “Ultimate Fighting†and it makes boxing look like patty-cake.
With this mindset in mind, let’s analyze some quotes from the article.
Ultimate Fighting matches are far more violent and faster paced than boxing.
Rebuttal: Journal of Combative Sport: Boxing Fatalities Data, Svinth
The thing evidently started as total free-for-all brawls staged in bars and Indian casinos several years ago.
Rebuttal: It cannot be denied that there is still an underground element that has “MMA fights”, and it also cannot be denied that MMA shows have taken place on Indian land. However, many of the shows that have taken place on Indian soil (such as WEC) have legitimate rules in place for the safety of the fighters.
[Once regulators got wind of them and threatened to force them into strict government restrictions, the sport’s promoters decided to scale back some of the more vicious aspects and adopt formal rules.
Rebuttal: Under Zuffa management, UFC did work with the New Jersey & Nevada State Athletic Commissions to negotiate various rules. McCain did want to go after the “old” UFC under the SEG banner, but for his own various personal reasons.
These Ultimate Fights are not held within a traditional boxing ring; they are staged inside something called “the Octagon,†which is an eight-sided, fenced-in cage.
Rebuttal: It depends on which state athletic commission you are dealing with in terms of whether or not you can use a ring or a cage.
There is an official association called the Ultimate Fighting Championship and it is this body that is promoting the sport in venues across the country.
Rebuttal: UFC is a promotion. A league. There are many, many leagues now promoting in the industry.
All this makes my memories of watching the Friday Night Fights with my Dad seem so innocent, tame and quant.
Rebuttal: The amount of severe injuries in boxing versus MMA is a comparison well worth making. And we’re not even talking about deaths, either.
Boxing done correctly isn’t about hammering; it is more like a physical art.
Rebuttal: As Rob Sayers talked about on FOR this week, there is still this mindset in the eyes of many Americans that boxing is somehow a safer industry than MMA or kickboxing or any other combat sport. If it’s a “physical art,” at what point do competitors dying uphold the activity as an artform? The pro-wrestling industry has had many wrestlers die before the age of 50. If I tried to call it a “physical art,” I would be laughed at by the mainstream media (as the first word out of their mouth about pro-wrestling is “fake”).
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There is a reason to write rebuttals to these kinds of op-ed articles.
First, someone who is not a fan of MMA or smart about the industry may read this.
Second, you can’t smarten everyone up, but the more of an effort there is to do on a grass-roots level, the higher the chances are that someone will become more educated. You can’t win over everyone, but the effort does count for something.
Third, it’s important to read these types of articles because it gives you a look into the mindset of what the critics of the industry think. It’s a look into the playbook that they base their writings on. Instead of telling these kinds of critics to shut up, it’s important to let them talk. And talk a lot. The more exposure there is to this kind of mindset, the easier it will be in the long-run to correct or alter.
Topics: All Topics, MMA, Zach Arnold | 6 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
I’m convinced no one reads these comments any more, however, instead of a media or press-relations story: this is just another instance of a really ignorant person who happens to have a job as writer.
I read your comments. 🙂
Opposites attract they say. When Howard Stern first created his now retired radio-show, they found out that a big chunk of the listening audience tuned in because they disliked him, and where waiting for what would come next.
I think you could find a similar effect in MMA when it comes to negative “mainstream” press coverage. The people you push away with these articles would probably never tune in to a PPV or fightnight anyway, while you might attract other people by this ‘negative’ hype around all the proposed violence in the fights, just out of human curiosity. And after watching a sanctioned event like the ufc, they’re bound to get an better impression of the sport than that what is delivered in an ignorant article by someone who should consider covering live chess or other ‘safe’ forms of head to head ‘sports’ and competition.
Yes, rebuttal to this type of article is absolutely necessary. Though I’m sure you know more than anyone that it is an uphill battle, it is of the utmost importance to get ‘our side of the story’ out there whenever possible. It is both very unfortunate and depressingly commonplace that uninformed writers such as those mentioned here have such wide media outlets. Kudos on the site and radio show Mr. Arnold, you’ve come a long way. Best wishes!
Gabe
[…] The recent Wall Street Journal piece on MMA was both surprising and dissapointing to me. Not only was it filled with innaccuracies but it also appears to have inspired more irresponsible journalism. Zach Arnold of Fight Opinion wrote a nice article refuting some of the points raised in Greg Crosby’s piece. You can check it out here. […]
Well done Zach.