![An excellent point re: the audience. I suppose this kinda does stoke the fires of meatheadery (which, to quote, less impressively, Billy Joel, has been always burnin’ since the world’s been turnin’) . And I haven’t spent a lot of time watching whatever this is (UFC?), but sure, they could all be big ol’ mean monkeys that I probably wouldn’t want to spend time with. Or maybe they are people seeking to channel all their excess alpha male energy into something that challenges them, blah blah blah first rule of Fight Club etc.
However, when you open the slithery can of worms as to what does and doesn’t constitute a sport, you kinda lost me. Why pole vault? Why slam dunks? Why anything? At least combat has roots in a natural human behavior.
lukesimcoe:
yeah… but the problem isn’t so much with what mma means to us (literate types who may be able to quote hemingway on command), but what it means to others, especially those doing it and those who idolize those doing it. admittedly, i have fairly limited experience watching this stuff, but every time i have, 90% of the participants come across as total goons who thought they could make a living out of the skills they picked up starting fights at bars.
you think mike tyson thought he was participating in the sport of kings? ol’ mikey thought he was beating the shit out of someone in the ring and that’s what this is. sure these guys go through intense training and have the level of dedication that other athletes possess, but the end result of all that work and passion is being better at beating someone up. just because someone worked hard to achieve a goal doesn’t mean that goal was worth achieving.
you can try and call it sport, but the bottom line is that guy in the photo is cold-cocking another guy in the face… that’s called violence. and i’d lump boxing and hockey fighting in there too; there’s a reason why we hold Gretzky — and not Domi —up as the greatest hockey player of all time. he was an athlete, not a goon.
while i think the guy trying to put quinn into a box is a knob, i would ask quinn how many times he came back from judo with a broken nose, a concussion, a pair of black eyes or sporting his own or someone else’s blood. there IS a difference between traditional martial arts and this shit.
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An excellent point re: the audience. I suppose this kinda does stoke the fires of meatheadery (which, to quote, less impressively, Billy Joel, has been always burnin’ since the world’s been turnin’) . And I haven’t spent a lot of time watching whatever this is (UFC?), but sure, they could all be big ol’ mean monkeys that I probably wouldn’t want to spend time with. Or maybe they are people seeking to channel all their excess alpha male energy into something that challenges them, blah blah blah first rule of Fight Club etc.
However, when you open the slithery can of worms as to what does and doesn’t constitute a sport, you kinda lost me. Why pole vault? Why slam dunks? Why anything? At least combat has roots in a natural human behavior.
yeah… but the problem isn’t so much with what mma means to us (literate types who may be able to quote hemingway on command), but what it means to others, especially those doing it and those who idolize those doing it. admittedly, i have fairly limited experience watching this stuff, but every time i have, 90% of the participants come across as total goons who thought they could make a living out of the skills they picked up starting fights at bars.
you think mike tyson thought he was participating in the sport of kings? ol’ mikey thought he was beating the shit out of someone in the ring and that’s what this is. sure these guys go through intense training and have the level of dedication that other athletes possess, but the end result of all that work and passion is being better at beating someone up. just because someone worked hard to achieve a goal doesn’t mean that goal was worth achieving.
you can try and call it sport, but the bottom line is that guy in the photo is cold-cocking another guy in the face… that’s called violence. and i’d lump boxing and hockey fighting in there too; there’s a reason why we hold Gretzky — and not Domi —up as the greatest hockey player of all time. he was an athlete, not a goon.
while i think the guy trying to put quinn into a box is a knob, i would ask quinn how many times he came back from judo with a broken nose, a concussion, a pair of black eyes or sporting his own or someone else’s blood. there IS a difference between traditional martial arts and this shit.
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