MMA has certainly been on the up-and-up in Australia. The whole country is still buzzing after UFC 110 and it certainly seems to have re-vitalized many in our sport. It’s been awesome to see everyone from UFC Hall of Famer Royce Gracie to super coach Robert Follis make the trip Down Under and ignite even more interest.
But with the positive, I guess there always has to be a little negativity. I don’t usually get too pessimistic in my editorial — you know, I don’t want to get the sport down anymore than it already gets beat-up in the mainstream media. But I felt I should address the matter that is flying around the MMA scene like a rabid dog at the time of writing. Yes, we must talk about the fallout from what will be known for years to come as the ‘Strikeforce Brawl’.
The most positive thing that I’ve taken from this event is that I haven’t seen or heard one person that wasn’t unhappy about this occurrence. Everywhere I go, online and off, there seems to be a united disgust about the primetime scuffle. All across the board MMA fans are up in arms about Strikeforce, CBS, Mayhem Miller and the Diaz boys.
Firstly, I think it’s too easy to bash the big corporation and kick into CBS, but I don’t really know what else they could have done. Cutting away from the action and going to commercials then pretending it never happened is never an honourable action, it will just start a hail storm of conspiracy theorists that already think MMA is this weird underground sport where things are kept under wraps at all costs.
I know plenty will be jumping on Mayhem Miller, but I wouldn’t be so hard on him. Sure, the guy can be a bit of a goose sometimes and it wasn’t a really classy move, but a 20-strong entourage mugging him in the cage and laying the boots in? A little overkill. Personally, the whole thing was a bloody embarrassment. As I’m sure many of you can relate to, I spend a lot of time defending my favourite sport and trying to convince nay-sayers that it’s not the barbaric blood-sport preferred by cave men that so many make it out to be. An event like this makes us all looks like complete idiots.
Out of everything that happened, probably the single most aggravating addition was commentator Gus Johnson’s ignorant comment that, “Sometimes these things happen in MMA.” Ahhh, no they don’t Gus.
At least there is an upside to the lack of Strikeforce coverage in Australia — the Sydney Morning Herald and the rest of the ‘bandwagon’ media in Australia won’t even know it happened.
Keep up the good fight…one on one, that is.
