http://www.cagepotato.com/has-the-ufc-devolved-into-the-ultimate-fighting-circus/
Mixed martial arts has always felt like a kind of fighting utopia. A permanent dream state for lovers of fight sports that occasionally seems almost too good to be true. In a sanitised world, it is the closest and most acceptable iteration of the “no holds barred†concept of combat all fight purists have wet dreams about. Two elite combatants. One locked cage. Very few rules. The best fighter wins, right?
Oh wait, no. We’re back in the land of fantasy again. In fact, with the cold hindsight of UFC 183 and many other recent revelations that are presently clouding the MMA horizon, we’re no longer dreaming or fantasising. We’re standing in a stark reality. And the reality is that MMA – or more specifically, MMA’s standard-bearer and aggressively-insistent market leader, the UFC – is beginning to resemble a bit of a circus.
“But everyone loves a circus!†I hear you cry. Kids loves the circus. Kids up to the age of about 10 love the circus. Right before it becomes socially shameful to admire any form of staged artifice that isn’t the WWE. And increasingly, that is how it feels for all MMA fans. We’re just witnesses to one big sanctioned joke and we’re the dumb people in the audience buying the whole thing. The WWE joke just became the MMA joke.
Read the entire article. Pretty good stuff.
Mixed martial arts has always felt like a kind of fighting utopia. A permanent dream state for lovers of fight sports that occasionally seems almost too good to be true. In a sanitised world, it is the closest and most acceptable iteration of the “no holds barred†concept of combat all fight purists have wet dreams about. Two elite combatants. One locked cage. Very few rules. The best fighter wins, right?
Oh wait, no. We’re back in the land of fantasy again. In fact, with the cold hindsight of UFC 183 and many other recent revelations that are presently clouding the MMA horizon, we’re no longer dreaming or fantasising. We’re standing in a stark reality. And the reality is that MMA – or more specifically, MMA’s standard-bearer and aggressively-insistent market leader, the UFC – is beginning to resemble a bit of a circus.
“But everyone loves a circus!†I hear you cry. Kids loves the circus. Kids up to the age of about 10 love the circus. Right before it becomes socially shameful to admire any form of staged artifice that isn’t the WWE. And increasingly, that is how it feels for all MMA fans. We’re just witnesses to one big sanctioned joke and we’re the dumb people in the audience buying the whole thing. The WWE joke just became the MMA joke.
Read the entire article. Pretty good stuff.
