Sonnen: Stephen A. Smith is the one owed an apology

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Wild

Zi Nazi
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Dec 31, 2014
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Stephen A. Smith has been widely criticized by the MMA community for his UFC 246 comments saying that he’s “disgusted” and thought Donald Cerrone “gave up.” Joe Rogan and Josh Thomson called him out for it, and Conor McGregor himself told Smith to apologize.

Chael Sonnen has since gone to bat for his ESPN colleague, saying that Smith graciously attended UFC 246 and brought with him a wider audience.

“For Stephen A. to come out and commentate on this — which by the way, I’ll just share with you. The numbers go through the roof when Stephen A. comes to the microphone,” Sonnen explained on his YouTube channel. “So many times in MMA I keep hearing that ‘we want to be mainstream. Why aren’t we…


Sonnen: MMA people got it wrong, Stephen A. Smith is the one owed an apology
 

Robbie Hart

All Biden Voters Are Mindless Sheep
Feb 13, 2015
49,703
50,709
He owes everyone in the world an apology as he’s annoying and I don’t see a fan of his anywhere.......if you refer to him as sas, unfortunately, as much as you may say “I don’t like him, he’s an idiot”, you are in love with him and a fan and you should also apologize
 

jason73

Yuri Bezmenov was right
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chael works for espn .he is also the same kind of guy as steven a smith . chael says shit for attention and ratings all the time. it is literally his schtick. the only difference is chael has earned his right to his opinion. who is steven a smith to say cowboy gave up or quit? the guys face was broken .it was a quick fight . these things happen in mma
 

BenAskrensStrikingcoach

Formerly formulating formally
Jan 30, 2015
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Big time over reaction to this shit, nobody seems to disagree with this pleb either, just saying that he's not entitled to an opinion.

I wish he wasn't but he is an MMA commentator/analyst now, going to be a lot worse than this ankle punching wank stain talking shit about fighters and the sport.

WMEs bullshit contracted "celebrity" apperances are worse, interviewing fuckin Bautista before fights, camera time for every cock sucker on their books every card.
 

BeardOfKnowledge

The Most Consistent Motherfucker You Know
Jul 22, 2015
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chael works for espn .he is also the same kind of guy as steven a smith . chael says shit for attention and ratings all the time. it is literally his schtick. the only difference is chael has earned his right to his opinion. who is steven a smith to say cowboy gave up or quit? the guys face was broken .it was a quick fight . these things happen in mma
Chael also says shit for attention then qualifies it where when you actually think about it you say "He could be right." In this context, SAS is just spouting nonsense, and is completely ignoring what he's actually catching flak for.
 
M

member 603

Guest
Stephen A Smith is an idiot, he's a moron, and delivers consistently, one of the shittiest takes on ALL sports that he covers..... That said, I give him a pass on all his activities and actions. Just saying, I'd be pissed too, and say inflammatory things always, if I too walked around realizing that I looked like the full sized version of comedic actor Tony Cox.




Just saying..
 

HEATH VON DOOM

Remember the 5th of November
Oct 21, 2015
17,281
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Stephen A Smith is an idiot, he's a moron, and delivers consistently, one of the shittiest takes on ALL sports that he covers..... That said, I give him a pass on all his activities and actions. Just saying, I'd be pissed too, and say inflammatory things always, if I too walked around realizing that I looked like the full sized version of comedic actor Tony Cox.




Just saying..
Did you just doxx SongExotic2 @Shang Tsong2
 

Mad Dog

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I agree with Chael somewhat. Smith should be able to make comments about MMA without the backlash he received. I would rather have Smith than Rogan's drugged out ass commenting with his bias.

Smith brings eyeballs. The MMA community trying to ostracize him is a bad look, IMO. Smith is the only one that called it truthfully about Cowboy's performance. The guy showed up for his paycheck and just stood there taking 4 shoulder strikes without doing anything about it.

Move, create space, push opponent away, get on bicycle, go for takedown....DO SOMETHING.


 

jason73

Yuri Bezmenov was right
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I agree with Chael somewhat. Smith should be able to make comments about MMA without the backlash he received. I would rather have Smith than Rogan's drugged out ass commenting with his bias.

Smith brings eyeballs. The MMA community trying to ostracize him is a bad look, IMO. Smith is the only one that called it truthfully about Cowboy's performance. The guy showed up for his paycheck and just stood there taking 4 shoulder strikes without doing anything about it.

Move, create space, push opponent away, get on bicycle, go for takedown....DO SOMETHING.


that is easy for you to say when you are not the one with a broken nose and cracked orbital . maybe he should have just side stepped
 

Mad Dog

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that is easy for you to say when you are not the one with a broken nose and cracked orbital . maybe he should have just side stepped
Anything besides just stand still there like a grappling dummy.
 

Onetrickpony

Stay gold
Nov 21, 2016
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He was brought in to get more people talking about the sport. Whether you agree or disagree with what he said, the motive was definitely successful.
 

tang

top korean roofer
Oct 21, 2015
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Anything besides just stand still there like a grappling dummy.
it's hard to see but I think Cowboy was stunned before the shoulder strikes. If you pay attention to the very first straight left Conor threw right off the bell, Cowboy ducked but got hit with Conor's left thigh (a little above the knee) by the same momentum and the broken nose might have happened from that and maybe the reason why Cowboy just stood there in the clinch cuz he was dazed

(can't really find a video with good angle but time stamped)
 

Rambo John J

Eats things that would make a Billy Goat Puke
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it's hard to see but I think Cowboy was stunned before the shoulder strikes. If you pay attention to the very first straight left Conor threw right off the bell, Cowboy ducked but got hit with Conor's left thigh (a little above the knee) by the same momentum and the broken nose might have happened from that and maybe the reason why Cowboy just stood there in the clinch cuz he was dazed

(can't really find a video with good angle but time stamped)
Cowboy left cheek is damaged
Possibly from that opening knee after slipping the left

I think he was rocked from that and just standing there dazed...Conor feels he is rocked and goes for safe shoulder strikes against a stunned cowdad

Basically stunned from the first 4 seconds and downhill from there.

Not a good performance but credit to the opportunist Conor
 

tang

top korean roofer
Oct 21, 2015
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Cowboy left cheek is damaged
Possibly from that opening knee after slipping the left

I think he was rocked from that and just standing there dazed...Conor feels he is rocked and goes for safe shoulder strikes against a stunned cowdad

Basically stunned from the first 4 seconds and downhill from there.

Not a good performance but credit to the opportunist Conor
they showed the camera angle of the other side and I thought it was more of a thigh than a knee, but definitely dazed Cowboy for sure.

The shoulder strikes wouldn't have worked if he wasn't dazed from that initial shot
 

Rambo John J

Eats things that would make a Billy Goat Puke
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they showed the camera angle of the other side and I thought it was more of a thigh than a knee, but definitely dazed Cowboy for sure.

The shoulder strikes wouldn't have worked if he wasn't dazed from that initial shot
Yep

Whatever hit him his head and jaw move a lot from the knee at 440 of that highlight vid
 

Hong Kong Phooey

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Feb 12, 2015
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Stephen A. Smith, Dan Le Batard missing the point of Joe Rogan, MMA fan criticism
More than a week after Conor McGregor returned with a flourish, his fight with Donald Cerrone remains a source of interest far beyond the MMA bubble. The attention though, has shifted from the match itself to criticism of ESPN commentator Stephen A. Smith.

The most consequential of it came from UFC analyst Joe Rogan, who during a recent taping of his eponymous podcast proclaimed Smith’s participation in the post-fight show “a bad look for everybody.” This mild rebuke unsurprisingly proved to be catnip for Smith, who responded back on Sunday via social media in a video that has been viewed millions of times.

The crux of the criticism is based upon Smith’s UFC 246 post-fight declarations that he was “quite disgusted” by Cerrone’s effort, and that “it looked like he gave up.”

Essentially, he characterized Cerrone as a quitter.

To be sure, it was the worst night of Cerrone’s professional life. Fighting before the biggest crowd — 19,040 — of his career, and competing in his first pay-per-view main event, Cerrone was stopped in just 40 seconds.

Yet the suggestion that he quit was disproven with a single viewing of the replay, which showed a likely broken nose, later confirmed by the Nevada Athletic Commission along with an orbital fracture.

Even if it didn’t, as accusations go, it’s incendiary. Smith knows this. He’s a merchant of controversy that traffics in extreme opinions. It’s not enough to say a loss was bad or lopsided or embarrassing; it must be something sharpened to a fine point and stuck in the audience’s eye.

This kind of musing works fine in stick-and-ball sports, where effort level can often be visually measured. You can see defenders get lazy on the fast break, a batter jogging down the first base line, a cornerback who avoids tackling a hulking tight end. In MMA, it’s not so easy to tell. Yes, we have heard tales of fighters quitting mid-fight, finding a way out. But this fight was five seconds old when Cerrone had his face busted up. He didn’t give up; he was crushed.

If you are making that accusation, you damn well better be sure it’s correct, and Smith has not watched enough MMA to know for sure. While he may tout his quarter-century in sports, scant few days have been spent covering MMA, a fact made obvious by his theory that Cerrone folded under the bright lights of “his first pay-per-view.” That is not a mistake that a seasoned MMA viewer would make, and the omission of “main event” at the end of that quote wasn’t an accidental one, as he repeated the claim several times.

Anyway, expertise isn’t a necessary requirement for the things he’s missed in the debate: context, nuance, humanity.

The stakes of MMA are so much higher than any other sport. One-on-one combat is designed that way. And while danger is an implicit agreement within the rules of engagement, that doesn’t mean observers should take its risks or its athletes for granted. Nothing about what fighters do is routine; nothing about it is easy. Pain is a promise; humiliation always lurks. It is unique in that regard, far past any of the traditional sports on which Smith opines on a daily basis. As such, these athletes deserve a higher level of reverence for what they do.

In basketball, if you get dunked on, it may be embarrassing for a night, but there’s another game two days later and everyone moves on. By the end of your career, only a few moments are remembered.

In MMA, you only get a few moments, period. There is no warm-up portion of a fight to get yourself into the flow of action. You can’t lose a baseball game in 40 seconds. You can’t lose a football game in 40 seconds. You have time to ramp up and if necessary, to come back.

Fighters don’t get that luxury. Be ready or be smashed.

Cerrone doesn’t get to apportion his failure to a team; he doesn’t get to share his broken face. There is nowhere to hide from what happened when he’s alone—especially when he’s alone. He has to live with the scars for the rest of his life; he has to live with that reality for the rest of his life. The damage is both physical and psychological; immediate and long-lasting.

This is why the MMA world gets protective of fighters in these kinds of incidents, something that fellow ESPN personality Dan Le Batard lamented during his Monday radio show.

“I’ve found that the MMA fans can be really unreasonable,” he said. “Like an unusual brand of elitist given what it is that we’re watching, which is human cockfighting. When I say that, they object to that every time. They object to that, telling me about the art. And it is artful the same way it’s artful to watch, you know, the spearing of bulls. Bullfighting is artful and also it’s hugely barbaric. It’s just interesting to see them zealously protect this thing from outsiders as if they don’t want the mainstream or haven’t been craving the mainstream their entire existence.”

That Le Batard can’t see a difference in the involuntary participation of an animal in a fight to the death is its own issue, but his second point is an object lesson in disingenuousness.

Yes, generally speaking, the MMA world has wanted the mainstream sports world to pay attention for years but we want you to assimilate into it, to understand the stakes, the risks, the pressure. To offer context and nuance. To show humanity and reverence. To acknowledge that there is a difference between a game and a fight. That is what they keep missing when they only drop in for big fight weeks. To them, it’s just another platform; for the fighter, it’s his career, his identity, even his life.

Listening back to Smith’s words, one diatribe is striking: “We have seen that from time to time, those bright lights shine down upon you and you just ain’t ready. No matter how much experience you have, you don’t have that experience.”

It’s true. It happened that night. In the moment he was assessing Cerrone, he was really describing himself.