MMA’s Mainstream Current
BloodyElbow’s Luke Thomas has circulated a food-for-thought
editorial
musing on the UFC’s status among the “mainstream” sports of the
era.
Written as a kind of counterpoint to a Steve Sievert piece on Yahoo trumpeting the UFC’s success compared to the MLB/, Thomas cautions against reading too deeply into a high-profile MMA event matching or narrowly outdrawing a wheezy baseball franchise.
“That the UFC's larger, one-off events can sometimes be in the vicinity of baseball teams who perform less than mediocre that also play roughly half of their games in the exact same venue over the course of roughly six months in a period where the UFC is an a growth upswing should give all the ‘MMA is on par with traditional sports’ talk some serious pause,” Thomas wrote.
Perspective is a seriously scarce commodity in this business, and Thomas’ zoom lens into the facts is appropriately responsible. But to take it a few clicks further: In measuring MMA to instituted sporting events in this country, you’re essentially stacking a cultural hobo against a high-society mascot in a three-piece suit. Baseball has been around for over 100 years, romanticized by millions of mitt-oiling fathers, appeared beautifully lit in movies and pounded into the public consciousness with regularity; MMA is, relatively speaking, still dripping snot from its nose.
That the two can be equitable on any level, no matter how much of MMA’s relative success may be circumstantial, is -- to my mind -- utterly beyond comprehension. We’re talking about two people hemorrhaging blood in a cage. Even stacked against a Washington Nationals game, that’s a tough sell. For a sport that’s been around for 15 years and socially tolerated for less than five, it’s a radical position to be in.
And yes, this was essentially an editorial on an editorial that was critiquing another editorial. So it goes.
Written as a kind of counterpoint to a Steve Sievert piece on Yahoo trumpeting the UFC’s success compared to the MLB/, Thomas cautions against reading too deeply into a high-profile MMA event matching or narrowly outdrawing a wheezy baseball franchise.
“That the UFC's larger, one-off events can sometimes be in the vicinity of baseball teams who perform less than mediocre that also play roughly half of their games in the exact same venue over the course of roughly six months in a period where the UFC is an a growth upswing should give all the ‘MMA is on par with traditional sports’ talk some serious pause,” Thomas wrote.
Perspective is a seriously scarce commodity in this business, and Thomas’ zoom lens into the facts is appropriately responsible. But to take it a few clicks further: In measuring MMA to instituted sporting events in this country, you’re essentially stacking a cultural hobo against a high-society mascot in a three-piece suit. Baseball has been around for over 100 years, romanticized by millions of mitt-oiling fathers, appeared beautifully lit in movies and pounded into the public consciousness with regularity; MMA is, relatively speaking, still dripping snot from its nose.
That the two can be equitable on any level, no matter how much of MMA’s relative success may be circumstantial, is -- to my mind -- utterly beyond comprehension. We’re talking about two people hemorrhaging blood in a cage. Even stacked against a Washington Nationals game, that’s a tough sell. For a sport that’s been around for 15 years and socially tolerated for less than five, it’s a radical position to be in.
And yes, this was essentially an editorial on an editorial that was critiquing another editorial. So it goes.
