After reading a piece by Chris Boulay and Jim Taylor, I decided to draft a letter to the editor of Town Times. Obviously, it will take a little time to get their in the mail, but I thought it should be open, because I can’t tolerate this stupidity.
To the Editor:
I just finished reading an article on mixed martial arts spawned by Chris Boulay and Jim Taylor, and, bluntly put, it made me want to vomit. Not since the 1990s have I been so disgusted by a piece of such phenomenal stupidity. Not only do the writers of the article demonstrate the fact that they know absolutely nothing about the topics on which they are reporting, they back up their unsubstantiated, uninformed opinions with a complete disregard for any facts what-so-ever.
Apart from the fact that your writers lacked enough knowledge of the sport to list three fighters (Kevin “Kimbo Slice” Ferguson, Ken Shamrock and Frank Shamrock) as men with “staying power,” a statement that any person with any knowledge of the sport would burst out laughing in the midst of, they compounded stupidity which might have been seen and justified as opinion by contradicting basic medical facts and rattling off rhetoric that was done away with almost a decade ago.
You authors make the rhetorical remark: “This ’sport’ is supposed to be immensely popular, but where are all of the stars?” Saying that boxing has bigger stars than mixed martial arts.
It is clear that the authors of the piece you have allowed to be slathered on your publication know as little about boxing as they do about MMA, because, if they did, they would know that mixed martial arts has created more success in crossing into the mainstream in fifteen years than boxing did in its first fifty years as a professional institution.
Let’s forget the fact that MMA has an incredibly successful TV program, inspired films (both fictional and documentaries) and has given rise to a half dozen big names in the Hollywood scene. Randy Couture, Quinton Jackson, Tito Ortiz and Chuck Liddell aside, the UFC (MMA’s major franchise) produces more celebrities at an event than any boxing match until the 1960’s and 70’s at which point boxing had been around for almost a century.
Even if I set aside the fallacious misrepresentation of the history and the clear lack of knowledge about anything, your writers make one statement that really needs to be emphasized for people to see how stupid this article is:
“Where will the disciplinary action come from in the Ultimate Fighting Championship, International Fight League, or other like-minded organizations should someone die?”
This statement was, at least in essence, spat from Senator John McCain’s mouth in the early 90’s, but I doubt your writers would have known that for the same reason they wouldn’t know that McCain was destroyed by Ken Shamrock in a debate over the issue and almost every credible medical professional to have released a statement on the sport has acknowledged that MMA is less dangerous than boxing, rugby, football or hockey, and that it is better regulated by state commissions than any of those sports.
It is my firm belief that if you don’t know something about a sport, you shouldn’t talk about it, and if your authors are considering writing another article, they should take President Lincoln’s advice.
“It is better to be silent and thought a fool then to speak and remove all doubt.”
Sincerely frustrated,
Joshua Stein
If you have letters, please feel free to send them to the editor at Heminway Center, 469 Main Street, Watertown, CT. And if you do, please feel free to post them on your sites (with a link) or in the comments. Or, if you’d rather, you can email a copy to me (jstein.ironsport@gmail.com) and I’ll post them on here, on my site and on MMA forum to get them out there for you.
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July 1st, 2008 at 8:58am
I can’t get over the fact that they tried to say there was submissions in wrestling haha! Maybe if they used the term grappling it would have fit a little better.
July 1st, 2008 at 11:05am
this was what i posted in the comments section of the site….but they never posted mine or anybody else after 5 people already stated their thoughts…
i’m sure you were expecting to hear us “bloodlusting” fans of MMA to call you all sorts of names. Please read these peoples comments and seriously reconsider your ignorant and biased views on MMA. I’m not asking you to become a fan of MMA at, as I have many friends who don’t watch it. But they don’t watch it because they deem it “too barbaric.” they don’t watch it because they don’t like sports, period. But they understand these mixed martial artists are not out there to kill one another. Being a journalist as yourself i would have assumed you would have done your homework before writing a piece so wrong and backwards it’s laughable and can not be taken seriously. Every article that you write from now on and have ever written can be taken with a grain of salt.
July 13th, 2008 at 9:55pm
A quick update, or non-update, as it were. I have still gotten no response from the idiots who published this piece and they are still publishing. Oh well, it was fun to write.