Throwing my Hands Up: Vol. 1

I decided to stir things up a bit and do a series of columns on my pet peeves within MMA. I’m sure some of my points will have a few of you agreeing, but I’m assuming the majority of my points will be met with debate. I welcome your comments and e-mails.

I’ll start off my grievances with MMA journalists/commentators/undefined people with a mask for every occasion who are either so in awe of fighters, or have complete conflicts of interest because of friendships, finding any reason to side with fighters or not press fighters when they might be in the wrong.

Many times it is because fans become “media”, but don’t understand the difference between fan sites and news reporters, or for that matter where commentary and editorial ends and factual journalism begins. The rise of blog sites in online MMA has brought this news note and comment style of reporting to the forefront.

You should not be a fighter’s buddy if you are covering him in any serious manor, and if you aren’t covering him in any serious manner, make that clear. If you are friends, you should not let that friendship conflict with your job to be objective, or at least to show both sides. If that fighter really is your friend and doesn’t see you as a fanboy, then he’ll respect that. If he doesn’t, he just wanted the attention you gave him. Sadly, that’s alot of fighter’s unconscious M.O.. They aren’t geniuses, they hit and get hit for a living, and a bunch of that drive to keep going comes from deep seated insecurity, which your attention feeds.

Fighters have strange ethics that may conflict with journalistic integrity. Why do you think TUF contestants would side w/ someone like Mac Danzig when he looks like a jerk in the house for picking on others? Maybe because the fighter he was picking on wasn’t as big or as talented, and fighters side w/ the bigger/better fighter.

Fighters/athletes also believe you have to do anything to get ahead because someone else is doing it, so that justifies it. That’s why so many at a high level will cheat during matches in little ways. Grab the cage. Grab the shorts. Sneak in a low knee. Ask a ref to stand you up. Stuff you’d never teach a kid at a grass roots level of any sport. But MMA fighters are indicative of athletes in general. Barry Bonds would have been seen as one of the greatest baseball players of all time before he used performance enhancing drugs. But he feels he had to, and had to hide it. He feels righteous and justified. The man stayed in baseball for years just to break Babe Ruth and then Hank Aaron’s records, just to have his name in a record book. And the truth is, he’s hated for it, and it still doesn’t bring the guy the father’s love Bonds so obviously still lusts after.

MMA fighters are no different with drugs. Review the California State Athletic commission reports on drug offenses in MMA, and compare them to any other sport tested. Ask people around MMA, like Mike Sawyer, who supplies supplements to fighters. He’ll tell you these guys are on dozens of supplements a day, and if he tells them that’s on a Commission banned substance list, don’t take it, they’ll nod, and give him the money for it anyway.

And that brings me to the people who cover this. Far too often this is swept under the rug, or enough people say “can’t I have my sports back?!” that they guilt others into not following suit and shutting up. It’s negative; it’s not uplifting like we want. We were taught as kids that sport was both pure and a great ethical and moral learning experience as kids, and we believed it. It wasn’t completely true, but it was sold to us that way, and we still want to believe it.

So many fighters still have access to the MMA media, which is still getting a sense of itself. If I want on any given day I can hear 20-30 different fighters on podcasts, internet radio, and broadcast radio, talking about all kinds of nonsense while hosts kiss their ass and try to buddy up to them. Where are all the hard questions?

The tipping point for me was listening to Nick Diaz go on and on about nothing and act like a child on Toe to Toe Radio this past week while the hosts sat there quietly finding ways to agree with him and soft ball him questions. The show itself is normally very good, but no attempt was made to make sense as the incoherent fighter babbled and whined on and on, acting like a child and a tough guy most of the time while belligerently complaining about doctors doing their jobs, KJ Noons talent, and everything else. Stop giving fighters a pass, especially when they’re combative and lack communication skills.

I’m sick of hearing every reporter tell me how Diaz is misunderstood, or he’s marketable and his value will show through. No, Diaz should be ignored until he figures out how to proper deal with people and situations! Smoking weed in your mom’s basement is not marketable. It’s sad. Diaz is indicative of the kind of person most of us try to avoid in our daily lives. He’s aggressive, uneducated, but believes he’s right about everything. He’s the pushy guy sitting next to you at the counter of a dinner trying to argue with you about whatever news article you’re reading in the paper, and his facts are horribly off.

It’s not just Diaz, and I’m not saying Diaz himself in any way is a bad person, but when will so-called journalists stop giving fighters free passes so they can be pals with them and get interviews that 9/10 times say absolutely nothing. After all, most fighters aren’t Shakespeare, and most don’t have the perspective or fighting thought process of Randy Couture.

Last week this site got a lot of attention when Brandt Delorenzo wrote a polarizing opinion piece on Rampage Jackson’s comments to TMZ on an NFL player’s death. I disagreed with Brandt on the finer points of the argument, but perhaps his overall point has some merit. I’m fine with fighters joking around in a context, but shouldn’t someone hold fighter’s accountable, or at least question what they say the minute they say it? So while I disagree on the example Delorenzo sited, the goal seems agreeable.

E-mail John Philapavage at johnnyp@mmaopinion.com