The YAMMA Affirmation

If the debacle that we called “YAMMA Pit Fighting” did anything for the MMA community, it confirmed a few things about MMA fans as a whole. With an obscure announcing style, a heavyweight tournament, and a cage with an abnormal fighting surface, YAMMA took us back 15 years to the early days of modern Mixed Martial Arts fighting. Unfortunately, it seems that fans these days don’t want to go back or change the style of MMA right now. If you think about, the sport of MMA is perfect where it is and the growth proves it. The rules, the cage, the fighting styles have begun to make the sport mainstream enough to escape John McCain and the rest of legislature, but still tough enough to keep the hardcore fans excited. YAMMA proved that fans don’t want the potential changes that Bob Meyrowitz presented earlier this month in Atlantic City.

Fans don’t want a new fighting surface. Professional wrestling would have seen the benefit of a cage with banked edges to help set up crazy tag team combinations, but MMA fighters only saw it as an obstacle which discouraged takedowns and encouraged stalling. The “pit” was a novelty idea that we’ll hopefully never see again in a real MMA competition.

Ring announcing shouldn’t be turned into a comedy show to distract from the action inside the cage. Although poor announcing really can’t ruin anyone’s night, it’s just a bad way to attract attention to a promotion. Howard Stern talk show host Scott Ferrall used phrases like “Please, give some loooove, to Chris Tuscerer.”, “And in the red corner, pacing again like he wants a piece”, and “In charge of the leverage tonight in the YAMMA Pit, once again, Big Dan the Man, how can I be the Man if you’re the Man, Dan, Miragliotta” only added to the ridiculousness of the overall show. Complain about Bruce Buffer all you want, but he doesn’t try to steal the attention from the fighters inside of the UFC cage with a poor comedic performance aimed at teenagers.

Moving on to who could be the biggest problem with MMA these days. YAMMA promoter Bob Meyrowitz was a driving factor behind the largest MMA organization back in the early 90′s and he seems to still be stuck in the years when MMA was truly no-holds barred. While the current owners of the UFC are lobbying to get MMA legalized in as many U.S. states as possible, Meyrowitz is still looking for fighting sensationalism. Sorry Bob, present day MMA fans want the MMA that has been around for the past few years. MMA fans don’t want something new and crazy and they don’t want the resurgence of the crotch-smashing MMA from the early years of the UFC either.

Now I realize that the proven MMA organizations are just looking at YAMMA as a joke, but I certainly hope they don’t try to borrow any ideas. I doubt the UFC, the old stable Republican of MMA, will do anything crazy this year, but the smaller organizations like EliteXC and King of the Cage need to just keep doing what they are doing right now in hopes of attracting larger crowds. YAMMA just proved that good old fashioned MMA fighting on a flat surface, with stable announcing, and weight classes is what the fans want.
Nobody wants to see a circus in MMA anymore. The early 1990′s have come and gone.