MMA is a three-syllable acronym that could also be expressed in two words and two syllables: “It hurts!”
And playing or even just watching this hurting game is not everyone’s cup of tea. The sight of two athletes trying to beat the other through striking and grappling appeals to sports fans who prefer combat sports.
Others fans prefer watching ball games, or even the less physically demanding sports like chess or bridge.
Well, people have always been divided on the merits and demerits of any given sport. Whether as fans or athletes.
That’s just the way it is, and it’s been like that even in Ancient Greece (if it’s any consolation).
Further stressing the point that the appreciation, or the lack of it, of certain sports over others has always been contentious, the great Greek philosopher Plato was reported to have said about pankration, MMA’s progenitor: “It is devoid of aesthetics.”
Take note that Plato trained in another closely related combat sport: wrestling, of which he was even said to have won in the Pythian, Nemean and Isthmian games.
And there are those who derided any kind of athletic competition as undeserving of patronage, or even practitioners! In short, there were—and still are—those who are absolutely anti-sports in general.
Take the case of the philosopher and founding Cynic Diogenes. Nursing a fever, Diogenes cried out to those who were passing by to watch the ancient games, “Wretches, will you not stay? But to see the struggle of ruined athletes you go all the way to Olympia; don’t you want to see a struggle between a fever and a human being?”
Jerk.
Moving on to the Roman Empire, the following is an assessment of athletes by Galen, the highly renowned second-century AD medical doctor. In discouraging young men from getting involved in sports, he wrote,
All natural blessings are either mental or physical. . . . Athletes have never even dreamed of anything mental. . . . They are so lacking in reasoning that they don’t even know if they have a brain. . . . They cannot think logically at all – they are as mindless as dumb animals. . . . They lead lives like those of swine; except swine do not exercise to excess nor force food down their throats as athletes do.
Troll.
Speaking of the Roman Empire, it became notorious for holding fight-to-the-death gladiatorial contests. These competitions pitted gladiators against their own kind, or against animals (most probably with the exception of harmless swine) and convicted criminals.
Ultimately, these spectacles ceased in the early 5th century when Christianity was adopted as the state religion.
Presently, many critics of MMA still compare our sport with those lethal gladiatorial contests. They preach that our sport has no place in today’s “civilized” society. (“Civilized” in quotation marks; just read the daily news.)
We know that MMA is the most complete hand-to-hand combat sport, allowing various holds and strikes to beat an opponent—via points or finish. And injuries or worse happen.
But its events are now held with equally comprehensive rules in place to make it safer and fairer.
And its athletes join out of personal choice as free individuals and not as soldier-prisoners or slaves of the Roman Empire as herded by its ruling class.
Still, for a long time the UFC itself used the image of the gladiator in promoting MMA. Question: How many years did the world’s top MMA promotion used The Gladiator promotional video to usher in its events?
For years the UFC evoked associations with the gladiatorial combat of ancient Rome until it replaced it with its new promo video last February.
Well, with or without that video, there will always be sectors that will voice out contrary opinions against MMA.
The greater leeway that MMA allows one athlete to win over the other, compared to more “specialized” combat sports like boxing or wrestling, is what its fans ultimately find special and appealing about it.
Unfortunately, this same wide array of moves allowed to inflict pain and potential harm to one’s opponent is what critics find as basis for perceiving MMA as, indeed, the modern-day resurrection of the inhuman Roman gladiatorial fights.
We find it exciting and acceptable; some don’t. But that’s just the way it is.
And to quote from a Latin saying, De gustibus non est disputandum. In English: “In matters of taste there is no dispute.” Ideally, that is.
Meanwhile, MMA continues to grow into “mainstreamhood” (wherever, whenever and whatever that really is). And perhaps, it will someday face a decline.
That’s just the way it goes, and “it” still hurts.
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