Photo by Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images
A reporter at this weekend’s UFC Moscow event questioned whether the promotion will ever allow kids to scrap in the Octagon.
Whoever said there’s no such thing as a stupid question obviously hasn’t attended enough UFC press conferences.
Things can get pretty ridiculous, especially when the promotion decides to let fans on the mic. Even when they don’t, press credentials sometimes go out to the wrong person and you get oh so valid questions like “Nate Diaz, you call yourself a badass motherf**ker. How do you say that when you’re a vegan?”
But now we definitely have the stupidest question asked, for sure. After the latest UFC Moscow card, a reporter asked exec David Shaw (official title: Senior Vice President, International and Content) when kids were getting added to the roster. Really.
“The UFC used to say they would never have women fighting,” the unidentified reporter asked. “Now they have women fighting sometimes on the main cards. So will there ever be kids fighting in the UFC? Because there are kids fighting in other challenges.”
??? pic.twitter.com/vQ2z1Q25el
— Jed I. Goodman (@jedigoodman) November 9, 2019
“Children fighting in the UFC?” Shaw replied. “No, we won’t have children fighting in the UFC.”
We can only hope the reporter was looking for a quote from the UFC to fill out an in-progress article on child fighting in MMA. It happens … more than you’d expect, actually. It’s not even that fringe. UFC fighter Michael Chiesa’s coach Rick Little has been in the headlines lately over his decision to feature two 12 year old girls fighting on his upcoming MMA card in Spoane, Washington.
Children fighting also made headlines in Russia when Chechen dictator Ramzan Kadyrov’s 10 year old son won the Grand Prix Akhmat 2016 international ‘youth division’ tournament. Fedor Emelianenko publicly spoke out condemning the spectacle, and someone ended up assaulting his daughter over it. Crazy stuff.
So yeah, maybe this was one of those situations where a reporter was fishing for a quote and it just sounded terrible and dumb out of context. Or maybe it was just a terrible and dumb question. Either way, it happened and it felt pretty facepalm.