When it comes to ridding mixed martial arts of lay-and-pray artists and excessive wrestling, proponents of Japanese MMA have been vocal for a while. North American MMA needs to adopt knees and kicks to the head of a grounded opponent—that’ll solve the problem.
Unfortunately, in the North American sports market, that’s not something you’re going to see.
MMA has fought too hard and too long for legitimacy, and while most fans don’t like to see a lethargic positional battle on the mats, for the guys in charge it looks a lot better than the alternative.
That alternative? A downed opponent eating stomps to the face, soccer kicks or knees to the head.
As Dana White so famously stated, MMA fans live in a bubble. They get the sport, understand where the true risks lie, and appreciate it for what it is. What they don’t understand, is how the average person sitting down to watch an MMA event on a whim computes what they’re seeing.
A bloody gash from an elbow is par for the course to the advanced fan. The layman may be horrified.
An elbow dislocated from a technically perfect armbar is cause for celebration for fans who’ve spent years watching. An MMA virgin sees something just a probable in video of a car wreck.
A lack of leg strikes on the ground is an out for boring fighters to be more boring in the eyes of many veteran fans. Having to watch those strikes is cringe-worthy for a fan who knows no better.
It isn’t a matter of what’s right and what’s wrong when it comes to such a rule change. Either side of such an argument is based on opinion.
It’s about what sells.
After a decade of beating the safety drum, claiming the sport has never had a death and most guys come out on the other side of their careers in better health than boxers, it would take no more than a single event of downed opponents eating kicks and knees to undo all that.
Sure, it’s no more unsafe than any other aspect of MMA. But it looks more unsafe, and that’s the kicker.
The average fan, and by extension the average loudmouth with an axe to grind over the sport, would see such strikes and either be completely turned off or, worse, get on the “human cockfighting” bandwagon again.
It’s a headache that White, Lorenzo Fertitta and anywhere commissioning the sport simply doesn’t need.
There’s no denying that the capacity to land knees and kicks on the ground would spice things up a little. Guys trying to grind away at a decision would have more tools to go for the finish, and would have more to worry about if they were simply laying there and waiting for their 30-27s.
But the risk isn’t worth the reward. As it stands, there’s plenty of excitement in MMA and those fights that are boring have done little to quell the expansion of the sport. Until that happens, there’s no reason to adopt knees and kicks to a grounded opponent because the sports world just isn’t ready for it.
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