Luke Thomas. Photo: YouTube/Luke Thomas/SiriusXM
Luke Thomas says he and his colleagues praise fighters because the collective media has a guilty conscience for not pushing more content to truly benefit fighters.
Luke Thomas believes the collective MMA media has a guilty conscience about the lack of coverage dedicated to truly helping fighters.
Thomas addressed the media’s general lack of adversarial coverage on the season premiere of Bloody Elbow and MMA Mania’s The Insiders interview series (video above).
“I think there are lots of positive stories, I think there could always be more, but to me, this is the thing that I tell everybody,” the Showtime Digital and SiriusXM personality prefaced his argument.
You have to think about “every way” fighters “are hit with a disadvantage in virtually every instance,” he argued.
“You have to fundamentally accept everyone from manager to gatekeepers at the state commissions, promoters, to virtually everyone – they have the upper hand on fighters in almost every way,” Thomas explained. “We pay a lot of lip service [to fighters] and we do this dance to them and we exalt them. We exalt them with our words because I think we all know we have a guilty conscience for the way they are treated.“
“If you’re going to cover issues of substance, you have to operate under the context of what the reality tells you. And the reality tells you that the fighters are uniquely disadvantaged in virtually every case,” he concluded. “If you accept that as your driving principal of coverage, that’ll take care of the problem in most cases.”
Timestamps are below for the video above.
0:41 – Most frustrating point to get across
4:11 – First impressions of Brian Campbell
5:48 – Creativity in MMA media
8:00 – UFC vs. fans vs. media
12:12 – How to help support fighters
19:51 – Departure from MMA Fighting
23:57 – The name “Bloody Elbow”
25:52 – Disagreements with Chael Sonnen, Brendan Schaub
28:26 – Making amends with Forrest Griffin
29:55 – Guilty pleasures
32:40 – Ranking Luke Thomas’ catchphrases
34:25 – Foreign Film recommendations
40:12 – Luke Thomas roasts Shak and The Insiders