The tide of public opinion is now more like a flash flood. If you get caught in it, grab onto something, anything at all, and hang on for dear life. It is powerful, but will abate shortly.
That might explain the sounds of supplication wafting off of Park Avenue Friday morning. You can almost hear Roger Goodell pleading: Just get me to the weekend. Get me to the time when everyone turns their attention back to jet sweeps and Richard Sherman.
The NFL is by no means out of the woods on its self-perpetuated domestic violence crisis, especially now that sponsors are tapping their pens on their checkbooks. But last week’s fever frenzy has broken, and it appears that commissioner Goodell will keep his job.
That’s how it goes. Just hang on and ride it out. Goodell knows that, even if he didn’t say so in an interview.
But you know who did say so in an interview? The MMA community’s very own Thiago Silva.
“People will forget,” he said November 8 on The MMA Hour broadcast with host Ariel Helwani. “They always do.”
That’s in regards to Silva’s own little domestic incident, just a small matter involving an armed confrontation with and death threats against his estranged wife, a protracted standoff with a SWAT team at Silva’s Florida home and his subsequent tasing and arrest.
That was in February. The whole thing was churned up again on Sept. 5 when the UFC reinstated Silva exactly one day after a judge dropped all charges (which at one point included attempted murder) related to the incident. It was also three days before TMZ dropped that video bomb on Ray Rice and the NFL.
As you know, dropping charges (as happened with Rice as well as Silva) is not the same as being found not guilty. In Silva’s case, the charges were dropped because Silva’s wife didn’t cooperate with the investigation. Oh, and she mysteriously boarded a flight to Brazil. Gone. Smoke on the wind. A little suspicious? Maybe you just don’t know what really happened.
“I know a lot more of the story and what went on,” White said with no apparent trace of irony. “If you take his side of the story, her side of the story, the truth lies somewhere in the middle, but he went through the process and he wasn’t charged with anything. The guy should have the ability to make a living.”
(It should also be noted that White originally, mistakenly said on the UFC’s official website that Silva was “acquitted” of the charges, when in fact the charges were simply dropped.)
At the time, not long after the arrest, Silva’s own lawyer, Scott Saul, said the case was one of “classic aggravated assault.” This is Silva’s lawyer. Openly stating that his client should be charged with aggravated assault. Go ahead, read the article. It was an attempt to avoid stiffer charges, but still.
And now, here we are, listening to Silva tell us not that he wants to become a better man, not that he regrets anything that happened, not that he has a lot of fence-mending to do with this wife. He tells us that we’ll forget. And a week or so later, he’s right on the money. We, the MMA fans and media, have already started to forget.
And it seems the UFC is banking on similar tendencies among its public. Right after Silva’s arrest, UFC President Dana White said Silva “would never fight in the UFC again.”
With that in mind, when White explained his reinstatement of Silva, he was defending himself against his own statements, as much as anything else.
Silva had a point in general, but he was especially right about MMA. It’s why there were no whispered prayers—much less discussions to change the decision—to be heard after Silva’s re-entry, despite the fact that it coincided with the Ray Rice revelations and a sudden public awakening around domestic violence in sports.
So no, no prayer sounds. More like the slurping noise you get when you reach the bottom of your beverage, followed by the tinkling of ice cubes that indicates you are quite ready for another.
Why? Is it because the UFC is a comparatively minor sports operation? Is it because the NFL stories have eclipsed those of the UFC? Is it because MMA fans are sadly but surely desensitized to watching these sorts of slugs ooze out of their daily news cycle? Is it because Silva is a willing fighter and proven bench player in its paper-thin light heavyweight division? Is it because, in this visual world of ours, Silva’s case lacks the smoking gun of a grainy video or crazy voice mail?
It’s probably a blend of all of those, to some extent.
Is the UFC the only MMA promotion to make this sort of decision? Oh, of course not. In fact, there’s healthy precedent. See, for example, one War Machine, the man Bellator (then under different management) not only reinstated after he left jail, but actually built a marketing campaign around. As we know, he’s now out of the promotion and awaiting trial on attempted murder and many other things after brutally assaulting his ex-girlfriend and a man she knew.
There’s also the small matter of fact that Silva clearly violates the UFC’s own Code of Conduct, which has oddly not come up, at least not in any substantial public conversation. Violating that code can be cause for the UFC to take all sorts of disciplinary actions. But never mind that. Hey, the light heavyweight division is thin, and Silva likes to do knockouts. So bring him back.
In the larger context, as awareness of domestic violence becomes a bigger deal in the sports world, you have to wonder how much longer MMA can stay out of the discourse, or whether that isolation might really put them on an island.
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