There’s an old saying that, “ignorance is bliss”. Well, sometimes ignorance is just ignorance. A recent interview with the president of the Boston City Council on NECN’s “The Morning Show” , Stephen Murphy spoke out against MMA, and more specifically the UFC, about the bad example that the sport teaches children. With one of the more important events in UFC history taking place in Boston this past weekend (the first UFC card on Fox Sports 1), this interview made its way around the twitterverse in no time. Obviously, there’s more to this story than the headlines would make it out to be, but it does open the revolving door debate about the nature of the sport of MMA and its violent nature.
So, what exactly is Stephen Murphy (President of the Boston City Council) have against MMA? Well, to get things straight – he isn’t against the sport in general. As Murphy noted in his interview:
“It’s great for discipline, physical training and these guys are athletes. On one level, it’s really professional. It’s the level that I’m talking about, the social behavior, the anti-social behavior.”
Murphy’s real problem related to the sport has to do with the poor image that is represented by the athletes involved outside of the cage:
“They are all over YouTube and the internet which is a great source of information for kids. They are promoting violence against women, teaching kids how to rape and stuff that is way over the top, the behavior. There has been no official sanction from UFC, the governing body that employs all these guys.”
The aforementioned comment is of course directed most exclusively at a video that was released some time ago by “Rampage” Jackson where he gave a tutorial to people (in admitted bad taste) that showed them how to pick-up women by putting them out with the aid of drugs, chloroform specifically. Jackson was never officially sanctioned by the UFC for this out-of-the-cage incident, although he was subsequently released from the promotion after his next fight.
The first question we need to answer is: whether or not Murphy’s vision of poor out of the cage management of UFC athletes is warranted? The answer to this is no. Few people can forget Miguel Torres being released, who was still considered a pound-for-pound best at the time, for sending out tweets related to raping women in panel vans. Torres’ tweets were sent out in humour, but did not impress the UFC brass; he was subsequently released (although later reinstated). More recently Matt Mitrione was suspended for offbeat comments he made about transgender fighter, Fallon Fox. Not many will remember when WEC (and now UFC fighter) Donald Cerrone made some homosexual comments in his fight build-up with Jamie Varner, and was subsequently suspended ( the WEC was owned by the UFC at the time). More recently, Nate Diaz was fined for comments made about Bryan Caraway.
To answer the question, the UFC doesreprimand its fighters for offbeat comments. Further to that now has a conduct policy in place for all of its fighters to follow, which was implemented after the Mitrione incident.
For someone to say that the UFC does not take its image seriously is ignorant. This is a sport where the livelihood of the promotion and its individual fighters relies heavily on that of sponsorships. No sponsor is going to stand behind an entity that makes inflammatory comments.
The second question we need to answer, is whether or not Stephen Murphy is right in singling out the UFC for this behaviour? Are other sports on top of this all the time? Again, we have a sorrowfully misguided opinion from our good friend on the Boston City Council.
Murphy seems to think that because the New England Patriots released Aaron Hernandez after his recent brush-up with the law that all other sports are in the clear and absolved of not taking the proper action against their athletes. Since football is such a popular sport with the councilman, let’s talk about Ray Lewis. No one can forget Lewis’ involvement in the homicides of Jacinth Baker and Richard Lollar – Lewis was acquitted of the crimes, but only because of his damning testimony, he was still involved in the crime and never released by the Ravens. Maybe going back a few years, but still relevant, baseball legend Ty Cobb was well known for his instances of aggravated assault – and yet never released from the Detroit Tigers. In 2003, NHL player Dany Heatly crashed his Ferrari while drunk, killing teammate Dany Synder; after the dust of his trial (and slap on the wrist) settled, Heatly was back on the ice with the Atlanta Thrashers. I’m not even going to bring up events surrounding NFL superstar quarterback, Ben Roethlisberger, but we all know what happened with him a few years ago – and where is he? Still at the helm of the Steelers offense.
It’s important to note that the above examples from other sports are some of the stand-out examples and not the norm; but, in defense of that point I think the “Rampage incident” follows the same criteria. All sports punish those who taint the sport, because bad PR for sports can be damning to team revenue streams. Fans will boycott and so will sponsors, and that’s the last thing a team wants to be stained with. I firmly believe that Rampage Jackson was not released because, the UFC already knew that he was getting the axe after his fight with Glover Teixeira.
I have no problem with Stephen Murphy and his view of MMA as a sport; however, some more education on codes of conduct and history of the sport would probably help before he starts kicking up a fuss. Is the UFC perfect in its handling of all situations? No. No sport is. Sport, like all humans is not perfect. With that in mind, I can forgive Stephen Murphy for his comments, as I am sure he will see the error in words.
Photo Credit: Paul Miles via Photopin
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