FanPost

Scrutiny of fighters for not "stating their case" on the mic needs to stop

First of all, I acknowledge that all platforms for MMA is entertainment and I don’t discount the importance of self promotion and fighters doing and saying certain things to dictate and influence the direction in their respective careers. I also acknowledge that the sport is evolving before our eyes and there are going to be growing pains and that we are taking influence from professional wrestling, and generally speaking I think things are going pretty great.

However, I think pressure put on fighters to say more on the mic and "state their case" is getting a little out of hand. On a recent episode of the MMA Beat I think Jeff Wagenheim said it best-"Fighters need to be themselves". I believe the constant scrutiny of fighters for not calling people out or trying to be entertaining with the things they say needs to come to an end, we need to get back to accepting that these athletes make their case in the cage and how they fight, not by what they say. Don’t get me wrong, I love nothing more when there is a heated rivalry with real trash talk (i.e Jones & Cormier) but on the contrary there is nothing I hate more than disingenuous smack talk with the sole purpose of hyping the fight, not to sound too dramatic, but I feel like it’s bad for the sport.

If my memory wasn’t awful, there would be a plethora of example’s but the best I can think of at the moment is an Ariel Helwani-Phil Davis pre-fight interview from UFC 172 . Coming off the heels of Dana White calling him out for not making enough noise,claiming he doesn’t want it bad enough, Davis seemed to have made a point to spew his venom towards Jon Jones in an attempt to answer to the bossman’s criticism leading up to a fight with Anthony Johnson. I found this downright hard to watch, it came across as a direct response to what Dana had said and a feeble attempt to get attention. Dial the clock back in a major way and I remember my mind being blown back in the day when Tito ortiz finished off Guy Mezger and gave Shamrock the middle fingers, I could be wrong but I believe that was the first time any real feud had been created in the UFC (fast forward 7 years from that time and the Ortiz & Shamrock ratings neared six million viewers) . The Silva & Sonnen Rivalry, while in retrospect the purpose of Sonnens actions may have been to hype the fight, the heat created from it was very real and it made for one of the greatest feuds in the the sport. Putting pressure on these fighters to say more when they get the chance on the mic is taking away from the rawness of the sport, if they are the type to just give the canned answer, then so be it, after "x" amount of impressive performances they will not be denied the big fights they deserve. Sure they may get there faster if they were to talk to smack, but if its not who they are, I personally don’t want to hear it out of them.

I’ve been a hardcore fan following this sport for approximately 14 years, I was one of the many out there who used to rent the VHS’s from the video stores and used to size up the match ups on the back of the box, it was more about "What happens when this guy fights this guy", where each athlete ended up in the rankings or the title picture meant nothing to me in those days. Granted things have changed over the years and I’m very happy with the growth and evolution of the sport,I just fear that the importance of what takes place in the cage is becoming less and less relevant and I don’t know how far its going to go. Again ,I understand self promotion and making things entertaining, but I believe the focus of fighter’s should be to fight and the focus of promoters should be to promote. Leave it at that and go for a quality fan base over quantity.