The following is an article UFC lightweight Joe Lauzon posted on his personal website, www.joelauzon.com, responding on a recent editorial published by the Boston Herald that compared the sport of MMA to dog fighting.Here is the piece in its entirety, courtesy of Joe Lauzon.
A Poor Comparison
by Joe Lauzon
Not everyone is on board with Mixed Martial Arts yet, but more and more sports fans are getting accustomed to our sport. With the increased popularity of the sport, it's becoming mainstream and it's just getting started.
To the uninformed, people who aren't into MMA (Mixed Martial Arts), the fights seem unconventional compared to more widely accepted arts like boxing, wrestling and karate. Oddly enough, MMA is a combination of the three with elements of many other arts incorporated. The sport has evolved many times over to most effectively control, submit or knock out a true resisting opponent.
I compete in the Ultimate Fighting Championship, which most involved with the sport simply call the UFC. It's not the Ultimate Street Fight and it’s not the Ultimate Dog Fight. I might be offended by the writer's comments if he were more informed or took the time to actually research the facts. If the writer knew how much safer the UFC was than boxing, he would not have likened it to dog fighting.
As part of an upcoming sport, it's my job to not only fight in the ring, but also be an ambassador to the sport. There are over 200 fighters under contract in the UFC, which is the NFL of Mixed Martial Arts promotions. Many of these fighters come from diverse backgrounds and are graduates from some of the best schools in the country.
Miguel Torres of East Chicago, Indiana, paid his way through school by fighting while others were tending bar. Miguel earned a degree in marketing from Purdue University. Miguel is the current WEC Bantamweight champion.
Former UFC Middleweight champion Rich Franklin is a former math teacher from Cincinnati with a masters degree in Education, Jim Miller attended Virginia Tech, and Brock Lesnar was an NCAA wrestling champion and is the current UFC Heavyweight Champion. Some have masters degrees while others have bachelors. There are really too many to list.
Frank Mir was raised in a true martial arts family and earned a black belt in Karate at the age of 12. Frank won a state wrestling championship in high school at 17 and earned a black belt in Jiu-Jitsu in three and a half short years. Frank's stage eventually became an Octagon surrounded by plastic coated chain link fence. It's within this Octagon that he shows the world his martial arts skills and shares his valuable message of perseverance with the world as he is a former UFC Heavyweight Champion. You would be hard pressed to find a more articulate man in any professional sport.
Our sport has been likened to dog fighting, which anyone will say is cruel. Dogs have no choice and are bred to fight, injure and maim the other dog. They are kept in poor conditions and are anything but family pets.
Fighters on the other hand make up their own minds regarding their career path, just like you have done. I choose to compete in mixed martial arts for the competition of it all. I love to compete and the UFC has the best fighting conditions, best referees, the best doctors and an outstanding safety record. Fights are stopped at the first sign of a fighter being unable to defend himself or the first sign that the fighter does not want to continue.
It is my job to not only inform the original writer, but also all of those that he has misinformed. I appreciate that everyone has their own opinion, but I get to express mine as well. I do not believe the writer has been to a dog fight, nor has he been to a UFC fight, or met with a 40-year-old boxer with a slur from taking thousands of shots to the head. I also doubt he has taken a look at a punch count showing a comparison of what a mixed martial arts fighters takes versus that of a boxer.
Boxing averages 11 deaths per year. In the over 15 year history of Mixed Martial Arts, there has been one death in the United States and it was not in the Ultimate Fighting Championship.
Long before its incarnation that we see today, Pankration was the original form of mixed martial arts. It was truly the first fighting system in human history and was used by Ancient Greeks back in 648 BC. U.S. Soldiers today practice mixed martial arts to prepare for hand to hand combat. Myself and many other UFC fighters have gone all around the world (Kuwait, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc) to work with and help train our nation's troops.
Tighter rules along the way have helped, in addition to strict supervision by a state appointed sanctioning body. Fighters are required to go through a laundry list of medical testing before every fight. Before my first fight in the UFC, I had to see about 7 different doctors and specialists just to get licensed. I had to have a physical, blood work for Hepatitis and HIV, an MRI, an ophthalmologic exam, and a few EEG's. In some cases, I saw specialists both at home and then the commission's own specialists. It turns out, fighter safety is always the number one priority.
It's a poor comparison between sports where fighter safety is so important to dog fighting where safety is the last thing on anyone's mind.
I can't help but liken the article to the way a lot of lazy college students write papers. They form their uninformed opinion and then write their paper based on their own preconceived notions. It's pretty easy to run a quick online search for information on the web to support your point of view.
Generally though, even lazy college students are bright enough to use information that is less than 10 years old to back up their claims. I eagerly await this particular writer's future shocking pieces about Bill Clinton's extra-marital affairs and how all computers are going to go haywire for Y2k. Let's get with the times.
Writers, among others, love to sensationalize things. This case is no different. This particular Boston Globe writer is calling our sport "human dog fighting" while another L.A. Times columnist writes about the crowd being hungry for blood. No doubt, these two writers will be referencing and quoting one another for a long time about the barbarism that is supposedly in our sport. In the day and age when everyone has an online blog, you can always find someone who shares your opinion. Regardless of what the ignorant claim, Mixed Martial Arts fights are between two willing competitors that at the professional level have spent considerate amounts of time improving their skills in a number of Olympic sports.
These sports include boxing, wrestling, karate, judo, tae kwon do and jiu-jitsu. All ages and levels of experience are encouraged to participate in these sports. The Ultimate Fighting Championship was started by Rorion Gracie to show the world the validity of his family's style of jiu-jitsu. The best representatives of all these other martial arts were pitted against one another and Rorion's family were the victors in the end.
The UFC was never about a blood sport even though the original promoters let if flirt with that line. Back then, the sport was new and there was no regulation. The times have changed and modern day mixed martial arts has grown and is very safe. The sport is highly regulated and is one of the safest in the world.
Joe Lauzon's Original Posting of this article.
The Boston Globe story.
(Follow Joe Lauzon on Twitter)
15 comments:
Nicely done Joe
first of all this is a great article. I also read the piece that lauzon is responding to and its pretty sad I thought serious media was past that throughly unresearched type of article in relation to mma.
Not to mention they suggest everyone would watch dogfighting if only it were on TV basicly insulting as many people as the writer could (the dudes the ultimate troll I swear)
I just argued safety on the Carmicheal Dave post here on MMAWEEKLY. Beautiful job Joe. As a 16 year fan, from the day I was introduced to the sport by a former owner of a company I worked at, I have been debating the safety and validity of this sport. It is actually less annoying to here why this sport is fake and scripted than why it is death waiting to happen. It amazes me how stupid both claims are and how much I actually hear them. I was on AM 1250 in Milwaukee,WI with the morning show having these same debates. At the end of the call they agreed the sport is not as barbaric as they were making it out to be. The next time I heard the sport mentioned on the show they were right back to calling it
toughman and a alcholic fans sport.Adrian Serrano runs an MMA school here in Milwaukee. He had to argue ,to no avail, why you would be better off training your children in MMA than boxing for safety reasons alone.This guy knows a little bit about MMA, he fought Wanderlei Silva at one point in his career. Mainstream media is the biggest battle for MMA. People still believe that accumulative blows to the head delivered in boxing, not to mention standing 8 counts, are safer than the rules set forth in MMA.
At the end of the day negative press sells. Boxing has to much history. So what the press does is go after the younger sport without any research at all.
Good job Joe.You are right.The writer is completly uninformed. This guy is absolutely wrong in stating that people would watch dogfighting. He should go back to writing articles for his local high school.
MMA is not a dog fight and never was.
These are replies to that article by Peter Funt on the newspaper site...
"If Peter Funt is so disturbed by mixed martial arts, a spectacle he considers akin to “human dogfighting,’’ then the easy solution is to change the channel. But then again, he might be faced with a boxer being pummeled, a NASCAR car crash, a hockey fight, a football player being carted off the field, or a reality show with half-naked participants. Taking a gratuitous swipe at all trained mixed martial artists is uncalled for. It’s fine not to be attracted to MMA, but these are willing participants who have trained for years to exhibit their skill and talent to an appreciative audience."
Bruce Korol
"I AM a woman and a college professor, I hold a doctoral degree, and I am writing about Peter Funt’s ludicrous comparison of mixed martial arts to dogfighting. I am not an unthinking consumer of entertainment. But I am a great fan of MMA and Ultimate Fighting Championship. The sport is well-regulated and medically supervised, more equitable and humane to its professional athletes than many sports, and displays gorgeous tactical work and obvious physical prowess. Are many of its fans, who hog camera time, drinking beer and shouting? Yes, and like any population, sometimes they can seem obnoxious. But why not? There is a great vicarious release in watching an MMA bout. But, at the end of each fight, two peaceful contenders catch their breath in the octagon, almost always exchanging an embrace or handshake to signal the retirement of their aggression toward each other.
Of course, the developing sport of MMA bears close watching, so that its high standard of safety and relative good taste is maintained. But uninformed and poorly structured opinion pieces such as Funt’s do not improve the level of dialogue around this topic."
-Leslie Pasternack
S4L any suggestions on what we talked about earlier,I can't figure out how to go about it.
Its been awhile since the debate of MMA n politics have become such a big issue again...I personally like it when a huge press company bash the UFC and MMA...it brings in more fans and opens more eyes to the beautiful sport that we know of....its like Eminem...when he disses people we don't really care....but when he gets dissed...then his albums become hot commodity because u wanna know what happens and he becomes another big hit....MMA is never gonna fully shake off the babaric image...because it is actually based on the old adage of gladiators battling for supremacy. Also with the witers that have complete disregard for actual journalism it becomes apparent that they have no knowledge of what atheletes must do to compete. They have most likely endured the hard task of sitting at a desk throughout there lives and thinking of ways to make there opinions count. If you read the boston globe piece you would know that the supposed jounalist list no facts or footnotes to support his own theory. Studying the sport could have helped him bring it into a debating manner rather then address it in a negative manner. Thus increasing the curiosity of the reader in wondering how this suppose dogfight really plays out. Most fans will tell u there on fire. But being in a position where negativity is feul to the media craze we should accept their opinion and show them that MMA is as classy a sport as you can find....
THAT'S IT, I WANT TO KNOW, AND I WANT TO KNOW NOW!!! WHO IS THE PERSON WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR PICKING ON THIS POOR, LITTLE PATHETIC EXCUSE OF A MAN. WOW, I BET HIS WIFE (IF HE HAS ONE) THINKS HE'S A REAL PIT BULL IN THE BEDROOM (YES, PUN INTENDED)...YEAH THAT WAS A BIT BARBARIC, I KNOW, BUT I JUST COULDN'T HELP MYSELF. I WAS LURED BY LAUZON'S JAB'S ABOUT THE Y2K CRASH, ETC...
HHHMMM... NOW TO MORE CIVILITY.
IS THIS GUY SERIOUS??? AS MUCH AS I DO LOVE THE CONSTITUTION, AND BELIEVE ME I DO! IT'S STILL SAD THAT SOME INCOMPETENT EDITOR LET THIS SLIP THRU, AND GET TO PUBLICATION; AND THE BOSTON GLOBE TO BOOT! HMM GO FIGURE!
NOW WITH ALL SERIOUSNESS, I DON'T THINK JOE COULD HAVE HANDLE HIMSELF AND HIS RESPONSE ANY BETTER OR MORE PROFESSIONALLY. WAIT...I CAN'T HELP, OF TRACK FOR 1 SECOND AGAIN. IS IT NOT FACT THAT THE MOST RELIGIOUS OF PEOPLE AND CIVILIZTIONS ARE OFTEN THOSE THAT ARE THE MOST AND BIGGEST HYPOCRITS?ROMAN CATHOLIC, GREEK ORTHODOX, AND ALL OTHER MAJOR SOCIETIES AND CIVILIZATIONS PRACTICED RELIGION WITH THE GREATEST OF PASSION AND BELIEF. YET AT A MOMENTS NOTICE DIDN'T THINK TWICE ABOUT ABOMINATING, OTHER ENTIRE SOCIETIES, AND CIVILIZATIONS. WAIT, NOW THIS IS THE POINT MY POINT...IS IT, OR IS IT NOT THE CENTER, AND THE BASIS OF ALL RELIGIONS, to be PEACEFUL AND PROSPER, WITH OUT VIOLENCE AND RAW CARNAGE. TO CO-EXIST IN PEACE AMONGST OURSELVES AND FELLOW NEIGHBORS??? DIDN'T MISTER FUNT SAY SOMETHING ABOUT THE CATHOLIC ARCHDIOCESE'S OPINION ON THIS MAINSTREAM SPORT?
---I COULD HONESTLY WRITE AND GO ON FOR DAY'S...HOWEVER UNLIKE THIS OTHER CHUMP, I DO HAVE BETTER THINGS TO DO THAN TRY AND STIR UP MY DEAD JOURNALISM CAREER, WORKING AT A NEWSPAPER WHO WE ALL NOW IS MINUTES FROM CHAPTER 7 BANKRUPTCY. SO MAYBE HE DOESN'T EVEN MEAN, BELIEVE,OR UNDERSTAND HALF OF WHAT HE IS SAYING OR WRITING...AND MAYBY JUST MAYBE, HE IS DOING IT TO BOOST NEWSPAPER SALES AND GET SOME NOTORIETY, BEFORE HE IS WORKING AS A CHECK BAG BOY AT THE PARK PLAZA. YES MAM, NO MAM, YES SIR, NO SIR,,,ANYTHING FOR YOU MR. LAUZON, AND MR. FLORIAN, ANYTHING ELSE I CAN DO TO BE OF ASSISTANCE TONIGHT, PLEASE CALL ME RIGHT AWAY. IT'S BEEN AN HONOR AND A PLEASURE TO WORK FOR AND BE INTRODUCED TO SUCH HIGH CLASS, WORLD CLASS ATHLETES....LOL TO ALL, HAHA..
SINCERELY,
NICHOLAS T.G.A. KOTSONAS
that may have been more entertaining that Mr. Lauzons take on this embarressment to journalism.
it certainly had alot of CAPSLOCK handed justice about it lol
hey Johnny just email me at mmanotufc@yahoo.ca I just made the account so I dont really care about giving it out
.com not .ca
this is a never ending debate..it's almost comparable to the pro-choice vs pro-life debaters..all we have to do here, is agree to disagree..if you love the sport..good for you..if you don't..well just leave it a lone..saying stupid lies about the sport though, is pathetic..just back you stuff up..have evidence..whether for or against the sport..
I like MMA just as much as the next guy but using Bogus claims... "Ultimate Fighting is safer than boxing" is just plain bad for your cause.
I've never seen a boxer Tee Off on a guy already unconcious on the mat, and win the fight, that's a DQ and it rarly happens. In MMA it fequently happens. A recent example see Hendo!
MMA is not classy at all see modern examples Tito Ortiz and your champ brock, Historical examples Tank Abbott and Ken Shamrock, the anti roll models of loud mouthing and bad sportsmen ship. O and let's not forget BJ Penn saying he is going to kill GSP in the ring. You can slant a story either way and Joe does this!
By know means is MMA comparable to dog fighting, but in actuality how many fighters make a larger purse than their medical bill ends up? Look up the stats on that one Joey, it doesn't favor you.
I'm def gonna keep watching MMA and hope it rise up to detract all the haters but come on the person who said it's comparable to dog fighting article is just as bias as yours, you got CNN vs FOXNEWS here 2 people who are lying to prove their points. And everyone who is gonna curse me out and talk what i wrote think about it for a minute nothing i said is a lie.
Bring us Fedor!
Very nice rebuttal Joe.
Let’s be honest though this isn’t the first ignorant article about MMA and it won’t be the last. Do any of you really care what the heir to the Candid Camera fortune thinks about MMA? Peter Funt is the son of Allen Funt, a man that became a multimillionaire by creating an entire generation of voyeurs and Peter of course is following Daddy’s footsteps. The only thing that I might care about his opinion on is the proper technique for a child to hit his/her father in the groin with a waffle ball bat.
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