It's Saturday night and I've just finished watching UFC 100.
Overall a great show with some impressive performances by GSP and Dan Henderson.
The one thing about the whole event though that compelled me to come home and write this blog post was Brock Lesnar's attitude and antics after his match against Frank Mir.
Brock Lesnar, besides being a phenomenal athlete who has great wrestling and overall grappling skills on top of his huge stature, (He probably fights at around 280-290lbs.) perfomed well and kept Mir trapped on the ground by controlling his head as he rained punches on him. Simply put, he did a great job of negating Mir's skills and keeping him from gaining momentum and control during the fight.
The one thing I feel forced to write about though was the inexcusable anctics of Lesnar after the match.
Yes some people might say that he is just basking in his glory and trying to gain notoriety as a fighter but he should be doing that with his skills in the cage not by belittling his opponent or giving the finger to the crowd.
Maybe someone should quickly remind Lesnar that those very fans who he was flipping off were collectively responsible for paying his earnings that night and without whom he would not have the opportunity he presently does.
The sport of MMA as a whole is worse off from this type of attitude and behaviour and I honestly believe that he should come to his senses and apologize for taking a great sport and degrading it the way he did.
Combat sports in general have been tied in to a culture that ends with respect and integrity for the most part.
It's what seperates these athletes from the majority of the sports world and propels them to an epic status. The fact that so much dedication and sacrifice goes into performing on the level that these guys do engenders and deserves more respect than what Brcok Lesnar demonstrated on this historic night of the 100th event of the UFC and the largest MMA show around today.
Let's hope that this stays as an exception and doesn't drag the UFC down to the level that professional wrestling fell to.
Maybe we should just treat it as an opportunity to remember how important a role mutual respect plays in our training in the grappling arts.
No comments:
Post a Comment