I was talking to my dad about Mixed Martial Arts one day, and he told me it was not exciting to watch. My first instinct was to invite him into the ring. Then I remembered the whole giving me food and shelter thing all those years, and I decided just to listen for once.
The truth is many traditional fight fans actually find MMA boring. Those, like my father, who grew up watching boxing, don’t understand MMA. Boxing only covers a small portion of fighting. I thirst to watch more rounded fighters.
My dad told me that the fighters try to get the fight to the ground and then just lay there. I wanted to laugh at this, but the thoughts of getting grounded at 28 years old crept in and I suppressed it for now. Actually, I opened my mind the next time I watched a fight and tried to look at it from an outsider’s perspective. Understanding was gained.
The fighting on the ground would be very boring to watch, if you didn’t know what was happening. The ground game is as important to a fighter as Mickey was to Rocky. MMA fighters learn Jiu Jitsu for their ground game. Why? Jiu Jitsu is a Brazilian art that almost has perfected what to do when a fight gets to the ground. The difference between this art and others is it has been forged and perfected in the modern real world. It is a practical art that encourages your opponent to submit to the pain or get incapacitated to where they can’t fight.
I have been involved in martial arts for twenty-plus years and have competed nationally. I used to train for numerous hours, five days a week. However, one hour of Jiu Jitsu training spent more energy than anything I ever did because when the fighters are on the ground they are contracting every single muscle in their body to attempt to outsmart the other. The smallest mistake could expose your neck for a choke. Every move is calculated.
Keep watching you’ll learn what is happening. I promise.
that’s true brother! jiu jitsu rocks! although im just a beginner, when we roll for a 5 full minutes, i get exhausted. very different from boxing wherein you can stick and fly… here, you’ll have to be fast and mentally alert…
I agree, mma bores me to tears. So what if you have perfected some “art” of ground fighting. I want to see men go toe to toe and punch to punch instead of watching some guy get bored into submission because another man is able to keep him from getting up off the ground. People who think mma is worth watching are the same people who think soccer is a real sport. Actually, they both bore me to tears.
[...] want to close by addressing the person who said MMA isn’t a sport. MMA meets every criteria for a sport. In fact, I would love to have many other athletes take [...]
It is boring.
Just because someone doesn’t find it interesting doesn’t mean that they don’t understand it.
I understand baseball…. and I find it boring.
I understand mma…. and I find it boring and gay.
icha, sorry to take so long to reply. I found this comment by chance while reflecting. First off, if you choose to believe these sports are boring, I am fine with that. I am not a baseball fan myself. However, I pray that icha isn’t a name honoring “handball.” I watched highlight reels and wanted to carve out my own eyes. It offers the same level of excitement as curling during the winter olympics. Moral to the story, I would save the ‘gay’ comment and in your case even the ‘boring’ one.
i think icha pretty much nailed it on the head. usually when i am to say that mma is boring to an mma fanboy they’ll tell me i dont understand it. i think by now most casual observers understand whats going on. its still very hard to watch. i put it on par with watching golf.
MMA fans have very sensitive feelings.
They get too flustered when soemone does like their sport.
Hey, if you want to watch grown men in speedos, paint their toe nails and wrap their legs around each other…. that’s cool. Just don’t be too stunned when others aren’t hip to that jazz.
I wrestled in middle school and high school…. and I don’t like it. Yes, I get leverage and fulcrums…. so I guess I ‘get’ mma. But I just don’t like it.
I guess i’m old school like your pops who you were thinking about beating because he does like mma (then thought better off it because of how he took care of you) – *kind of disturbing that you would even think to fight someone who disagrees with you*.
I’m old school like your pops because I would rather watch boxing than mma. MMA fans like to say “but we’re killing boxing” – which I find hard to believe when I see that Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao have brought in close to 5 million ppv buys for their matches alone.
Oh here we go again:
if you don’t like mma or find it boring you don’t “get it”.
Maybe the problem is with mma fans, they have this odd sense of entitlement. This feeling that others need to like their sport of choice and if you don’t then you hear comments like “oh how about I tap you out!!??” – like that proves anything. This Joey Lawrence character actually considered fighting with his dad because he dad doesn’t like the sport. Then, he came to the conclusion that his dad was ignorant as to what was going on.
Joey, there’s no mystery with what is going on. And also, if you need to have a working knowledge of how to pull off various submissions in order to appreciate the sport, then that’s really not saying alot for the sport. It almost seems more like a problem with your sport than with people who could care less about it or find it very boring.
I’m sick of everyone glorifying MMA because of some obsession with stereotypical male masculinity. (Not saying all MMA fans are as such). I’m a guy who works with other guys who try so hard to fit the profile of some fighter. You know what I mean, the head shaving, showing all the tattoos they have, wearing those ridiculous TAPOUT shirts and sweaters ALL the time. I’ve tried to watch and I can’t get into it… Like the author’s father says, “they just lay there” and it’s true! I want action and a good story to listen to. Basically I want entertainment, not a male ego fueled contest to see who can hold whom on the ground the longest. Give me pro-wrestling ANY day over MMA. Criticize pro-wrestling all you want but those guys never get credit for any of the work they do and the stresses their bodies take. To uneducated non-wrestling fans, they’re all just fake and use “ketchup” for blood. Missing the point… It’s not about watching a boring ground fight, pro-wrestling is entertainment yes with obvious physical hazards everyone fails to see. MMA fighters don’t typically launch themselves from 30 foot cages or work on the road 300+ days a year nor do they suffer from the cultural stigma’s attached to pro-wrestling. Most MMA fighters who transition to pro-wrestling fail because they have no coordination or personality.
Wow.
This thread kind of backfired in the face of the mma fan who wrote this article. LOL.
I’m not an mma fan.
I’m much rather watch pro-wrestling (because I’ll admit, like SK, I like the story lines) and boxing.
When I see mma on tv I click right passed it. No interest in watching it. And it’s not because I don’t understand what they’re trying to accomplish in an mma fight. I just don’t care either way.
Yea ground sex, umm I mean ground fighting is very boring to watch. Two muscular man groping each other on the ground for minutes after minutes… suddenly, TAP OUT, fight is finish, what the hell is that?? I don’t care how technical you are, or how tired you are on the ground. I find it boring. I train in boxing, Muay thai and K1 style kickboxing, that’s a men’s sport, you knock each other on your FEET. You remain standing to the end of the fight, you only go to ground when Knock out cold by hook or roundhouse kick to the head.
Even ATA kids taekwondo championship is more fun to watch, more full action..
I don’t think this is where the article poster hoped his comments would go.
I do like mma either. Not into “combat sports”, but I agree with eddy.
I’d much rather watch boxing, Muay Thai or any type of standing fight.
I really don’t get excited to see two men rolling around on the ground. Say “but you don’t get the technique”. Well, if that’s true or not, it doesn’t change the fact that I don’t like it.
Boxing is an exciting spectacle. Its a classic sport, like soccer, baseball, football etc.
If you were to meld those last three sports together and call it ‘mbs’ (mixed ball sports) in a year or two you would have idiots following it and saying ”mbs is superior to soccer because you can pick the ball up and hit it with a bat” or other such nonsense. See my point?
Mma fans delude themselves that mma is more like actual fighting. In the junior school playground – yes! To my detriment, I had a lot of streetfights in my teens, twenties and thirties, and they never resembled mma. In a streetfight against a dangerous individual, your one objective is to KNOCK OUT your opponent, not roll around on the ground, get him in a headlock and say ”give up?”
A streetfighter will attempt to bite a chunk out of your face or pull your eyeball out, not get you in a leg-lock.
Mma fighters are useless at actual punching, and rarely score anything resembling a knockout. That is disastrous on the street.
I would much rather face an mma clown in a streetfight than a trained boxer, believe me!
I only just found this article today after typing “mma is boring” into google, to find i am not the only one to think this.. I’ve enjoyed reading lots of comments i agree with on here – especially SK laughing at gay TAPOUT teeshirts. We all know the original article writer was wrong. Jiu Jitsu, is a Japanese martial art, but Brazillian’s perfected their own style. I prefer watching boxing, thai boxing and K-1 thai boxing. Its more explosive to watch for me, watching thinking fighters, and i trained in muay thai for 13 years through the Trojans, Master Lec from Nottingham and my best trainer Tyrone Herod who was British Thai Boxing Heavyweight Champion for most of the 1990s, who’d had a few K-1 fights himself. MMA seemed to evolve after we all watched respectful Gracie Jiu Jitsu beat other respectful martial arts in the first UFCs in the early 1990s, before it was hyped and watered down into MMA men in trunks. Respectful martial artists understand how effective judo and jiu jitsu is, i tried ground fighting with Tyrone who would have snapped me with all the locks he put me in, but its not exciting to watch MMA. MMA doesn’t deserve its hype.
I know whats going on on the ground and I still find MMA boring. I tried watching it when it first came about and was expecting to see a good fight. What did I find. 30 seconds in 2 guys dry humping on the floor and a submission hold and the fight was over. That’s me watching my tv for 30 seconds. That is not good entertainment value. So I tried to watch a few more at later times and still came across too many fights that ended in this manor. MMA is boring in the current rules. That and the announcers are annoying and contradictory. In the current state I will never watch another MMA fight or condone it in any way.