I was saying that it's possible that certain fights have been fixed. Not all of them. That I agree with.
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Can some fights, even big ones in MMA be fake?
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There may be MMAmatches that are fixed, and you wouldn't know it.
However, that is completely different than the claim that the MMA is fake like the WWE. WWE is designed intentionally to be fake. MMA is designed to be real fights between real fighters. Any 'fakeness' in an MMA match is completely unsanctioned, and are isolated incidences rather than part of the rules.
Anyway, I don't watch MMA because I don't see the point. It's a little too Top Gun for my tastes.
However, that is completely different than the claim that the MMA is fake like the WWE. WWE is designed intentionally to be fake. MMA is designed to be real fights between real fighters. Any 'fakeness' in an MMA match is completely unsanctioned, and are isolated incidences rather than part of the rules.
Anyway, I don't watch MMA because I don't see the point. It's a little too Top Gun for my tastes.
People were making your exact same comment years ago about wrestling and currently say the same thing about reality shows (that they are not faked). It's all entertainment and should not be taken seriously (i.e. who cares if it's faked. Just enjoy the match).
While I suppose it's theoretically possible that some of the big MMA matches are worked like boxing, it's unlikely in that the financial structure of the UFC works very differently from boxing. In boxing, you have several organizations and titles (WBC, IBF, WBA), and fighters can hold titles in several of them. Also, there is at least an order of magnitude more money in boxing.
For instance, Anderson Silva (who is the UFC champion and top ranked P4P fighter in UCF) in his recent match against Vitor Belfort, got $200k as a base payment. Mike Tyson has received over $30 million for individual fights.
To say that the fights are completely fake a la WWE is rather silly, since WWE doesn't even resemble an actual fight, since the Wrestlers just kind of run all over the place when thrown and blatantly stomp on the ground. MMA fighters frequently suffer injury in similar ways that a boxer might. In the most recent Welterweight championship, Koscheck suffered a broken orbital bone from being punched in the eye, and you could visibly see his eye get worse throughout the fight. In WWE, they run razor blades across their foreheads to bleed easily, and sometimes get injured when a throw goes wrong, but they clearly aren't attempting to harm each other. Also it's openly "sports entertainment" as opposed to sports.
Regarding the hilariously bad youtube video:
Kimbo Slice was actually a fan favorite, so it made no sense for him to take a dive. The reality is that large fighters can have glass chins (see: Andrei Arlovski), and Kimbo Slice was thrust into the MMA world because of his popularity in some random "underground" internet fights.
In the second fight, Sakuraba hit his opponent in the jaw multiple times. It's not abnormal at all to get knocked out from something like that.
The tapping in the third fight was because he clearly could not get out of the rear mount and he was just being hit in the head over and over again. Overeem was clearly not making any valid attempts to get escaped, so rather than being slowly pummeled into unconsciousness, he tapped out.
For instance, Anderson Silva (who is the UFC champion and top ranked P4P fighter in UCF) in his recent match against Vitor Belfort, got $200k as a base payment. Mike Tyson has received over $30 million for individual fights.
To say that the fights are completely fake a la WWE is rather silly, since WWE doesn't even resemble an actual fight, since the Wrestlers just kind of run all over the place when thrown and blatantly stomp on the ground. MMA fighters frequently suffer injury in similar ways that a boxer might. In the most recent Welterweight championship, Koscheck suffered a broken orbital bone from being punched in the eye, and you could visibly see his eye get worse throughout the fight. In WWE, they run razor blades across their foreheads to bleed easily, and sometimes get injured when a throw goes wrong, but they clearly aren't attempting to harm each other. Also it's openly "sports entertainment" as opposed to sports.
Regarding the hilariously bad youtube video:
Kimbo Slice was actually a fan favorite, so it made no sense for him to take a dive. The reality is that large fighters can have glass chins (see: Andrei Arlovski), and Kimbo Slice was thrust into the MMA world because of his popularity in some random "underground" internet fights.
In the second fight, Sakuraba hit his opponent in the jaw multiple times. It's not abnormal at all to get knocked out from something like that.
The tapping in the third fight was because he clearly could not get out of the rear mount and he was just being hit in the head over and over again. Overeem was clearly not making any valid attempts to get escaped, so rather than being slowly pummeled into unconsciousness, he tapped out.
No, they weren't. Though a lot of people (marks) might have believed that pro-wrestling was real, at it's height, even the biggest fans knew pro wrestling wasn't a competition.
For one, Vegas cares. You think Vegas ever made odds on Hulk Hogan versus Andre the Giant?
Two, the athletes. It's extremely disrespectful towards the fighters.
I've been involved in the martial arts and the fighting sports since about the time I could walk. My involvement is approaching thirty years now. I've learned, practiced, fought, coached, and trained on four continents. As a teenager and a young man, there was a time when I lived, breathed and ate fight sports. I mean that literally. For a five-six year span of time between age fifteen and twenty, I physically lived in different gyms, dojangs and dojos almost every summers Korea and Japan. One of those years during that time, I lived in the PE dorms for university judoka. Later, I joined and worked out at one of the premier MMA (before it was called MMA) gyms of the time. At one point, I was actually considering putting all of my academic and professional ambitions on hold to pursue some of these testosterone addled dreams. I obviously took another path but and competition is a much smaller part of my life. Even still, the first thing I do when work sends me to a new country is I find a local gym that practices anything and I go and introduce myself.
The path to being a professional fighter is long, difficult and unforgiving. It's usually pretty lonely because most people around you have no idea what you're going through. Some part of your body always hurts. Unless you're some sort of fighting genius, it's nothing but peanuts for years. Even if you've managed to work your way up to the main card of a third class promotion, your sponsorships and prize money still is nowhere enough to make ends meet so you're probably still working a part time job somewhere.
And then even if you're the one lucky guy in hundreds or thousands to headline the big time, it can all be taken away in half a second.
And yet some know nothings who've never had the balls to step in a ring or a cage have the nerve to walk around calling what you do fake?
Piss off.
People take their lives too seriously, jump down from the high wooden horse, relax, and enjoy the less than little squirt of time you spend on this planet before you commence rotting. If what you love is a little bit of a primate activity, then good for you.
I agree with you. The poster you are referring to, even though they have similar experience to me (in some respects), is just talking on emotion. He may even be Japanese like me so I suspect the martial arts are not sport, but a way of life, even a religion. (ie - Shinto).
When there's a huge economic incentive to lose, then weird things can happen. I should have said that only some fights are staged or predetermined "if" there's a lot of money involved.
I apologize for my reality TV b.s. thread title and I will change it for respect of real MMA practitioners and fans. ...also...Macdawg, I will PM you as to this and also apologize in advance.
One of the most revered sports from my Japanese heritage is Sumo wrestling. On its face, with its long tradition and tie win with Shintoism, one would think that there's no way that Sumo could ever be fixed at some matches, right?
Anyway, some mathematicians in Japan have put out some intriguing evidence and some journalists published articles that this most revered of fighting sports can, on occasion, like a boxing match or UFC, be fixed. Did Ali lose to be able to regain third reign at top? Did some let Kimbo win to raise his and the sport's visibility. Honestly, before Kimbo, I never ever heard anybody outside of MMA mention a name of any competitor. But Kimbo is fairly well known in a lot of places today, but still somewhat less than the Hulkster.
I could go into another argument bringing Sumo into the thread, but that's not what I will do since, if anybody loves any sort of match (especially Sumo which is huge and actually holds a national identity much like baseball does in the USA), please see the movie, "Freakonmics"*.
While my family holds Japanese traditions in high esteem, and I hold Okinawan Karate at a high level of prestige, there is no way I would have thought there could be anything fixed about Sumo. While it looks like two fat guys just pushing each other around in a circle, it's very brutal and loaded with injuries. These guys train very hard and are experts at what they do. So f--- UFC or boxing or WWF when we talk about what some say is 2,000 year old sport (and in current form hundreds of years old), and this is Sumo we are talking about and its older and as far as any cultural anthropologist is concerned, much more than a sport. Anybody who knows anything about the spiritual side of martial arts will understand though there's no requirement that one incorporate spirituality into Asian martial arts to benefit from it. (That in itself could be another thread, too
) So when I saw freakonomics tonight, the movie, my initial reaction when Japan's Sumo was attacked so blatantly, I was offended. But more than being Japanese, I am educated, especially in mathematics and statistics so I sat through and heard the arguments as to why Sumo can be faked, or have staged outcomes, at times and how that ties in with human nature (ie. greed).
However, after seeing the Japanese investigative reporters/researchers and a couple of Americans who backed their claim of some corruption in what some see as the purist of sports on its face, the evidence of "some" cheating in Sumo is very profound and very hard to refute mathematically.
Unlike UFC or American boxing, pissing on the image of the sports won't get you killed, but in Japan, it can if one challenges Sumo, and that's just how much some people in high places (actually all places there) can revere the sport. But sometimes the best way to hide impropriety is to have an heir of absolute purity and tradition. At the end of the day, financial incentives can get to the top Sumo guys, too. Hey, they're human and when it comes to Japanese culture, believe me, they have their Don Kings, too.
Anyway, it's too long to go into the math here (I did grad work in quantitative analysis and macroeconomics), but please rent the movie. It may not change your worldview, or anybody's on cheating in matches, or other topics brought up such as abortion, raising children, or shaky real estate deals, but a sound use of mathematics is not a bad thing when it's devoid of emotion and allowed to paint a picture without left or right wing pundits pushing an agenda.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freakonomics
*flamesuit disclaimer: I am a liberal and I know the recent ultra-right wing worship for the authors of Freakonomics, but let's let political debate on authors Dubner and Leavitt as neo-con idols sprout in another forum and not this thread.
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