Challenging the MMA claim to own ‘the street’
One of the things UFC fight fans love to claim is that their sport is the real deal. It’s “street” in the sense that you can’t get more hardcore than MMA; it's the closest we've got to real fighting. OK, sure. But what does that even mean? And how is that idea propagated in the sports world?
Saturday night UFC legend Randy Couture schooled boxer turned one-time MMA competitor James Toney. Schooled is the right word, because that’s exactly what Couture did. In the classroom, James was the annoying kid sitting in the back of class, claiming the impossible. He said that without any MMA experience at all, he was going to knockout Couture in a fight that catered to all of his opponent’s strengths. That proved to be like roping in the wind, and while Toney’s cause was a sad pipe dream, the bout still gets at some interesting claims being made when you put a boxer against an MMA fighter.
Without a doubt, a lot of MMA advocates said the following after the bout: “well, you know, it just goes to show you who would win in a street fight...an MMA guy will always take a boxer.”
From a certain perspective, it’s hard to understand this claim. If we watch a baseball game, and then say, oh, because Team A won, they’d win against the same team in a hockey game, does that make sense? The truth is that Couture-Toneywas not a street fight, so it says little to nothing about what would happen in that kind of real environment.
The implied suggestion of the above is, again, that MMA is more authentic or hardcore or ‘real.’ But that’s a load of hot air. It’s a different kind of sport, just as full of hoop-la and entertainment and marketing as boxing. It may be similar to a real fighting environment in some vague way, but the truth is, MMA is very far away from being like a fight ‘on the street.’
In a ‘street fight,’ you’re not going to get a cage, and you’re not going to get a referee. You’re not going to get weight class divisions, or a head butt ban. In fact the concept of fouling and disqualifying altogether, from the perspective of the street, cease to exist. That means anything goes: eye gauging, biting, groin attacking, small-joint manipulations, all of which are banned under MMA code of conduct. That isn’t even to mention weapons, guns, or anything else that might play a factor in a ‘legitimate’ street fight. Have the guys making these arguments been on the streets anytime in the last twenty years?
You see where one can go with this? It’s a mindless pit.
I sure as heck don’t know if Randy Couture is more ‘street’ than James Toney because he took him out in the sport toward which he’s dedicated his life. The chances are that if Toney put gloves on in a boxing ring with Couture, the match would have went his way—and savagely. Because either way you cut it, this would be a mismatch. It’s always a mismatch putting an expert against an amateur.
And don’t forget, that’s exactly what the UFC did Saturday. Put an expert against an amateur. So if Toney made ‘boxing look bad’ by accepting this bout and losing sorely, it’s just as clear UFC and president Dana White make their own sport look bad by endorsing this fight. It would be like putting Joe Everyman against Bernard Hopkins (a good Couture equivalent) in boxing. In this sense, it’s interesting that MMA would even get such a draw for the bout. It turns out that the sport supposedly known for having the most skilled ‘streetfighters’ demonstrates that by putting its top guys against the amateurs.
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