Reaction to Rashad Evans at UFC 114 Highlights Need to Educate Fans - Mixed Marshall Arts

Rashad Evans used -gasp- WRESTLING to win! C'mon boys, grab your pitchforks and torches and lets get 'im! (photo from MMAFighting.com)

The reaction to Rashad Evans on the internet following his victory at UFC 114 has been disheartening for those of us who have decried the anti-wrestling sentiment that’s been so prevalent in the MMA community over the course of the last several years.

As soon as the fight was over, fans took to internet message boards to start threads decrying Rashad Evans’ route to victory, as if him using evasion tactics and superior wrestling to win the fight was somehow a cowardly or insincere means of winning. It exacerbates a continuing controversy over fan perception of the sport and the role of wrestling in North American MMA.

Quinton “Rampage” Jackson fueled the fire further in the post-fight press conference Saturday night. During what was a rare appearance by the loser of a main event in a press conference, Jackson responded to questions about his performance by praising Evans for having a solid game plan and sticking to it. However, he also blamed his own ring rust, then added that Evans “didn’t win a fight…he won the match, but it wasn’t a fight.”

Which is exactly the attitude we need to drop.

Mixed Martial Arts isn’t street fighting. As ad-hoc advocates of the sport, fans have been fighting that perception for years. The “street fighting brawl” mentality is pervasive amongst political opponents of the sport, and is the very thing keeping it from being legalized in New York State. It’s frustrating to read statements from politicians that paint it as such.

And yet, those same fans who are so quick to correct that misconception are the very same ones with Quinton Jackson’s mentality.

This isn’t an attitude exclusive to MMA. In fact, much of the criticism directed towards Evans is reminiscent of what you see after every Floyd Mayweather fight, where Mayweather’s natural skill and athleticism is overlooked because he somehow wasn’t “man enough” to stand still and let the other guy hit him. It’s perplexing that the same audience and pundits who espouse boxing as the “sweet science” suddenly drop that approach once somebody actually applies that “sweet science” in route to a convincing victory.

For what it’s worth, I think they’re wrong. As a fan of the sport – and not of knockouts – I actually enjoyed Rashad Evans’ performance, just as I’ve enjoyed watching Floyd Mayweather compete. I thought that Evans wrestled beautifully and mixed it up quite a bit. He didn’t just take it to the ground and grind Jackson into the mat; rather, he used various clinches, takedowns, side mounts, great cage awareness, masterful footwork and counter-punching to keep Jackson guessing as to where he’d go next. There wasn’t any of the lay and pray that you often see when wrestlers dominate using wrestling. As much as one could attribute Jackson’s loss to “ring rust” (the real reason is that Jackson ballooned up to over 250 pounds and in the process of getting back down lost a significant amount of muscle mass in his upper-body which took away from his strength), it was a masterful performance by Evans and he deserves praise for his approach.

Additionally, it was the only sensible approach for Evans to take. Columnist Ben Fowlkes (as usual) took the words right out of my mouth hands:

“The pre-fight hype seems to have had a strange effect on some fans, and even some members of the media. They got so drawn in by the animosity narrative they briefly forgot that this is still a sport, and the men involved still professionals.

What, did they think Evans hated Jackson so much he’d abandon good sense and try to brawl with a superior power puncher? Did they think anger might turn Evans dumb, or that Jackson’s smack talk would make him forget that he knew how to wrestle?”

-Ben Fowlkes, MMAFighting.com

Fowlkes goes on to say that he wasn’t disappointed by the fight at all, and asks if he’s in the minority.

It’s hard to tell. Certainly he’s in good(?) company with yours truly and Kid Nate over at Bloody Elbow. If you’re to judge by internet message boards, you’ll probably think we’re vastly out-numbered, but it’s hard to tell when a loud minority discourages reasonable discussion. If six guys are at a bar acting like a-holes and espousing their opinions, the lack of anybody approaching them to say they’re wrong doesn’t mean they’re right. It just means nobody wants to deal with those a-holes.

I’m not saying you’re an a-hole if you hated Rashad Evans performance. I am saying that you can’t judge anything by an internet message board.

Some like Fowlkes put the blame on expectations of what the fight would be. He definitely has a point. It’s almost as if people expected that all the trash talk and animosity would somehow make these men forget they competed in a sport and they’d just grab each other by the back of the head and start pounding away a la Frye/Takayama.

But I’d extrapolate on that point and say it’s a problem of fans simply not being thoroughly educated about or fully exposed to the sport. A lot more people are into MMA now than they were even a year or two ago. Unfortunately, Chuck Liddell let them in through the side door, and now that they’re seeing the finer points of MMA they don’t know how to process it. They’re not the group that came into the sport watching VHS tapes of Pride, where competitors would grapple in front of a completely silent crowd.

I’m not trying to adopt an air of superiority with that last statement. However, it may explain why guys like myself, Ben Fowlkes, Kid Nate, and many of the people I know who are MMA fans could cheer for Evans’ performance on Saturday evening while the rest of the bar booed and called for him to drop his game plan. The ones that booed are the ones that came in watching clips of knockouts on YouTube and “UFC Unleashed” specials on Spike, where you rarely see a masterful wrestling performance highlighted.

For what it’s worth, I honestly think most of them will come around. There’s always going to be bad crowds, but we’ve also seen some that have cheered good wrestling and/or jiu-jitsu. But it’s also on us to continue espousing this as a sport and not decrying good, solid wrestling.

Craig

Kevin (and his faitful readers), I pre-emptively apologize for this rant

This is one of the things that makes me ambivalent about the sport. While Dane White is espousing Mixed Martial Arts, many people in the audience and the cage are hearing and seeing what resembles something Michael Vick had endorsed back in the day.

While I admit I’m one of the ones who started watching UFC and other MMA-related promotions recently, I’ve seen the Highlight Reels. Watching the first UFC matches, there was Martial Arts going on. Style vs Style. Men wore Gis. As someone who studied Goshin-Ryu JiuJitsu (which is only minutely related to it’s Brazillian nephew), I could at the very least, dig the concept.

Unfortunately, all most people see are just a bunch of bodybuilders grappling and and beating the shit out of each other for 15-25 minutes. Everyone and their mothers is putting on bicycle shorts and going through crash course BJJ classes so they can be Ultimate Fighters.

Having taugh a JJ class a few weeks back, I went on a three minute long spiel trying to educate the difference between Japanese JiuJitsu, Brazillian JiuJitsu, and Mixed Martial Arts. A guy by the name of Adrian, whose first time in the group, practiced BJJ and MMA. I felt I may have overstepped my bounds and apologized if he took offense. He said he understood, and then told me that alot of the guys nowadays just study BJJ and then immediately go into Mixed Martial Arts, whereas in the old days, you had to at least be a black belt. to be recognized in the field.

In short, MMA is at a peak in their popularity and visibility. There is a lot of demand, and they are going to have to adapt one way or another to meet that demand. This incident with Evans and Jackson only points that out that there are alot of misconceptions going on, and it’s only a matter of time before the industry sets down a definition before everyone else does.

Again, I apologize for the Rant. The MMA industry could be a great thing, and one I enjoy watching from time to time, but it’s still got some growing up to do.

http://kevinmarshall.wordpress.com Kevin Marshall

I don’t even know where to start with this.

Firstly, you lose me as soon as you compare Mixed Martial Arts to dog-fighting, then accuse the UFC and Dana White of promoting it. Quite the contrary. What they promote is the main event we saw on Saturday night, which is what people are complaining about. The point is that it IS a sport and it’s just as safe if not safer, both practically and statistically, as most other contact sports (especially football).

In the beginning, yes, men wore gis. They wore gis as they repeatedly punched their opponent in the testicles until the referee stopped it. They wore gis as they savagely sandwiched their opponents heads with their knees and elbows. They wore gis as they headbutted each other.

You have this overly romantic view of what the sport used to be that simply isn’t based in anything other than nostalgia and couldn’t be further removed from reality. And your view of what the sport is now may be every bit as skewed.

The industry has been setting down the definition, as have pundits. The fault lies in the expectations of the fans. However, there’s also a misconception and misplaced apprehension (that I’ve discussed before on this blog) from martial arts practitioners such as yourself towards the sport. This is a combat sport that combines elements of various martial arts. The reason guys may take a “crash course” in BJJ is because it’s simply one of many elements that is helpful in developing your MMA game.

And I can’t stress that enough. MMA in itself is an approach, sharing certain elements with BJJ. BJJ black belts do enter the sport, and often. Sometimes they fare well, and often they don’t. Those that don’t carry the sort of attitude that you do: that it’s style versus style, with BJJ as the God of all Martial Arts (not to be confused with this “Moosin” fella). They fail because they stick to their game plan even though it’s out of their element. There are a good number of BJJ and other black belts that have great success, but only when applying their skill as a part of their overall game. B.J. Penn is a prime example: one of the best BJJ practitioners in North America, but it was only combining that with training and great technical boxing that he was able to get some success.

And they’re not “bodybuilders,” an observation that is just dripping with Haterade. Far from it (if you’d watch the event you’d see what Mike Russow – flab and all – did to the cut from stone Todd Duffee). Bodybuilders have tried to enter the sport and they fall flat on their face because they don’t have the right build. The honest truth is that they look the way they do because they train a ridiculous amount and need to be in great shape in order to endure the physical rigors of competition.

Adrian may have taken offense because you were trying to educate them on something they already knew. In other words, they know the difference between the styles and were wondering what that has to do with the price of tea in China. It’s like a Muay Thai practitioner complaining about all that karate and Jiu-Jitsu going on in the cage. Well, it’s Mixed Martial Arts; if you want to excel using Muay Thai only, then enter kickboxing. If you want to find out who the best Jiu-Jitsu practitioner is, then enter Jiu-Jitsu competitions.

Perhaps you’re right in that the industry needs to acknowledge that expectations of the fans are different than what they see. But I don’t understand your apprehension and negativity towards it at all.

MMA has done a lot of growing up. It’s everyone else that has to catch up.

Craig

Fair enough. As I said at the beginning, I started watching well after UFC hit mainstream. I hang with a group of martial artists who discuss, demonstrate and spar with one another with their various martial arts. So my experiences and my expectations are geared towards that when I hear “Mixed Martial Arts”.

As your article states, I am one side of the problem: Martial Nazis, people who believe that the various disciplines out there by the mainstream simply because everyone wants to be Royce Gracie and BJ Penn (Who I agree are the best BJJ fighters) in the cage. These Martial Nazis believe that UFC (and by extension, BJJ) is a fad that confuses those who come in to learn Martial Arts expecting to cage fight.

In regards to the actual content of your article. Rashad Evans did what he did to win the match, he fought smart. This dissappointed alot of people in and out of the industry, who perceive it as a fight. While I apologize for the venom in my previous post, and I will admit (again, as my last post showed) that the peanut gallery has a long way to go before it “gets” it, I still hold that some of this perception is in part the responcibility of the promoters and how they allow their sport to appear.