Attn: Nintendo: This Must Happen

The hard part would be jumping over the barrels as Kimbo Slice rolls them at you from atop an unfinished skyscraper.

Ha!  Mottram is a hater indeed!

Thanks for giving MMA some time here, TSN definitely needs to cover the sport more.  Too bad I’m at work and can’t watch the video…

Just to be clear: I don’t hate MMA. I actually watch it from time-to-time. I simply said it will never be more popular than football, baseball, basketball, soccer … uh … tennis … hockey. But boxing, sure. It might be more popular than boxing someday.

It already is more popular than boxing in the US.  It’s done better than boxing the last 2 years as far as pay-per-view numbers. 

Your previous post regarding MMA and its popularity took a few cheap shots at the sport which made you out to hate it.

As far as popularity, it might have already surpassed some of those sports (tennis, really?) but regardless MMA deserves recognition as a popular sport and should be covered on TSN and TSB more regularly.

Your previous post regarding MMA and its popularity took a few cheap shots at the sport which made you out to hate it.

I did take some cheap shots. And those were jokes, not intended to be taken so seriously.

As far as popularity, it might have already surpassed some of those
sports (tennis, really?) but regardless MMA deserves recognition as a
popular sport and should be covered on TSN and TSB more regularly.

Worldwide, I’m sure tennis is far more popular than MMA. And I agree, we should cover it more, and I’m sure SN as a whole will in the coming months and years. Like it or not, you can’t ignore MMA anymore.

I did take some cheap shots. And those were jokes, not intended to be taken so seriously.

I guess it’s hard for me to look at them in that light considering how TSN has ignored the sport, it just adds to my growing suspicions that Sporting News hates MMA.

I agree, we should cover it more, and I’m sure SN as a whole will in the coming months and years.

I hope you’re right, I really do.  But I was disappointed that nothing got mentioned about the huge superfight on Super Bowl weekend after the hope that I had following TSN’s posting of a short AP story about Fedor beating Arlovski.  I still say TSB needs someone who covers MMA regularly…how bout it?

And I’m not trying to be a pest on here, it’s just that along with a couple of other bloggers on this site, I’ve been lobbying to see more coverage of the sport on Sporting News.  Some of us put a lot of effort into MMA blogs on here and we’d like to see TSN either add their own coverage to go along with that or even give some of the bloggers already here a chance to help out with coverage.

Ask Large to see if he can get The Franchise to reprise the dearly missed "Sharpshootin’ With The Franchise" feature.  It’d be a great fit for TSB.

you can’t ignore MMA anymore

I can.

I really don’t agree with the statement that tennis is more popular than MMA around the world. MMA is not only popular in America, but the main components of the sport originated in other parts of the world. For example, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu originated in Brazil, Muay Thai origianed in Thailand/Chinese Taipei, and most of the best wrestlers in the sport are Japanese-born. And that’s not to mention that the sport is also super-popular in England (they have a few notable fighters including Michael Bisping), and Russia (uh…heard of Fedor Emelianenko?).

I think that a look at the top pound-for-pound fighters in the world shows the global impact of the sport:

-George St. Pierre (Canada)
-Anderson Silva (Brazil)
-Fedor Emelianenko (Russia)
-B.J. Penn (Hawaii)
-Miguel Torres (Mexico)
-Shinya Aoki (Japan)

Don’t make statements that you can’t backup, espeically when you claim not to care much about the sport and obviously haven’t done any research.

"Don’t make statements that you can’t backup, especially when you claim
not to care much about the sport and obviously haven’t done any
research."

Please tell me what research I would do to determine for certain which sport is more popular worldwide. Would I list a bunch of popular tennis players and which countries they’re from, as you did with MMA? I don’t see how that proves that MMA is more popular worldwide. Tennis is played in all the countries you listed.

And you might wanna leave England out of your argument. I’m fairly certain the country that created tennis enjoys that sport more than fighting.

And you might wanna leave England out of your argument. I’m fairly certain the country that created tennis enjoys that sport more than fighting.

Maybe as an organized sport…

Please tell me what research I would do to determine for certain which sport is more popular worldwide. Would I list a bunch of popular tennis players and which countries they’re from, as you did with MMA? I don’t see how that proves that MMA is more popular worldwide. Tennis is played in all the countries you listed.

That’s why I didn’t get into that argument, outside of boxing you can’t necessarily make a fact based argument that MMA is more popular. 

What I can say is that in Japan MMA had the primetime television coverage and New Year’s Eve events were the Japanese equivalent of the Super Bowl.  That only ended because of scandal surrounding the big organization of the time, Pride, and their possible connection to organized crime.

Vale tudo and jiu-jitsu have been HUGE in Brazil for years before MMA ever developed through the UFC in the US.

I think regardless, the point is that it is popular and does have a chance to build on that worldwide and maybe not be more popular, but certainly eventually be regarded on the same level with the other sports (although I do think soccer might always hold the edge outside of the US).

You never responded to my urging for the addition of an MMA writer to TSB.  It’d be a great start to adding MMA to TSN…