silumkid,
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Originally posted by Silumkid
Sorry if this sounds a little harsh, but what do you mean by this question? UFC has always been full of low-lifes and liars and braggarts.
it does sound harsh, yeah. but it's an opinion. that's fine.
that said, martial arts in general have always been filled with low lifes, braggarts, and liars. we all know that. from the moment anyone figured out that there was money to be made, acclaim to be had, and rubes to be taken advantage of, these sorts of people were an inevitability. but, frankly, while there are some unsavoury characters in the octagon, i'd rather have them there, where the truth of the matter is going to come out, like it or not.
again, i think we're falling on that "that's not us, it's them" argument. point at a low life in CMA and he's 'not a representative of real kung fu.' point at one in MMA and he becomes an icon of the whole system.
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Kimo...claimed to have all sorts of training, then was later revealed to be nothing more than "basically a big football player with a gimmick"...pretty WWE'ish.
yep. and refresh my memory. what happened to kimo? he lost to royce gracie (a far smaller and less WWE'ish fellow). then there's kimo's teacher, joe son. an equally flamboyant competitor (which worked, given the amount of film work he's gotten). and what happened to him? one trip into the octagon, eight punches in the nuts, and never seen again in that venue.
see a pattern?
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Tank Abbott...yeah, there was a class individual. :rolleyes:
can't argue with you there. don't like tank abbott. enjoy seeing him get beaten by more skilled and well-mannered competitors. tank abbott would be a sociopath regardless of where he is. he's not a product nor a representative of MMA. he's one aspect of MMA, just as he's one aspect of modern society. at least UFC brings him into direct competition with people that are his match or better. the venue doesn't allow him to be the thug he'd like to be, because he's fighting people who are too good to be... thugged.
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That three tooth biker dude that competed once that I know of and did that ridiculous somersault landing flat on his back.
howard something. won one match with a well executed punch against a muay thai guy. lost the only other match i've seen him in. again, the showboats are filtered out. or defeated consistently. either way, you're hardly rewarded for style over substance.
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Steve what'shisname...the "Ninja Cop" who won the same as event as above mentioned biker boy.
and what, precisely, was low-life, braggart, or liar about steve jennum? or howard?
kimo's a bit of a goof. abbott's the only genuine low life so far.
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That fat black fella who claimed to be a sumo champion...of where? His neighborhood?
emmanuel yarborough. and, to my knowledge, he is an accomplished sumotori. have you done any research on sumo before deriding his background?
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The entire "undefeated, unbeatable" Gracie clan...call it semantics, call it whatever you want, but a loss is a loss and Poppa Helio is NOT undefeated. So that makes them braggarts and liars.
granted, i have a problem with this too. if you lost, you lost. i find the gracie presentation a bit much. but, again, MMA is bigger than the gracies. much bigger.
can you cite examples of sakuraba talking crap?
what about the shamrocks? frank has done so on occassion. but i think he grew into it a bit. in his later performances, he's still got the confidence you'd expect from a fighter who excels. but he's also a little more realistic about his own limitations, etc. that's the thing about competitions like UFC. talk as much crap as you want, but at some point, reality is going to set in. someone's going to beat you.
not 'reality' in the bigger sense. just the understanding that you're not the best. you won a bout. no more, no less. the more mature MMA'ers (and there are many) understand that.
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I'm really not trying to sound insulting here...I respect what these guys are willing to do to themselves to prove whatever it is they feel they need to prove. I just don't think we should try to romanticize it into something it isn't.
no, well, we'd be hard pushed to romanticize the shamrocks, right? a guy runs a home for boys, adopts two of them, and they grow up to become accomplished athletes who sing their father's praises up and down for what he did for them. what a bunch of low lifes.
get my point? this venue, like any other, attracts a spectrum of people. some of them, i'd happily hang out with on a saturday night (as i have done with merryprankster, the only MMA'er i know personally). others, i'd like to see tazered into submission and shipped into outer space (as with merry... er, no sorry).
:)
stuart b.