So I just had an experience that ****ed me off quite a bit on the 8th of November. I'm a Songshan Shaolin practitioner, and wanted to dip my foot into Sanshou and see how I liked it. Well I signed up for a light sparring match in an upcoming competition that my school was hosting. On the day of the competition, we were told the rules for light sparring would be light contact to the head and face, all other striking fair game per Sanda rules (no knees/elbows) and no throws (workaround being you could trap someone's leg and knock them down in other ways to get points). Anyways I had 2 1/2 months of training in Sanda/sanshou at this point, and was eager to have a good match with someone around my level (beginner/novice). Long story short I got paired up with some guy from an MMA gym who wanted to compete in the main event but was forced into light sparring because he didn't have an official fight record. Him and his team were acting very ****y and rude from the beginning. When my match started the rules of light contact to the head were reiterated. He nodded understanding and we got the match underway. I lasted 25 seconds before they broke it up, with the last 10 seconds being him punching me in the face as hard as he could as quickly as he could. He obviously trained for a long time, and completely disregarded the rules of the match he agreed to, to the point where I would have been knocked out if he had gotten one more punch in before they stopped the match and disqualified him.

Is this the usual attitude in the MMA community? It seemed like he was trying to vent his anger for having to compete in a lower division by just beating up a beginner.

If anyone has any thoughts on this or about attitude and respect in general in the MMA community I'd love to hear them, thanks.