Christ, now if a squirrel waterskis on Sportcenter, MMA is a Mickey Mouse sport. I don’t even watch Sportscenter and I know that MMA gets talked about on it occasionally, because I hear about it from other fans. I just mentioned that Top Plays clip because it was today. Google mma sportscenter if you think today was the only time it’s been mentioned.
I think poker, as a fad, has more in common with every other popular sport than mma, Rnatb. What else has been around as long as 2 people testing themselves against each other with as few restrictions as possible? Every other sport is an extrapolation of this-- now you’ve got to get a ball in a basket, now you’ve got to get a ball across this line, now you’ve got to cross this line first . . .
How exactly do you picture mma going away? The entire fanbase is just going to dry up, and Georges St. Pierre will be in his mid-30s, fighting for door prizes in Saskatchewan? And why now? I think your predictions here are a lot more unrealistic than mine, and if the sdmb was more representative of the general public, a lot of people would be agreeing with me.
I didn’t say MMA is a Mickey Mouse sport. I’m point out that the SportsCenter Plays of the Week segment isn’t representative of the rest of the show. It’s usually the only time that any non-big six sport gets mentioned.
You keep using this argument about how combat sports have been around for ever, and will therefore always be popular. You completely miss the point that combat sports have always changed to suit the times, and hand to hand combat specifically has never been consistently popular. That is an extremely good indicator that it won’t be now.
I’m not going to claim to be a professor of combat sports history, but it’s obvious that boxing has been wildly popular for well over a century, and I think probably far longer than that. And other forms of martial arts have been popular in other parts of the world for a long, long time. I can’t imagine fighting was popular in ancient Greece, completely disappeared for 2 millenia, and then spontaneously re-emerged in the mid-19th century.
I think one of the metrics to be able to tell if a sport penetrated a country if the fans actively participate in the activity, and that the sport is not just restricted to the pros.
American football, hockey, soccer, baseball all have minor leagues, peewee leagues, and “pickup” games amonst the neighborhood kids and at picnics.
Boxing, while not as widespread as those others, in it’s heyday (I’m talking about the nineteen-thirties and forties), had boxing gyms and amateur night in lots of places.
Question: Did some national level boxing organisations try to monopolise the sport by squeezing out the “mom and pop” gyms and exhibitions? (If they did, I think that may have hurt the sport.)
There’s an mma program at my university, and they’re starting to do it at high schools. There are also private gyms all over the place. And high school/college wrestling is a popular fundamental base for the sport.
I’m not sure this is true. Soccer (in the US) has a much higher participation level than its fan interest would indicate. I think the opposite is true for many sports, including combat sports like MMA and boxing.
My guess is that if we came up with a metric for participants/viewers, the numbers for various sports would be all over the map.
Actually, that does not appear to be the case. As has been pointed out, soccer is a wildly popular participation sport in the USA - arguably #1 - and struggles for respectability as a pro sport. Either #1 or #2, depending on how you count, is baseball/softball. FAR more people play organized baseball than play football, but pro football is just as popular. Hardly anyone races cars, but NASCAR is quite popular.
I think in the US MMA will have an arc similar to nascar. Right now its popularity might be a regional thing but there is no denying its growth. Like MeanOldLady said, here in the Midwest it is very popular. The current UFC champ Brock Lesner, being a gopher definitively helps coverage in Minneapolis. It gets wide coverage in the papers and almost everybody I know who is even slightly a sports fan either watches the major fights or is at least aware of the results.
MeanOldLady makes a good point about it being linked to the popularity of wrestling in the Midwest. Many of the best fighters are former wrestlers and a lot of them have roots in the region. I think the midwest is to MMA what the SE was to NASCAR. A strong base of fans to keep the sport alive while it grows into a national awareness.
As far as worldwide popularity i yield to Ciscos much greater knowledge.
I agree with Cisco mostly. When and if MMA gets a real broadcast tv contract it’s gonna explode. It needs to get off ppv though except for title fights maybe. But there’s a good amount of “free” mma on spike and vs. Way more than boxing.