# Little boys doing MMA style cage fighting. Apparently this is a real thing. **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [November 6, 2013, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-boys-doing-mma-style-cage-fighting-apparently-this-is-a-real-thing/673277 "2013-11-06T22:02:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2013, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-boys-doing-mma-style-cage-fighting-apparently-this-is-a-real-thing/673277/1 "2013-11-06T22:02:23Z")
[Story here](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2487527/Inside-world-child-cage-fighting-Boys-trained-attack-MMA-arenas.html) Is this any different than kids going at it in martial art dojos? Should kids this young be doing this? > [@](#): > > It is the heat of battle between two MMA fighters hemmed inside an industrial metal cage. One kicks, punches and strangles his way to brutal victory. His opponent breaks down and cries tears for his mother. > > But this is not an unusual end to another televised brawl between two fully grown brutes, this is kids’s MMA, or Mixed Martial Arts, which is rapidly becoming one of the nation’s fastest growing sports among children. > > It is estimated that three million boys and girls, some as young as five-years-old launch themselves at each other weekly across the nation engaged in Pankration - some wearing no head protection and throwing punches boasting gloves little more than one-inch thick. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2013, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-boys-doing-mma-style-cage-fighting-apparently-this-is-a-real-thing/673277/2 "2013-11-06T22:30:22Z")
This is fucking _wrong._, and I hope that posters on this board are intelligent enough not to have to ask why. Sum bitch! ---
**Author:** ![pravnik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8edcca/32.png) [@pravnik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pravnik)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2013, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-boys-doing-mma-style-cage-fighting-apparently-this-is-a-real-thing/673277/3 "2013-11-06T22:35:10Z")
Maybe they shouldn’t be doing so, but it’s hard to make a fair judgment solely based on one ridiculously slanted article, i.e. “brutal victory,” etc. You’ll notice that in some of the photos the kids aren’t wearing gloves at all, reason being because it’s solely a wrestling match, which is never mentioned. All of the talk about children throwing each other to the ground and strangling each other sounds pretty barbaric, until you consider that that’s exactly what Judo is and that children as young as 6 and 7 have been competing in Judo for over a century. The striking isn’t full contact Muay Thai that you’d see in MMA - it really isn’t much different from Point Karate, which children all over the U.S. compete in every weekend without much controversy. It looks bad if you show a bunch of crying children and intersperse words like “brutal” and “heat of battle” and “breaks down and cries tears for his mother” and “screaming parents” but you could write an article doing the exact same thing with Pee Wee football, or probably even soccer. If you don’t have an objection to children’s Karate or children’s Judo, it’s hard to see how this is fundamentally different. ---
**Author:** ![mufatango](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/6a8cbe/32.png) [@mufatango](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mufatango)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2013, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-boys-doing-mma-style-cage-fighting-apparently-this-is-a-real-thing/673277/4 "2013-11-06T23:42:37Z")
“…rapidly becoming one of the nation’s fastest growing sports” Huh? ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2013, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-boys-doing-mma-style-cage-fighting-apparently-this-is-a-real-thing/673277/5 "2013-11-06T23:46:26Z")
I watched several videos on youtube and in all of them it seemed to be only a wrestling match, indeed. Nobody was hiting or kicking. ---
**Author:** ![PSXer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/48db29/32.png) [@PSXer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PSXer)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2013, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-boys-doing-mma-style-cage-fighting-apparently-this-is-a-real-thing/673277/6 "2013-11-06T23:47:34Z")
Better get those kids on medication. Little boys roughhousing? Unimaginable! ---
**Author:** ![TBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c89c15/32.png) [@TBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TBG)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2013, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-boys-doing-mma-style-cage-fighting-apparently-this-is-a-real-thing/673277/7 "2013-11-07T00:21:29Z")
I don’t see how it’s any different than kids taking karate or whatever. In addition, compared to a lot of other big sports, MMA competitors for the most part tend to actually show some sportsmanship, so if the kids can learn that instead of emulating the thugs in the NFL, NBA, whatever, the more the better.