|
Originally Posted by Kid McCoy
Whoo.....Not so fast.
There's plenty of room for more than one fightsport out there.
Hardly a 3rd tier sport.
Witness that Willie Pep’s death took up 4 consecutive days on the front cover of the Hartford Courant, American’s oldest daily newspaper.
Today’s hot stuff comes and goes as fast as you can say “in sync”, but history holds firm to very deep roots.
It has only been in the last generation that basketball, football, soccer and golf have joined Baseball in surpassing Boxing as a spectator social institution.
And yet none of these sports have ever produced an international icon equal to a Muhammad Ali or Joe Louis, who are as known through the world as Babe Ruth and Michael Jordan are in their U.S. homebase, and the nation producing the lion’s share of global sports revenue still resolutely rejects the existence of Soccer, viewing it as “a weak little sport for weak little people in weak little countries”, in the words of one sport writer.
In very recent years, propelled by their tie-in as recreational pursuits, Hockey and Tennis have also nudged up beyond boxing in the sports pages as well, owing singularly to the unpalatable nature of a combat sport, which are problems, actually, that MMA and K-1 face in far greater numbers than Boxing, so the main thing keeping Boxing out of the limelight will cause even greater obstacles for a sport without any history or pedigree.
This is why MMA is seen as a PPV & Video sales exhibition, rather than an actual sport reported on by the Associated Press.
In terms if the ‘Mainstream”, which sherdoggers have distanced themselves from completely in regards to their sports, John McCain, a strong contender for the next leader of the free world stated his observation after watching an MMA card: “to hit a man when he was down was un-American”, and called it "human cockfighting".
As recently as July of this year, McCain reiterated his intentions to ban the sport, should he get the opportunity, and if the 2008 presidential election polls have at merit this early in the sampling, his opportunity will come in exactly 24 months.
Despite one noted businessman’s rosy picture, painted as he promotes his product from his soapbox, the next big thing may turn out to be a big surprise for the lovers of the nouveau fight sport rules.
Younger people have always been less able to distinguish fads from historical trends, however, which is a fact, and one very much in evidence here.
|