Issue 077
July 2011
By John Morgan, 2009 MMA Journalist of the Year.
When nine-fight MMA veteran Sergio Salcido Luna was gunned down at the US-Mexico border in the early hours of a recent April morning, the incident went largely unnoticed by the MMA community. In some ways the lack of reaction was completely understandable.
After all, Salcido was a relatively unknown 25-year-old mired in a four-fight losing streak. Fighting professionally since 2005, ‘Suave’ opened his career with a promising 4-1 mark, but he would lose his next four bouts against a host of West Coast notables. Quite simply, Salcido’s murder wasn’t the type of story that would gain national attention, driving all-important page views to Internet news sites and bring the once-close-knit community of MMA together in grief in the way the tragic passing of beloved TapouT founder Charles ‘Mask’ Lewis did a little more than two years prior.
But to one of Salcido’s closest friends, California-based lightweight Dominique Robinson, letting his death pass unnoticed didn’t seem right. ‘Fallen Angel’ wanted the world to know about his fallen comrade and he reached out to anyone and everyone who could possibly draw attention to the slaying.
Robinson made phone calls, sent emails and contacted as many MMA personalities as he could via Twitter. He was shocked at what came next.
“I got three small, little websites to put it up,” Robinson said. “A billion fans were retweeting it. I didn’t see any big-time fighter retweeting it. I couldn’t get any major websites to hit me up. If that was Jon Jones that got killed in Mexico it would have been up on every site within 10 minutes. This kid is murdered and I can’t get anybody to even report it. That’s pathetic.”
Robinson didn’t expect anyone to pretend Salcido had accomplished anything more in the sport than thousands of other wannabe pros. But in a community that once survived by trading VHS tapes of events and techniques, sharing couches for traveling competitors and finding any and every means possible of eking out a living in a spectacle that was still not quite yet sport, Robinson said he struggled to find anyone willing to help him tell the story.
“We had a well-recognized reporter tell us, ‘I don’t know him,’” Robinson said. “That’s what this sport is becoming. It’s not even the same sport I got into. We said, ‘You don’t have to know him. He was in the MMA community. Can you just get this news out there?’ This reporter said, ‘I don’t have anywhere to put this.’
“That’s it right there. That shows you the mind-set of this sport now. That’s the epitome of people’s thought processes in this sport. It’s not everybody. I personally know a few good people in this industry, but most of them don’t give a [expletive] if it’s not benefitting them. It makes me sick.”
Perhaps it’s a by-product of growth. Perhaps it’s what mainstream acceptance really means: when an industry is so big, only the most appealing stories deserve even a cursory mention – when a cold-blooded murder of one of the community’s own is relegated to the ‘Transactions’ blurb on the back-page of the sports section.
It’s a harsh reality Robinson contends actually contributed to Salcido’s death. The professional hopeful was in Mexico only because he had been promised real assistance in reaching his dreams. He wanted dedicated trainers, he needed sponsors to help him survive, he needed places to fight. All of it, he was told, awaited him there. It didn’t.
Robinson knows not everyone is cut out for the lifestyle of professional fighting. But after training side-by-side with Salcido, he believes Suave in fact was. But everyone needs a break and his never came. The grassroots efforts to identify the sport’s best unknowns, Robinson says, are gone. In its place are people simply looking to jump on the coattails of the next proven superstar.
“I remember talking to a couple of well-known Brazilian fighters and coaches in MMA, who I’m not going to name, and one of them told me a long time ago that there are great fighters in Brazil who try to make it in MMA and truly love it, and no one helps them, and their dreams are crushed,” Robinson said. “They have to go right back into the poverty that they’re trying to get out of.
“When I was younger my grandmother used to tell me, ‘Everybody has lost their sense of community.’ I was like, ‘What the hell is she talking about?’ The more I listened to her growing up, I starting getting it. Back in her day you knew everybody on the block.
“It’s a utopian ideology to think everyone can be helped. But if you see a person working hard, and they really want it, you can’t help them? I’ve seen sponsors give fighters big, expensive diamond chains. You know how much money that [expletive] costs? They’re sponsoring thousands and thousands of dollars to people who make thousands and thousands of dollars. But they can’t help a guy they see trying to do it?
“Everything shouldn’t come down to who you know. Hard work should be recognized. Maybe that’s a utopian thought, but it should. People are killing people’s dreams and this is the worst example of it. It led a kid to being somewhere he shouldn’t have been and it led to him getting murdered.”
After much effort on Robinson’s part, many major MMA websites did make mention of Salcido’s death. Time will tell if Robinson is able to change anything else.
