Issue 027

July 2007

Thanks to an enormous PR push from the UFC, mixed martial arts is receiving more national media attention than at any point in the sport's short history. From glossy lad's mags like Arena and Maxim, to BBC Five Live radio, ITV television news and major newspapers like the Star, the Telegraph, the Mirror and the Independent, our sport has left the backwaters and has hit the mainstream for the first time.

The coverage itself has been of mixed quality, though, and many of you reading this will have rolled your eyeballs almost out of their sockets as the dreaded name of US Senator John McCain and his infamous human cockfighting' analogy was exhumed from 1997.

As most Fighters Only readers know, as far back as 2001, McCain came to accept the UFC, embraced its rules and regulations and after having already rode it to the front ranks of the Republican Party, decided to climb down off his hobbyhorse. Yet a bewildering percentage of non-specialist journalists still use the 'cockfighting' line. Makes for an easy angle and lazy afternoon's work, we guess.

Of course, no one becomes an expert in anything overnight. Genuine mistakes are going to be made because no sports journalist - especially those who cover perhaps three other sports in addition to their first MMA piece - is going to provide the kind of expert commentary you find in this fine publication.

But some of the dogmatic, wholly unresearched articles which made it to press in the days after UFC 70 in Manchester were a lamentable indictment of British journalism. One of the most vicious assaults on journalism - not to mention the English language - was published in the Manchester Evening News, who in their wisdom decided women's fashion writer Emma Unsworth was the right scribe to send along to cover Nations Collide. The copy she filed was awful.

After getting off to a flying start by asserting how very 'disturbing' UFC is, she went on to state "anything goes", that bouts ended with "a variety of pins and submissions" and that, until recently, MMA was "banned" in the UK. Unsworth even managed to spell "UFC" incorrectly - twice! In another of her, ahem, 'articles', Miss Unsworth described herself as a "skint twenty-something". We can well imagine, because if she's relying on her writing skills for her income she will surely starve.

Meanwhile, the Express elected to run a poisoned ink article by Chris Riches, who, determined to spark a witch-hunt, claimed the British Medical Association were "looking into" the "dangers" of MMA. Not surprisingly, he failed to mention that a man died competing in the London Marathon, which started just 12 hours after UFC 70 went off Setanta's airwaves.

Astonishingly, when Fighters Only telephoned the BMA on Monday April 23rd to request a clarification of their position on MMA, we were told by press spokesman Katie Jordon that the 'journalist' in question had completely misrepresented what he had been told the previous week (i.e before he'd even attended UFC 70). "The BMA is a trade union", Fighters Only was told. "Looking into any sport, dangerous or not, is not something we do. We made that clear when he called".

Lying, hit-and-run sensationalism aside, let's not forget the great strides MMA has made towards mainstream acceptance in the last few months. When Michael Bisping was the feature of the Telegraph's weekly 'My Sport' column, both in the paper and online, it was the Telegraph's sixth most popular sports story this year (think about that for a second). Top boxing writer Steve Bunce wrote a series of positive pieces, as did the Star's Kevin Francis, who will now cover every major UFC card in person. There were other extremely encouraging items and features all over the media.

Even bigger things are on the way: FO has learned a national newspaper has committed to a weekly column starting in early summer, which means millions of average sports fans will have our sport thrust under their noses every week.

That's where you guys, the fans and MMA's advance army, come in. As mighty as the UFC's PR machine is, the most powerful force for change in the way MMA is perceived is the person reading these words right now.

If you want MMA to continue to grow, write in to major newspapers, radio and TV stations and request that big MMA shows get covered. Tell them you want to read, listen to and watch interviews with the top fighters, and that the sports editors are currently out of touch with what people like you want.

Bitching about hit-and-run merchants like Riches and Unsworth on Sherdog and MMA Weekly's forums will not affect any change whatsoever, you may as well not bother. Please, for the sport, write and email in to your newspaper and say you want to read about MMA in the sports pages. Getting the name of the various sports editors takes nothing more than two minutes and a Google search. I promise you, you will not be wasting your time.