The shenanigans that have surrounded the cancellation of UFC
151 event in Las Vegas have not been seen in the world of MMA in a very long
time. A wave of criticism has been
launched at Jon Jones and his coach Greg Jackson for not accepting the short
notice fight against Chael Sonnen. While it is very easy to attack the
hesitant champion who has probably wasted months of training and thousands of dollars of
fellow fighters, dozens of dozens of their training partners and coaches
and ruined the weekend of thousands of fans, the following article will suggest taking
a look at the situation from a different angle. The question is whether Jones
should care about the other fighters and the fans. The proud Christian is in
this sport for money after all.
It is very unusual to see one of the elite representatives
of a sport to be so controversial and unpopular, be it for his so called ‘’fakeness’’,
boring Christianity, arrogance or out of the cage accidents. A few similarities
could be noticed between Jones and Miami Heat’s LeBron James who has been
heavily critiqued after he chose to leave Cleveland Cavaliers for Miami. Both Jones and James are at the top of their sports;
however their previous career decisions have made them quite unpopular amongst
a considerable portion of fans. The main question here is – does it really matter
to them, as they still dominate the sport and make the same money. Of course, a
team sport and a combat sport can hardly be compared; however some correlations
are visible and can teach us a thing or two.
We should ask whether Jones does or does not care what
people think about him. After all, the champion stated just a few days ago: ‘I
fight to make money, quite frankly’. The only way to guarantee a constant flow
of money in this sport is by constantly winning fights. It is the mind-set of
currently very controversial Greg Jackson’s training camp. Even Dana White has finally stated that
Jackson is a ‘’sport killer’’. While
many fans agree, Jackson would probably go back to the starting point of the
argument: his main concern is not to entertain the audience; his main objective
is to provide his fighters with training and a strategy that will reduce the
chance of a loss to a minimum. At this aspect, if compared to basketball, MMA
is quite different as a majority of basketball coaches firstly focus on defence
and make sure that the opponent team finds it as hard as possible to score. A
defensive basketball coach does not get critiqued for the lack of use of
alley-ups. The defence of his team is a problem of the opposing team – if they
are not capable of eliminating the defence – it is their problem.
When it happens in MMA – the coach and his strategy are often attacked first.
Maybe basketball fans can appreciate defensive strategies
more than MMA fans, or perhaps it is because Mixed Martial Arts as a sport is
much younger than a century old basketball. Or maybe this article is only
playing devil’s advocate; defensive basketball is much more interesting than
careful MMA and Greg Jackson and his point-orientated strategies should be
kicked out of MMA as soon as possible before they kill our sport.
good insights
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