Saturday, May 12, 2007

What's wrong with covering MMA?

The question of why TDA Training doesn't cover MMA, primarily UFC and Pride has come up, and I want to address it so that there is no misunderstanding about that. There are several reasons why we don't feature the mixed martial arts:
  1. MMA personalities and competition results don't jibe with the TDA Training focus - our focus is on learning and sharing the best techniques and training methods for effective self-defense, defensive tactics, and combatives applications. Nowhere in those subject areas do you find Wanderlei Silva, Brandon Vera, or Rampage Jackson. In other words, it's not that we don't enjoy watching MMA, it's just not what we do!
  2. Other sites do it far better than we ever could. I probably don't know eighty-five percent of all the top MMA fighters. In fact I probably know less than the casual MMA fan. I'd think that would be a prerequisite for covering the sport. Sherdog, MMAFighting, and MMAWeekly do a fantastic job, have insider contacts and information, and have an historical perspective make for great coverage of bouts and personalities.
  3. I don't have cable (sob!). Right now, with our house on the market, we've cut our cable to bare-bones basic, and while it's still technically cable, come on! I don't have Spike, VS, or any other channel that shows MMA. The closest I get is hotels, and that's not often enough because many don't have those channels either!
So, while I love watching MMA, I don't really care that much about the stories and personalities. I love the sport - it's as close to real fighting as you'll see on the small screen, but don't really care about the hype that's required to want to cover it. What techniques work, and why, but not who does them, with only a couple of exceptions.

2 comments:

Patrick Parker said...

I'm with you completely. Couldn't care less about what the latest results were in the various MMA events. I occasionally watch them but don't go out of my way to keep up with it.

Keep doing what youre doing - because goure doing great at it.

Unknown said...

Thanks Patrick. There is a lot to be learned from the sport of MMA, and I'll keep up with that, but I will leave the event coverage to the pros! Thanks for reading TDA.