July 29, 2007
Mixed Martial Arts: A New Kind Of Fight
MMA Is Becoming One Of The Fastest Growing Sports In America
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A New Kind Of Fight
Mixed martial arts was once deemed too vicious for decent society. The sport has modified its rules and is becoming one of the fastest growing sports in America. Scott Pelley reports.
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Video
Fight Clubs Go Mainstream
A martial art that combines boxing, wrestling and jujitsu is one of the fastest growing sports in America. Scott Pelley reports on an activity that was once considered too violent for society.
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Pelley's 'Fighting' Notebook
"60 Minutes" Scott Pelley discusses the popularity in the United States of mixed martial arts, which has combatants battle with different fighting techniques.
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Celeb Sports Fans
You may be in some pretty celebrated company when you sit in the bleachers cheering on your favorite team
"Too violent," Pelley remarks.
"They were scared of it," White argues. "What's more violent than the NFL? What's more violent than the NFL?"
"Oh, come on. The NFL, they're not throwing punches at each other, not usually," Pelley says.
"You've got 250 pound men in the best shape they could ever get into, and they're so fast they could run track and field with pads on running directly into each other head to head. Broken arms. Legs getting snapped in half. Broken necks. What do you consider violent?" White replies.
He didn’t sign any network TV deals like the NFL, but he did get a reality show on cable where fighters compete for a spot in the league. Now, White has seven TV shows reeling in that young, male demographic; his Internet site sometimes gets more hits than the NFL. And he's got a video game and his DVDs that outsell all other sports.
He and his partners bought the UFC for $2 million. Asked what it's worth now, White says, "I don't know. A lot more than two million."
"The smile on your face suggests maybe over 100 million, I'm guessing," Pelley asks.
"Could be. Could be. Could be a billion. I don't know," White says.
It seems plausible. The International Fight League just went public and it is valued at more than $150 million. It turns out rules were the key: the money flowed when the blood stopped gushing.
These days, there are 31 fouls, and the fighters don’t come at each other bare-fisted anymore. They’re required to use special gloves with a little bit of padding over the knuckles. You can’t kick to the groin anymore, and you can’t stomp your opponent once he’s on the ground. The octagon itself is 30 feet across. There’s padding under the fighters' feet, and they put the fence around it so the fighters don’t go rolling out onto the floor.
Have all the rules and regulations made the fights less interesting for the fans? That didn't appear to be the case when 60 Minutes headed to a match in Anaheim, Calif.
There were some 14,000 fans in the stands and 700,000 at home, who paid $40 a pop to watch on TV. This event alone made $28 million. White does 14 of these a year.
Pelley wondered exactly where the fighters come from. Who wants to get in on this? One of the biggest stars is welterweight Matt Hughes.
The fights have made Hughes a millionaire. When he fights, he's in a testosterone-fueled world of money and sex, but 60 Minutes found him where he grew up, on the family farm in Illinois.
"When I leave this sport, I want to be the same person as when I started this sport," Hughes explains.
"It'll change ya if you let it," Pelley remarks.
"You're exactly right," Hughes agrees.
Like a lot of the fighters, Hughes has a college degree. He was an all-American wrestler who sees this as more like the Olympics than a street brawl.
"Yeah, but you know better than I do that that's not why those 17,000 people are in there," Pelley remarks.
"Well, that's true," Hughes says.
"They want to see somebody bleed," Pelley says.;
"They like excitement," Hughes says. "There's excitement all over. It doesn't have to be somebody getting hurt to get excitement in the octagon."
In fact, a recent medical study found that MMA fighters are less likely than boxers to suffer brain injuries.
Produced By Solly Granatstein
©MMVI, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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I just want to thank you all for putting together something that (from what I have seen) has made MANY MMA fans very happy. Great work
I started watching the sport because of The Ultimate Fighter and have been a fan ever since.
Like Pat Miletich said, it's like checkers to chess compaired to boxing. The multiple choices and ways a match can be fought make it interesting. Usually fans are more upset about stopages being to early than too late. The refs and the major Organizations really do try and protect the fighters. It's a great SPORT.
The owners of the UFC should have been scrutinized (in my opinion). They got a free pass.
The UFC had rules and sanctioning BEFORE the current owners bought the company.
These and other of the several inaccuricies could have been cleared up with a modicum of research.
I found your presentation honest w/ no hint of an objective which is rare the words mixed martial arts are mentioned.
I also feel that doing articles like this may also help bring in a younger viewing market as I know at least 20 people who tuned in to watch the piece.
I look forward to hearing more on this subject hopefully from you you guys.thanks again
The failure to address this casts doubt on other stories featured on "60 Minutes."
Also, as stated earlier, Tim Sylvia is the UFC heavyweight champion and he was on the show. Why not bring up his involvement with steroids? If you guys had Barry Bonds on a baseball segment, you'd have mentioned illegal drugs as many times as you could, and Bonds has NEVER tested positive for an illegal drug.
Here, on this show, you have a guy who is a KNOWN steroid violator and you do and say nothing.
Fluff piece.
Most offensive was that you slyly mention that the UFC is regularly seen on a cable network. It is not JUST a cable network, it is Spike TV, a network owned vy VIACOM just like CBS NEWS! Spike TV's success is owed to UFC. I doubt CBS is going to be critical.
This is just like when 60 Minutes features and promotes EVERY anti-Bush book that fellow VIACOM company, Simon and Schuster, publishes.
It is a shame that 60 Minutes has lost so much credibility. In my mind, it is nothing more than a poltical and economic shill
Most offensive was that you slyly mention that the UFC is regularly seen on a cable network. It is not JUST a cable network, it is Spike TV, a network owned vy VIACOM just like CBS NEWS! Spike TV's success is owed to UFC. I doubt CBS is going to be critical.
This is just like when 60 Minutes features and promotes EVERY anti-Bush book that fellow VIACOM company, Simon and Schuster, publishes.
It is a shame that 60 Minutes has lost so much credibility. In my mind, it is nothing more than a poltical and economic shill
They were almost the entire size of his corneas, making his eyes appear BLACK!!! This man was high on some sort of speed (crystal meth or whatever) during this interview. Did NO ONE see this??? And what does this say about this sport?
rgabriel01, I think you are right to chastise CBS for their one-sided reporting and their hidden agenda. They have done themselves and their viewers a great disservice. Mixed martial arts is certainly a very controversial subject and should be treated as such by agencies purporting to be news sources. Honest discourse between credible sources is the only reliable way for society to work out what it is comfortable with and what it should treat as undesirable.
That said, I do believe that eventually MMA will and indeed should be accepted as a legitimate form of competition and entertainment. In order to explain this belief, I would like to gesture at a few facts which tend to show that MMA as a sport and as a spectacle comports with contemporary morality in the USA.
1.) Despite your legitimate concerns about the credibility of those who claim that the MMA is safer than boxing, it isn't clear that those claims are false. While it's true that you see more blood in MMA, this isn't necessarily a sign of more (or more serious) injury. Consider high school wrestling. Wrestling matches often include several bloody noses. Does this mean we should ban wrestling? In other words, is the presence of blood enough to warrant a ban on a sport? Obviously not.
2.) Even if the sport produces relatively high rates of injury, it is inconsistent with our society's moral values to ban the sport. Consider professional football. Football has one of the highest rates of serious injury in all of professional sports. Yet, as a society we consider it a great achievement to play in the NFL. Furthermore, we have no qualms about watching the game as a form of entertainment, notwithstanding the fact that many football fans are attracted to the sport because of the possibility of "huge hits". If this sounds unconvincing, imagine how popular football would be if the NFL abolished tackling and replaced it with two-hand-touch. The point here is that, even if there is a substantial risk involved in participating in a sport, and even if the crowds are attracted by that risk, we aren't justified in banning the sport.
Why are there so many steroid cheats in the game? UFC heavyweight champion Tim Sylvia is one, as is a previous UFC heavyweight champion, Josh Barnett. Former UFC light heavyweight champion Vitor Belfort recently tested positive for steroids as well.
Want me to go on?
Stefan Bonnar was busted for steroids after a recent UFC fight. Nate Marquardt was also busted after his UFC fight against Salaverry.
It goes on and on.
Making sure to comment about this as it relates to the story presented on 60 Minutes, I'll again point out that the current ownership and management of the UFC has perpetuated the lie about the advent of rules in the cage. The rules were in place BEFORE the current ownership was in place. It's all over the internet, so I can't imagine that the fact-checkers couldn't have found out about this.
Fluff piece.
To answer your steriod concerns, consider this, why were those men caught? Because they were tested. Every main event fighter in America is tested before and after the fight, along with a random sample of half the card. AND, they are duley punished, suspended from fighting for up to a year. The aforementioned Silvia, was suspended and since cleaned up his act (he's been tested every main event, since he is currently the champion), and has won several bouts since his suspension. Moreover, you mention Belfort, and Bonnar, both of which have been suspended!
In it's infancy, MMA has surpassed many manstream sports with the handling of this issue. I.E. BASEBALL, TRACK AND FIELD, even Boxing....Shall I go on?
To answer your steriod concerns, consider this, why were those men caught? Because they were tested. Every main event fighter in America is tested before and after the fight, along with a random sample of half the card. AND, they are duley punished, suspended from fighting for up to a year and fined. The aforementioned Silvia, was suspended and since cleaned up his act (he's been tested every main event, since he is currently the champion), and has won several bouts since his suspension. Moreover, you mention Belfort, and Bonnar, both of which are currently suspended!
In it's infancy, MMA has surpassed many manstream sports with the handling of this issue. I.E. BASEBALL, TRACK AND FIELD, even Boxing....Shall I go on?
Please understand that what I wrote was in defense of the sport of MMA, not CBS news. I will again state that I agree with your criticism of CBS. They have failed miserably as a news agency and it is clear that they haven't fact-checked to any reasonable standard. You are absolutely justified in calling this a "fluffpiece."
Regarding steroid use, I don't see why the transgressions of some individual athletes should impugn the entire sport. As dunedain11 said, the UFC has dealt with the infractions as it should, and hopefully more rigorous standards of testing will be introduced in the future. However, it would be naove to assume that athletes in other professional sports don't use steroids, so why pick on the UFC? Shouldn't pro baseball or professional cycling be held to the same standard? So the answer to your question ("Why are there so many steroid cheats in the game?) is: The same reason there are so many steroid cheats in any other professional sport - steroids make you stronger.
(continued above...)
Rgabriel01, my purpose in responding to your initial remarks was to point out that MMA is a legitimate sport and that your criticisms of the sport itself (as opposed to individual athletes or the sport's promoters) were unfounded. If you have responses to any of the arguments I set forth in my initial response, I would be very eager to read them. Otherwise, I am not really sure why you would bother responsing to this. No one disagrees with the claim that steroid use is bad. No one can deny that CBS's story on MMA was a self-promoting "fluffpiece." So what is your point? Should MMA be banned because of these unrelated facts?
Apologies. I mistook EurosportFan's post as yours.
However. UFC can't hide it's violence and intentional injury ,though many of its' fans and promoters try to have it both ways as well. On one corner of their mouth they like to stress how real and damaging and hardcore and street it is, then the other corner of their mouth tries to stress how safe and sportsmanlike and mainstream it is. Your argument is wierd as you try to validate the violence and injury of MMA by pointing to other violent sports. UFC is just a cleaned up streetfight. That is what they promote and a ground-and-pound and snapped arms are what the fans pay to see.
60 minutes prostituted itself AGAIN by having NO opposing viewpoints, unattributed safety claims and by NOT mentioning that another Viacom television wing airs UFC. Hey Scott Pelley - it isn't just 'a cable network', it is SPIKE-TV, a network owned by your company. Why hide that?
Again, this story was just like all the anti Bush stories 60 Minutes promoted in support of books published by Viacoms' publishing arm.
Would Don Hewitt have accepted this infomercial disguised as a new story?
Edward R. Murrow is spinning in his grave.
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by costandino1
July 29, 2007 10:37 PM PDT
- gracy family did not start the brazinlian gracy juijui.the kodokan judo instatute from japan sent an instructor to brazil to teach the head of the gracy family judo .it stemed from that.
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