Luke Thomas was asked about the alleged on-set brawl between TUF Brasil coaches Chael Sonnen and Wanderlei Silva on his live chat and here’s what he said..
Is there a situation I give less of an ‘F’ about? About whether people are fist fighting? I just don’t care. Oh my god I don’t care. I don’t care. Did some harlot on the bachelor get a rose? I don’t know. I don’t care. I don’t care. I don’t. I don’t care. I don’t care. I… don’t care. Caring I don’t.
It’s amazing to me. On the one hand in this business, most of the journalism out there for the fight game, a lot of it is really literary. A lot of people will say, ‘So and so is the best writer,’ what they really mean is not necessarily that they are the best writer – because being a writer means many different things – what they mean is he tells the most interesting literary story.
These things are interesting. For example, you have Sara McMann vs. Ronda Rousey coming up. Two Olympians fighting one another, and they’re both medallists. Look at Sara McMann’s story; she almost moved to Washington DC, then on the ride her car flipped and her boyfriend or fiancé at the time died, and it was a horrible thing, and these stories are important. Telling a fighters background and assessing the angle at which these two people meet at this point in their life, in this crazy thing that they do. This is all very interesting.
That sort of bleeds in a weird way into the soap opera drama of it, and guys having some conflict and even that is really important for the news cycle, I don’t dispute that, but at some point, very few people in MMA journalism – and I try to be one of them – ask, ‘Does anybody care what we’re looking at here? Do we not care about what these guys are doing in the cage? Do we not care about learning about that?’ Ultimately, that’s what settles all of this. That’s what this is all about; what happens in the cage.
I really feel like there are two audiences, one much larger than the other, that are colliding. One is very much a spectator oriented perspective, who are really interested in the gossip and the stories and the rivalries. They like fights too, but they really have this spectator driven perspective. They want to see things happen before them in a way that titillates them.
There is another perspective which has a participatory element to it. I don’t mean actually participating, but having enough cognitive awareness about what’s happening in there to inform your judgement. To me, there’s no denying that the spectating side is A) the bigger side, and B) for business, the most important side, but for crying out loud… Me, personally? I find the participatory side significantly more interesting, significantly harder to achieve understanding of and significantly underreported on.
Like, why do I do those technique talk series? Because no one else is doing them. No one else is doing them. Do we not want to understand why takedown defense is easier to learn that takedowns? Do we not want to know if the 50/50 position is going to work in MMA? Do we not want to know what the value is of excellent footwork, and how it’s derived from boxing and wrestling and combined? This defines what happens, and what defines what happens changes the world. Our little world anyway.
So, did somebody get in a brawl on TUF brazil? I don’t know, how many angels fit on the head of a pin? I don’t give an F! I don’t give an FFFFFF! I don’t care. I’m not saying you shouldn’t, and listen, if it gets you through your day, and you enjoy it? Have at it.
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