The Real Reason we Hate MMA Casuals

The Real Reason we Hate MMA Casuals

By Sandi Langlois Martin

People ask me all the time, “what makes you a fan?” Everything about the surface of MMA appeals to me.

Violence, dominance, competition, fear, pain, fairness, winning and losing are all things of interest to the primal side of humans. Without intellectualizing it at all, One can fall in love with the sport on excitement alone, but to consume the product without feeling or expressing some curiosity about the sport’s origins or pioneers is disrespectful to figures fans hold sacred.

Sitting at a bar watching a UFC under card you will encounter it. Something you consider honorable, noble, and requires a skill level so much more difficult than it looks, will be mocked and booed by fat guys in metal shirts or girls wondering when the cute one is gonna fight the other cute one.

When the deficit in knowledge about MMA lines right up to the level of respect given, you’ve found yourself a casual. No one wants to be disrespected or have what they love and built their life around to be ignored by the public as a whole, but better to be respected in the shadows than misunderstood or mislabeled by the masses.

I’m hardly alone in my coming of age story. I discovered MMA on a VHS tape at a friend’s house in its infancy when it was still touted as no holds barred, but didn’t come to realize or respect what I was watching until I saw The Ultimate Fighter Season 1 and watched “my friends” fight each other for a contract on television.

Guys like Griffin, Florian, Koscheck and Sanchez bled and sweat and worked to earn the sport a spot in the mainstream. The producers delivered up Couture and Liddell at their prime and then the most anticipated fight the UFC had ever delivered, delivered big in a climax that solidified mixed martial arts as a legitimate sport, though still cool and edgy enough to keep the old school fans.

TUF gave the world a personal look at the faces that would help to bring the sport out of the shadows and into legitimacy, but not without cost.

There is now a fool without so much a stripe on his white belt on every corner selling “ultimate fighting” to even bigger fools. They stamp their ignorance all over the comments section of some beautifully written and insightful articles about the sport because they’re only in it for the violence.

They want to argue about the GOAT without knowing the name of a single Gracie. It’s not that we don’t want new MMA fans, it’s simply that we don’t like the ones we’re getting.

They didn’t walk 5 miles in the snow to see Don Frye fight Dan Severn dammit! There’s a feeling that because they didn’t suffer the growing pains along side us, they don’t have a place in the growing community. Some are hopeless and it is obvious that they will die meat heads, but don’t be afraid to drop some knowledge on casuals. Take the time to debate the occasional troll and you might catch the eye of someone worthy to spar with.