I'm a huge fan of MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) and an avid reader of Salon, which I'd guess places me in a minority here. The sport of MMA barely registers on some of your radards, I assume, and us an ugly bright red spot for others. However, MMA appears to be the biggest thing since sliced bread (or maybe rollerblades), so, opiniated readers, it will be on your radar if it isn't already, and most of you will voice an opinion on the sport at some point.

I'm writing with the hope that I can convince you to support MMA, or at least not denounce it. As of this date, many sports writers still feel the need to question MMA's legitimacy or defend the sport in every article they write about it. This is changing, but there's still a lot of prefjudice. First, I want to clear up some common misconceptions: MMA has nothing to do with professional wrestling (WWE), most importantly in that it is a legitimate sport, not rigged; though there tends to be a lot of blood in MMA, the sport is not especially dangerous, especially when compared with boxing and football, which generate regular concussions (in fact, the rigorous health and drug testing has actually saved lives, as is the case of Santino Defranco, who had a brain anneurysm that was caught by pre-fight screening); lastly, MMA fighters are highly skilled athletes, not thugs.

Not so long ago, Robert Anasi posted a review of Blood in the Cage, which I highly recommend. While his review was certainly fair, Anasi demonstrated his ignorance of the sport (and, I'll assume, unwillingness to properly research it before writing his article) in passages like this: 

I don’t find MMA as visually compelling as boxing; unless you have a technical understanding of Brazilian jiu-jitsu, it often looks like two sweaty guys rolling around on the ground. (As a longtime prizefight fan and former amateur boxer, I have to admit a bias.) But the fact that MMA fighters generally aren’t very good at avoiding punches does lead to spectacular knockouts. There are plenty of boring boxing matches too, and I think that over time, MMA will continue to tweak the rules to make the sport easier on the eyes.

I actually want to write to the general public rather than MMA fans, so I won't entirely disect this passage, but take for example his statement, "MMA fighters generally aren't very good at avoiding punches."  Actually, modern MMA fighters all train in boxing. The reason they can't "avoid" punches is because they where small gloves, which slip past defenses and more easily knock fighters out. Anasi's tone suggests that fighter's don't know what they're doing (not like boxers anyway). The notion that MMA needs to be made "easier on the eyes" simply reflects Anasi's unwillingness to spend the few minutes needed to begin to understand grappling. So why does this sports writer treat MMA differently from other sports? Why is there this undercurrent of prejudice in his article? 

A lot of the confusion and prejudice surrounding MMA comes from confusion about the sport's history. For those who need everything to be tied to some ancient Western tradition, MMA closely resembles Pancrase, which was an early Olympic sport (not to be confused with the modern day Pancrase fighting league). The main difference is that early Pancrase had no rules, and fighters tended to kill one another.

More recently, MMA, and specifically the UFC -- the largest MMA organization -- was the invention of the Gracie family from Brazil. While they Gracie's are all tough guys, the family is known as masters of Jujitsu (and inventors of Brazillian Jujitsu), a martial art premised on disabling your apponent without really hurting him. Helio Gracie -- the oldest of the second generation of Gracie jujitsu practitioners -- believed that he could beat up anyone using jujitsu. Long story short, he conceived of an all-comers challenge, which in the US, with the help from some financial backers, became the UFC.

Early UFC fights often looked barbaric, as there were few rules in this budding sport, and many unskilled bar brawlers. Most Americans knew something about karate or kung-fu through the movies, but hardly anyone knew how to grapple. The result was bloody bar-brawls or Joyce (pronounced Hoyce) Gracie easily submitting someone using Jujitsu (a submission means choking or joint-locking an opponent to the point where he either taps or passes out/breaks a limb. As you might imagine, especially tough fighters didn't always tap -- more imporantly, refs couldn't recognize submissions, and in the earliest fights, weren't even given the option to stop the fight (as is the case in boxing).

MMA today bares little resemblence to the early UFC fights. Fighters from various disciplines -- collegiate wrestling, kickboxing, jujitsu, karate, etc. -- train at gyms that teach all of the skills necessary to be well-rounded fighters. All professional fighters can protect themselves against and recognize submissions and striking, as can refs. Modern fighters may only ever train as mixed martial artists, rather than beginning as single discipline fighters; for collegiate wrestlers and traditional martial artists, MMA is the first oppurtunity in modern history to show off ones skills to an audience who gives a damn. Fights are therefor dynamic, competitive, and infinitely safer than they used to be.

Accordingly, appreciating MMA requires knowledge of the various disciplines employed by the fighters. As with any sport, you can't really enjoy it until you know what's happening on the "field." But, wheras basketball or football look like a chaos of rules and activities to the untrained eye, MMA kinda still looks like bar fighting if you don't know what's going on (or people tend to see it that way).

I'd also like to address the attitides of the fighters themselves. For the most part, they are not violent people. Training for MMA requires more discipline than any other sport, arguably, and professional fighters place the entire burden of winning or losing on their shoulders. Despite all their training, fights can easily swing either way, and fighters almost always recognize one another's efforts by hugging after the match (when they're conscious, anyway). Sure they trash talk before, but that's as much a marketing ploy as anything. In any case, it's hard to bare a grudge after you bare it all in the ring.

In addition, many of the top fighters come from "respectable" backgrounds. For example, former middleweight champion Rich Franklin was a high school math teacher. Many fighters have college degrees. This isn't simply coincidence -- Jujitsu requires an exceptional IQ, and fighting pushes you in the same way as high-level academics and professions. 

There are more hard facts. As with boxing, few fighters will ever rise to the top. Most fighters simply cannot make a living fighting and training full-time. Fighting wears out your body, and it's tragic that fighters can't universally afford medical care. This is the one evil that will simply never go away, though Dana White, president of the UFC, is well-known for helping out fighters families in hard times. Of course, few fighters will ever fight for the UFC, so that isn't saying much. On the other hand, many fighters recognize this, and compete for the joy of it and to make a few bucks on the side.

The core issue is this: MMA frightens people both because it is new and because it is ancient. People call it barbaric because it's fighting (in a cage!!!). Meanwhile, boxing and other sports enthusiests prefer the good-old-days, whenever that was, and poo-poo this young upstart (same thing happened to "extreme sports" like snowboarding). The fact is, MMA is as pure a sport as you can find -- too men, no excuses. It's safer than many popular sports, and less corrupted by politics (this may change to some extent, but there can never be a Yankees of MMA). 

Oh, and by the way, women aren't left out of this sport. Guys, Youtube "Gina Carano" or "Cris Cyborg" and you'll be questioning your masculinity in no time.

If you've found your interest piqued, I highly recommend Blood in the Cage, even if it does oversimplify a bit.