Article: KO UFC Before Somebody Is Killed
Jun 22, 2007 19:35:40 GMT -5
Post by LWPD on Jun 22, 2007 19:35:40 GMT -5
Typical anti-MMA attack article...that uses the ignorance of the NYSAC as a bludgeon. When someone does eventually suffer a serious freak accident (which is as inevitable in MMA as it is in the NFL or any heavy contact sport) people just like this author (with their agendas in tow) will crawl out from under their rocks and come out of the wood work in droves...sporting the same asinine mentality as read here. Be prepared for the mainstream media to eventually try to tear down what it is now building up...just as it does with everything else in sight.
Courtesy of Lower Hudson Online
Time to KO Ultimate Fighting before somebody gets killed
By Rick Carpiniello
(Original publication: June 21, 2007)
MOUNT VERNON - I've got quite a few years left until retirement, so I'm trying to hit it big, and quickly. So I'm offering this idea to TV execs - they can pay me a percentage.
Offer up, I don't know, $10 million for anybody who will come and participate in a gunfight, one on one. Winner takes all. Well, of course, winner takes all, because loser won't have any use for it (the promoter can pay for the casket).
Put it on Spike or Versus or Fox Sports, or one of the networks in prime time. Better yet, make it pay-per-view, $79.95. Live! Two guys (or gals) shoot each other to the death!
Sound ridiculously absurd and over-the-edge? Yeah, well, it's coming. It's coming. Or live feeds from inmates' death row.
I was listening to a news radio station the other day. They told of a sick story about somebody who had beaten a mentally and physically disabled person, and the whole thing was caught on surveillance video. Then the equally sick come-on: "Want to see the video? Log on to ... "
This is where we're headed, folks. Straight to hell.
So a couple of weeks ago, I'm reading Sports Illustrated and a cover story - a cover story, for crying out loud! - on Ultimate Fighting. I tried to get through the story with smoke coming out of my ears. It actually lent legitimacy to this garbage, which is gaining the kind of TV momentum that reality shows and televised poker have enjoyed.
And I remembered that one of the truly outstanding citizens of this area, Steve Acunto of Mount Vernon, had written a warning shot in his regular editorial, "Ring, Rhyme & Reason." The title of the column was "Money over Morality: Please don't refer to this as boxing."
So I visited Acunto, the deputy commissioner emeritus of the New York State Athletic Commission and co-founder of the American Association for the Improvement of Boxing - in other words, a guardian of safety in the sport.
"I think this Ultimate Fighting, it brings out the worst in people," he said. "I think Ultimate Fighting satiates the barbaric lust of people who would watch cockfighting, dogfighting, bullfighting, or anything that has the ultimate results of hurting somebody, very badly. Very badly.
"I've watched it. I've seen people removed from the ring in a stretcher because they've been struck behind the neck with a knee. They've been absolutely out of it. Very shortly, although it's at its peak in Atlantic City right now, there will be some deaths from this thing. You can't call it boxing. It's not boxing. It's not any one sport, per se. It a sport for hoodlums who kick each other, smash each other in the groin, do things that are absolutely barbaric."
The S.I. story noted that Sen. John McCain, back in 1996, called it "human cockfighting."
Which is why it's doing so well.
I'm not so naive to think that there isn't a similar magnetism in other sports. Acunto's favorite sport of boxing surely draws a portion of its crowd from blood lust. So does hockey. People go to hockey games to see fights. People go to auto races to see crashes. People want quarterbacks mauled. People go to movies to see murders and all sorts of violence.
But this latest mixed martial arts brand of fighting taking root is well over the line. Which is why it sells.
"There's a segment of our society that thrives on barbaric performances," Acunto said. "Nothing is fun. In football, they want to see somebody down. And yet these people who advocate this wouldn't get into the ring with a crane.
"There's a lot of money in it, but I think it should be stopped in its tracks, like they should have stopped Adolf Hitler in his tracks. You've got to stop a bad thing before it catches on and overwhelms you. I guess I have to apologize. I'm an idealist about boxing. I see it as a wonderful vehicle for the youth to gain confidence and face life. I see it as an art, a science; a very grueling, very difficult sport in which you have to be in optimum condition, much more than other athletes in other sports."
Acunto - who admits to age 84-plus, which I think is the same age he was two years ago - has taught the finer side of boxing at Westchester Community College for nearly three decades. He doesn't teach students to scramble brains.
He has always, in his words, "pursued boxing from the standpoint of being an art and a science, where defense is just as important as offense. And I've (taught) the students at the college to reduce to an absolute minimum the number of blows they're hit with in the course of a round, a contest or a career, because the cumulative number of blows (is damaging)."
Also damaging is the effect of kids watching pure violence. Just as there is no arguing that children whose parents smoke are more likely to smoke, or whose parents are alcoholics are more likely to become alcoholics, or whose parents physically abuse them are more likely to abuse their children. Violence begets more violence.
So maybe, if America's not ready for the gunfight idea, how about this: We put surveillance cameras in all bars and tape every drunken brawl? It may be too late to close the barn door on the runaway fad of extreme fighting, under any title. If people will watch it, TV will show it. If it will draw ratings, it will make money, and that matters more than right or wrong. It's been proven by all of sports, by all of television, over and over again. Not to mention those who get their blood thrills on the Internet.
That's why I think people would pay to see live gunfights, and TiVo it.
"Oh, absolutely," Acunto said. "They would go watch fights to the death. They love the movies that have the barbaric theme. They love the pictures where there's murder, guns. It's not good for the kids, not good for the youth of the country."
It's not so great for the adults, either.
Courtesy of Lower Hudson Online
Time to KO Ultimate Fighting before somebody gets killed
By Rick Carpiniello
(Original publication: June 21, 2007)
MOUNT VERNON - I've got quite a few years left until retirement, so I'm trying to hit it big, and quickly. So I'm offering this idea to TV execs - they can pay me a percentage.
Offer up, I don't know, $10 million for anybody who will come and participate in a gunfight, one on one. Winner takes all. Well, of course, winner takes all, because loser won't have any use for it (the promoter can pay for the casket).
Put it on Spike or Versus or Fox Sports, or one of the networks in prime time. Better yet, make it pay-per-view, $79.95. Live! Two guys (or gals) shoot each other to the death!
Sound ridiculously absurd and over-the-edge? Yeah, well, it's coming. It's coming. Or live feeds from inmates' death row.
I was listening to a news radio station the other day. They told of a sick story about somebody who had beaten a mentally and physically disabled person, and the whole thing was caught on surveillance video. Then the equally sick come-on: "Want to see the video? Log on to ... "
This is where we're headed, folks. Straight to hell.
So a couple of weeks ago, I'm reading Sports Illustrated and a cover story - a cover story, for crying out loud! - on Ultimate Fighting. I tried to get through the story with smoke coming out of my ears. It actually lent legitimacy to this garbage, which is gaining the kind of TV momentum that reality shows and televised poker have enjoyed.
And I remembered that one of the truly outstanding citizens of this area, Steve Acunto of Mount Vernon, had written a warning shot in his regular editorial, "Ring, Rhyme & Reason." The title of the column was "Money over Morality: Please don't refer to this as boxing."
So I visited Acunto, the deputy commissioner emeritus of the New York State Athletic Commission and co-founder of the American Association for the Improvement of Boxing - in other words, a guardian of safety in the sport.
"I think this Ultimate Fighting, it brings out the worst in people," he said. "I think Ultimate Fighting satiates the barbaric lust of people who would watch cockfighting, dogfighting, bullfighting, or anything that has the ultimate results of hurting somebody, very badly. Very badly.
"I've watched it. I've seen people removed from the ring in a stretcher because they've been struck behind the neck with a knee. They've been absolutely out of it. Very shortly, although it's at its peak in Atlantic City right now, there will be some deaths from this thing. You can't call it boxing. It's not boxing. It's not any one sport, per se. It a sport for hoodlums who kick each other, smash each other in the groin, do things that are absolutely barbaric."
The S.I. story noted that Sen. John McCain, back in 1996, called it "human cockfighting."
Which is why it's doing so well.
I'm not so naive to think that there isn't a similar magnetism in other sports. Acunto's favorite sport of boxing surely draws a portion of its crowd from blood lust. So does hockey. People go to hockey games to see fights. People go to auto races to see crashes. People want quarterbacks mauled. People go to movies to see murders and all sorts of violence.
But this latest mixed martial arts brand of fighting taking root is well over the line. Which is why it sells.
"There's a segment of our society that thrives on barbaric performances," Acunto said. "Nothing is fun. In football, they want to see somebody down. And yet these people who advocate this wouldn't get into the ring with a crane.
"There's a lot of money in it, but I think it should be stopped in its tracks, like they should have stopped Adolf Hitler in his tracks. You've got to stop a bad thing before it catches on and overwhelms you. I guess I have to apologize. I'm an idealist about boxing. I see it as a wonderful vehicle for the youth to gain confidence and face life. I see it as an art, a science; a very grueling, very difficult sport in which you have to be in optimum condition, much more than other athletes in other sports."
Acunto - who admits to age 84-plus, which I think is the same age he was two years ago - has taught the finer side of boxing at Westchester Community College for nearly three decades. He doesn't teach students to scramble brains.
He has always, in his words, "pursued boxing from the standpoint of being an art and a science, where defense is just as important as offense. And I've (taught) the students at the college to reduce to an absolute minimum the number of blows they're hit with in the course of a round, a contest or a career, because the cumulative number of blows (is damaging)."
Also damaging is the effect of kids watching pure violence. Just as there is no arguing that children whose parents smoke are more likely to smoke, or whose parents are alcoholics are more likely to become alcoholics, or whose parents physically abuse them are more likely to abuse their children. Violence begets more violence.
So maybe, if America's not ready for the gunfight idea, how about this: We put surveillance cameras in all bars and tape every drunken brawl? It may be too late to close the barn door on the runaway fad of extreme fighting, under any title. If people will watch it, TV will show it. If it will draw ratings, it will make money, and that matters more than right or wrong. It's been proven by all of sports, by all of television, over and over again. Not to mention those who get their blood thrills on the Internet.
That's why I think people would pay to see live gunfights, and TiVo it.
"Oh, absolutely," Acunto said. "They would go watch fights to the death. They love the movies that have the barbaric theme. They love the pictures where there's murder, guns. It's not good for the kids, not good for the youth of the country."
It's not so great for the adults, either.
IPPON!!
