Rest in Peace John McCain, thank you for your military service. We will not thank John McCain at all for trying to murder mixed martial arts back in the 1990s. The sport we now know and love survived McCain calling it human cock fighting.
Sure maybe early incarnations of no holds barred cages fights bordered on a blood sport but McCain labeled MMA human cock fighting solely for political reasons. This wasn’t some noble cause to protect fighters from promoters, this was McCain looking to please big money campaign donners from the boxing world.
Even in 1996, while the UFC and the sport of MMA were tumbling over themselves with bone headed after dumb ass move, boxing still took notice. The sport of boxing in the mid-1990s was already on a decline from where it stood in the 70s and 80s, and the premature “death of boxing” opinion pieces were flowing just as much back then as they are today.
MMA survived McCain’s political hit job and the course of the sport would forever be changed due to the Arizona Senator’s campaign against it. Um thanks?
On Saturday (Aug. 25) McCain passed away at the age of 81. Like anything topic big or small in our current screwed political climate, the world was divided 50/50 with their John McCain hot takes. McCain was either the greatest politician who ever lived or the worst politician who ever lived.
Welcome to The Internet in 2018 Ghost McCain.
From the combat sports corner of The Internet, there was this weird unprovoked movement to brush aside history and overly praise John McCain for helping MMA. Wait, what?
https://twitter.com/JESnowden/status/1033782676434681857
Sen. John McCain was once considered public enemy number one in the MMA (NHB) community for comparing the sport to, as he famously put it, “human cockfighting.” But in hindsight, one can argue those comments were instrumental in cleaning up the sport for the better.
— Ariel Helwani (@arielhelwani) August 26, 2018
That’s not what happened. https://t.co/CbP0vh81kU
— MiddleEasy (@MiddleEasy) August 27, 2018
Trump saved MMA. This article is 100% trying to rewrite history. I fucking lived this shit. I remember being so upset that McCain came out against mma.
I want this article taken down.
— Tara LaRosa (@TaraLaRosa) August 27, 2018
We get respecting the dead but don’t make up facts. Just some flat out ignorant takes mixed with rewriting history currently going on because of McCain.
You know what? MMA OG Big John may have just summed it all up in a single tweet.
I had many things to dislike about John McCain. He tried to destroy the sport I loved not because he felt it was right, but because of loyalties to political supporters & money. However I respect the man and his service to our country, his time in a POW prison cannot be forgotten
— Big John McCarthy (@JohnMcCarthyMMA) August 26, 2018
Wait hold up…..Or maybe MMA/MiddleEasy OG fan Cain The Bull just summed it all up in a single tweet.
Saying McCain saved MMA is like saying Bin Laden saved the Twin Towers by flying planes into them.
— CAINtheBULL (@CAINtheBULL) August 27, 2018
Big John? Cain the Bull? Pretty much all the same when talking John McCain’s contributions to the sport of MMA.
