Sadly 4/20 has now come to an end. The day after 4/20 is usually one of those days you have a hard time getting motivated to accomplish anything. It’s difficult to find direction or purpose for the 24 hours following any intense 4/20 holiday celebratory traditions. Never fear though, I think I have found a little something to light a fire under your backside and get you moving during this herbal aftermath. Don’t worry it’s not pictures of your girlfriend and her boss playing doctor in the storage room. I’ll send those to you on another day. It’s even worse than that–it’s some ridiculously insane anti-mma propaganda.
Read, or if you choose you click on this link and listen to this guy named Fred Fiske spew his anti-mma banter all over American University radio. This guy really has a massive amount of disdain for the sport and athletes we revolve our meager little lives around. He compares our beloved sport to cock or dog fighting and is absolutely revolted that in the year 2011 it would be considered one of the fastest growing sports.
“I don’t know whether it more closely resembles the gladiators, who pummeled each other to amuse the ancient Roman emperors, or the cockfights, which were popular in the Middle Ages, or the dog fights, which sent Michael Vick to jail. But frankly I’m appalled and ashamed and a little revolted when I hear that mixed martial arts is one of the fastest-growing sports in America.Occasionally, when I’m channel-hopping, I’ll catch a little bit of it on TV. I can’t believe that here in the year 2011, we pay to watch two human beings in a boxing ring pound, kick, headbutt, wrestle, or use any means available to defeat an opponent. Most states sanction it. New York and Connecticut and a few others have refused, and there’s a campaign underway now to get them to change.David Zinczenko, editor of Men’s Health magazine, recently wrote an op-ed piece for The New York Times in which he tried to make the case. He argues, “Mixed martial arts may be violent, but that it’s safer than the other, supposedly more civilized” competitive sports. He says that “we think of more traditional violent sports like football or boxing are safer in part because of the helmets and padded gloves their athletes wear.” Those protective devices, he says, just allow the athlete to hit harder and to take chances which lead to “even greater levels of punishment.” And Zinczenko points to the studies which show that 40 percent of former boxers have brain injuries. Hockey and football players are subjected to serious injuries too. Football and hockey sent 55,000 Americans to the emergency rooms with head injuries in the year 2009 alone.We’ve all seen fans cheer when a football or hockey player leaves the game on a stretcher and returns the next week. The cheers are even louder when he returns in the next period. Yes, I’ve seen that. I’ve even participated in it. But it sure doesn’t strengthen the argument that because we descend to the levels of savagery in some sports, which have already gained huge contingents of followers and players who risk injury — even death — to collect obscenely large salaries, that we should encourage the growth of newer sports which appeal to the worst in us. And let’s not forget either that we’re concerned about violence in our society and the effect on our children.What Zinczenko says about the other violent sports is true, but team sports are so much a part of culture that limiting them now would not be politically acceptable. It would be stupid, though, to encourage the growth of large numbers of newer and younger fans of degrading violence. I agree with New York State Assemblyman Bob Rielly, who called mixed martial arts “a violent sport not worthy of our society.”
Now that you know there is another human being on the planet who agrees with Bob Rielly you should be wearing your angry mean mug and fired up enough to get out of bed and kick something. In the words of Tim Kennedy, ‘Stay Angry friends.’ Stay angry-but please try to just kick Thursday’s ass instead of any real tangible objects. I don’t want any of you crying to me about how you broke your pinky toe after you tried to axe kick your dining room table. [source]
