Ultimate Fights expand to include kids as young as 6

[RamboLiberal]

Ultimate fighting was once the sole domain of burly men who beat each other bloody in anything-goes brawls on pay-per-view TV.

But the sport often derided as "human cockfighting" is branching out.

The bare-knuckle fights are now attracting competitors as young as 6 whose parents treat the sport as casually as wrestling, Little League or soccer.

The changes were evident on a recent evening in southwest Missouri, where a team of several young boys and one girl grappled on gym mats in a converted garage.

Two members of the group called the "Garage Boys Fight Crew" touched their thin martial-arts gloves in a flash of sportsmanship before beginning a relentless exchange of sucker punches, body blows and swift kicks.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080327/ap_on_re_us/ultimate_fighting_kids



Wonderful! :sarcasm: And I say this as someone who spent 27 years in the martial arts. This is despicable IMHO but then I don't have much use for the spectacle of Ultimate Fighting or what I consider the crap of pro wrestling.

I wonder too if this is really fun for the kids or are the parents dragging them in to it. When I was in martial arts and it became "the thing" for kids to do I found that most kids after awhile didn't really want to be there and it was the parents dragging them to it paying big tuition and test fees.

[selador]

1. love the rhetoric. bunch of garbage!

"But the sport often derided as "human cockfighting" is branching out."

no, it's not "often derided" as "human cockfighting"

iirc, it was mccain who made that claim in yet another nannystate attempt to regulate every aspect of our lives.

"before beginning a relentless exchange of sucker punches"

what makes them "sucker punches?". again, biased ridiculous rhetoric

how is an MMA punch any more a 'sucker punch' than a TKD punch, a boxing punch, or any other martial arts strike.

complete biased crap.

i also love the "burly men" comment. note the (very common in mainstream media) not so subtle bias again (lord forbid) muscularity. see: dumb jock myth

note also some of the most successful MMA are hardly "burly" in any sense of the word. classic examples - several of the gracie brothers, who were quite lean and not at all mesomorphic.

complete biased crap.

probably sponsored by pro boxing lol.

junk

i took a fair amount of (mostly bogus) martial arts like the stylized (and mostly useless) "martial art" of tae kwan do (also have taken some jiu jitsu and aikido and wrestling.

this is a GREAT development. it is just as legitimate as ANY other MA (boxing, wrestling, etc.) with the added benefit of not being stylized to the point of relative uselessness for REAL self defense.

[RamboLiberal]

2. I don't think MMA are healhty for kids

I especially don't like the punching to the head even with the head gear. And what I've seen of MMA on TV is not teaching respect!

[selador]

3. i can respect that

my point is that the article is SO cleary filled with prejudiced rhetoric, bias, it's just ridiculous. and i pointed out in the BRIEF excerpt numerous examples of same.

whether MMA is appropriate for kids is tangential to the fact that the way the article presented MMA is not realistic, fair, or accurate.

iow, even if the point is right (MMA for kids not being kewl), the way MMA is presented did not offer a fair assessment.

it's a hit piece.

my favorite was the mccain meme "human cockfighting".

[underpants]

4. *

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