Sovvolf said:
SaneAmongInsane said:
Sovvolf said:
SaneAmongInsane said:
When, not if, MMA becomes staged fans won't know about it. It'll be a closely guarded secret, just like Pro-Wrestling's false hood was initially, and if the fighters are smart they'll learn from the mistakes of the past keep it that way.
You seem overly confident on the idea that MMA will go the way of Pro-wrestling. I don't think so but I wouldn't deal in absolutes.
History repeats. If it doesn't, it'll burn it's fanbase over time the same way boxing did.
Mind you I think the MMA candle has just begun to burn, so it'll be a while before this would happen... Hell it could be happening right now, in theory, how would we really know if the fights were fixed?
it'd probably be much more obvious. Could in theory but I highly doubt it. You could say that for boxing and any other sporting event. How do we know Football isn't fixed? and such doesn't make it so, only the deeply paranoid would think so. Even before the whole scandal, many thought wrestling was fake, it did look heavily choreographed and such. Hell, even a joke is made in Rocky III with Hulk Hogan on the whole fake thing and that was back in 1982.
This is gonna take a bit of explaining, you may want to get yourself some snacks.
Because by then it slowly moved more towards entertainment from about the 1960's onward. Rumblings that it was fake really didn't come about till the 80's. For plenty of decades the entire thing was a charade and no one knew.
How do we know football isn't fake? Well for one thing, to many players. the more people in on the secret the harder it is to contain. Also generally it's relatively easy to get into the NFL, and I don't mean easy as in I could do it, but easy as in they're scouting for the best players not weeding out people that would blow the whistle on the scam. The fact that wrestling was fake use to be a carefully guarded secret, veterans training rookies would put their trainiees through absolute hell before letting them in on the secret. First day of training, Hulk Hogan's trainer broke his legs intentionally.
Boxing isn't something you rig easily either, because how could you throw fake punches for 12 rounds and not visibly show any damage to the face? That's why wrestlers tend to avoid punching to much. Now I know what your saying, that's a huge part of MMA too, but as it is the fans are more warmed up now to the ground work then they use to be. Also unlike boxing, their hands are free so it's very possible for them to conceal a blade for cutting their scalp like wrestlers do. There is also a significant advantage of the fact that MMA fighters actually have time off in beteewn fights, something that a wrestler that's on the road 320 days a year performing matches every night doesn't, so it's very possible they can take advantage of their bodies more and work rather stiff/snug (legit) and make the stuff look as real as possible while still avoiding major injury and putting on a good show and planning the outcome.
Also back when it was slowly becoming a "work" (I like this word better then fake, because I've bumped around a ring a little bit and if it was all fake it wouldn't hurt as much as it did.) It was more then likely that it was only the top guys that were in on the work. I believe, I'm going from memory here so I may be wrong, one of the first work contests was George Hackinschmidt agreeing to lose the first fall of a 2/3 fall match up with Ed "The Strangler" Lewis to make the fight more interesting and make some extra money. Ed was suppose to lose the second fall and they'd have a legit battle for the third fall... but Ed was an oppurtunist that took the first fall and then double cross Hackinschmidt and won the second fall and one the World title.
MMA is bassicaly the wrestling business at the turn of the century, it would make sense that everything would happen the same way eventually. The only thing I could imagine preventing this is the rise of the internet and technology, cell phone cameras being everywhere and what not, would expose it. But that's the only thing. I say MMA's gorgeous george is only 20 years away.
EDIT: Also if you asked a wrestler from that old time era if it was fake, something like this would happen...
And that was in 1997 dude!
