My dad and I sit on the couch every once in a while and watch the news. We've been on vacation on and off for a while, so we were clearing through some recordings and we found an episode of 60 minutes we hadn't watched. One of the segments was on MMA.
I have, lately, been struggling with alot of the mainstream media's projections about the sport as a whole. My biggest problem, honestly, is that they still manage to represent the sport as barbaric.
With that said, I have to admit that 60 Minutes put together the best segment on MMA that I have seen so far. They weren't as uninformed as Sports Illustrated (shame on the guys that wrote that article, it was badly put together and parts of it were clearly ignorant of the sport) or as ridiculous and self-righteous as Bill O'Reilly's past work on the sport (I'm not an O'Reilly fan to begin with, but when a friend emailed me that segment, I couldn't finish it).
60 Minutes was honest about the sport, and they didn't talk.
Personally, I think it's great when a reporter asks questions and let's the expert answer.
They also had great selections for subjects of the show. They talked a little bit about Dana White (though it would be an understatement to say they glossed over the Pre-Zuffa history of the UFC) and he had some great comments, but he's a great guy to have speak for the sport.
More impressive was that they interviewed Pat Miletich and Renzo Gracie, real legends of the sport. They mentioned Pat Miletich's legendary coaching backround (though they forget, like everyone seems to, that Pat Miletich held a world title for a while). They discussed Renzo's jiu-jitsu skills, making a point of his intelligence and his articulateness (which is even better when you consider that English isn't his first language) and even talking about the fight with Kazushi Sakuraba.
There are so many intracacies of the sport that I would love for someone to put together an hour special on it to inform people, but that won't happen until we get to the point where covering the sport in an hour is no longer possible.
If anyone out there has money and air-time, it would be worth doing.
Still, 60 Minutes did a great job. Thank you to those responsible for the segment, and to everyone in the media who is smart enough and honest enough to present the truth about the sport in a way that represents the intellectual aspects, as well as the athletic ones, while managing to be historically and politically correct.
It's not an easy thing to do and I appreciate it.
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