Props: Fanhouse.com
Quoteworthy:
“I hope I’m alive to see it. I don’t think it’s going to happen soon, but then again I thought it was going to take longer than it did for us to get where we are today…. There’s still a lot of work to be done, but seeing mixed martial arts in the Olympics would be incredible…. If you combine boxing, judo and wrestling, what do you have? That’s what mixed martial arts is.”
UFC President provides a realistic (and unfortunate) assessment of the possibility of mixed martial arts becoming an Olympic event one day soon during the UFC 90: “Silva vs. Cote” press conference today in Chicago. We can dream, can’t we? That’s apparently all we can do … for now.
August 19th, 2008
54 Comments »
I would love to see it happen aswell buttt…..
How would they judge it ?? thats the main question.
idk about judo or wrestling in the Olympics but i know the boxing is judged alot different then pro boxing is. Its kinda hard to watch .
I would also love for MMa to reach the Olympic’s, one day!!!
The only Olympic’s I have been watching is the BasketBall..
Yeah if mma was in the olympics it would just be ruined by the judging. Cecil peoples has been judging fights forever and he still doesn’t know what he is doing. Just imagine the BS that will follow a french or Russian judge!
Miguel Torres said that he will defend his title December 3, probably against Manny Tapia
Listen to this Patrik Cote quote: “I know my face will be a mess at the end of the fight”…..at least he isn’t too delusional!
The olympics make any combat sport boring as crap. They would completely butcher MMA. Think about it.
1. Headgear.
2. No elbows (from anywhere)
3. Shin pads.
4. Painted glovers for scoring hits.
5. Who knows how bad they would screw up the submission game.
And crazy insane Bas Rutten was just on Inside MMA last week saying that he expects to see MMA in the 2012 Olympics. He clearly got hit in the head several extra times than necessary over the years.
Godspeed and PARTY ON!!!! BBWWWWWWWWWWWAAAAAAHHHH!!
The rules would change a lot just like boxing. Probably pads all over the fighers like elbows and knees, if those kinds of strikes are even allowed.
As much as professional boxing bores me, it’s 10 times worse watching Olympic wrestling. The IOC would not have to work very hard to completely suck the excitement out of MMA.
Oops, meant Olympic boxing.
That would be awsome!!!
then they would have a sport that i would actually wanna watch in the olympics
Agreed. Swimming sucks
So you guys don’t like football, volleyball or basketball? In a different note, I don’t think this will ever happen either. From my understanding you have to have 30 countries active in a sport for it to become an olympic event, and I can pretty much count on my hands the number of countries that have good MMA fighters… but who knows, maybe in forty years it would be different…
Hmmm….linx. The olympics are FULL of sports that shouldn’t be there! I’m a HUGE football (soccer) fan and I don’t think soccer should be in the Olympics. Why? Soccer has the CUP! It doesn’t need the Olympics. To me, the Cup dwarfs all other sporting tournaments! Other “sports” that IMO should not be there? Let’s see: Anything that starts with the word “synchronized”, canoeing, walking, trampolining (maybe in the gay olympics), rythmic gymnastics, shooting (you get a gold medal for target practice?), baseball (that’s right, I said it b#tches, the best players in the world can’t be there, so the sport itself shouldn’t either), badmitton (both singles and doubles), and table tennis (ping pong? you can get a medal for f’in ping pong?). The olympic games are beyond irrelevant for the most part b/c everyone who has a hobby or is an “enthusiast” of something gets to compete in them. I better stop now, I could talk about this cr@p for hous. lol
I HATE BEING MODERATED!!!!!!
chefdaddy: I see that I have turned you into a Jacre fan! He is an amazing grappler, like on an entirely different level then the grappling that mma fighters are used to. Many fans think grappling is boring, not that guy! His jits is Off the charts, combine that with his GSP-like athletic ability and that mnakes him 1 bad mofo! Did you see the flying arm bars and flying triangles? or the takedowns? He is just amazing!
I cant wait to see him win the DREAM middleweight grand prix next month. What makes him tough to beat is that his opponents will have a very hard time getting any offense going when they have to defend constant and various different submission attempts. Can mount an offense if you are on your heels playing Defense…know what I mean?
Maia vs. Jacre grappling match was awesome and extremely technical. Maia starts the match up off on FIRE, he pulls guard and Jacre is busy defending, but it turns intop a great fight.
I completely agree Chef. I think the Olympics have lost a lot of relevance because the sense of true amateurism is gone and also because we no longer have to prove our athletic superiority over a bunch of roided up cheating commies. NBC did a great job milking the Michael Phelps story, but other than that there was really nothing I felt like I absolutely HAD to see.
LOL, yeah, I agree with ping pong, wtf were they thinking putting that in there. But the World Cup is much different than the football in the olympics, most of the players are young in the olympics so it’s a good way of getting to know them before they make it big. It’s also another excuse to ditch work and watch a great game
(if it was only the cup, we could only do that once every four years, but we got the American Cup, Olympics, Liberator’s cup and of course the Brazilian cup!) Gotta go, it’s half time in Brazil vs Argetina, our biggest rivals!
“we no longer have to prove our athletic superiority”
Are you chinese PW? I think they have you beat already… Not trying to d-i-s-s the USA, but some of you guys just sound soooooooo i-g-n-o-r-a-n-t.
john, when and what channel is having that tournament for “Jacare”? That guy did stuff so fast, I had to go back a couple of times to catch it! REALLY want to see him in action!
I think I’m one of the few people who like tha fact that the Olympics are no longer strictly amateur. IMO, if you win a gold, you should be the best of the best. Not the best, except for a thousand other people. Oh well, just wait for my rants and raves over the winter games. lol
Chefdaddy: Jacre will have to win 2 fights in 1 night to win the tournament. I believe its the 23rd of September and I am sure that it will air on Hd-net, unfortunately its a channel I do not get on my cable package. So I will be stuck watching the fights on the computer.
I cant wait to eventually see him in the UFC. FYI he training at Extreme Couture and working his stand up with wanderlei.
THere is no one I prefer watching on the ground then Jacre. maia, Almeida, Palhares, wErdum, leites are close 2nd.
Chef, you’re a fan of someone you’ve never even seen fight??? That sounds strange.
And yes, all of the DREAM events air on HDNet.
I posted an amazing Jacre highlight video for him to watch. It showed both Jacre’s mma and grappling highlights and he loved it!
Vm: I got Jacre winning the tournament. your thoughts? I think he gets passed Zelg in the semi’s NO PROBLEM (but I like Zelg)!
VM, the highlight video blew my mind!I can’t say I’m a fan yet, b/c I’m very unfamiliar with him and I know nothing yet of his personality (that actually matters to me, if a guy seems humble/cool). What that video did was simply make me excited to hopefully become a fan!
GIve it time, u will become a fan. He seems like a humble, fun loving dude. NOt to mention his celebration: the “aligator crawl” and then flapping his arms like the Florida Gators is BAD ASS!!!!
Ah, ok. Now I understand. I just sour that he got past Mayhem Miller, who I am still hoping will be in the alternate match.
If Jacare can control where both the fights take place (on the ground) then he can easily win. However, all three of the other fighters do posses one punch KO power so it should at least be interesting.
Souza beat Miller, so I guess I’ll pick him to go all the way.
But you would have Americans who couldn’t make the American team going to other countries just like they do in Basketball so you never know. The biggest question is will Dana cross promote with the Olympics. Because some of his fighters would be facing other promotions fighters.
it will never happen!
Ditto. And if it does, Dana’s dead by then…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GCwnJPTAlg
Im not sure it would be realistic to have MMA in the olympics. I mean would you have to fight like 4 times in 2 weeks to win a gold medal? I mean if they were gonna do that they’d probably have to fight with head gear and thicker gloves and that would kinda take a lot of the fun out of it. And really i don’t see it being that exciting because we see people from different countries compete against each other all the time anyways.
not realistic at all… are professionals allowed to fight?? cuz no org. would let their guys go and if it was all amateurs, the fights would be terrible. along with the reasons u said i can’t ever see this happening. i think some pure Muay Thai or pure BJJ would be awesome in the olympics…although we know which countries would win all those medals
everything you said was spot on, olympics should definently add submission wrestling, and muay thai
and completely right about the organizations not letting there fighters fight
I didn’t even think it that way either, but you’re spot on!
i dont. i havent followed the olympics since the u.s. started letting thier pro atheletes compete. their is no amatuer org. for mma,like the golden gloves for boxing, that im aware of. the amatuer boxing scoring sysytem in the olympics is wretched. the olympics would only enforce its own rules and regulations on a sport that is damned near perfect imo. ha!
u say that like the u.s. decided to break the rules and send pros to dominate the poor little 3rd world countries… the IOC made a decision to allow pro athletes from around the world represent their countries in certain sports where the talent wasn’t worth watching. clearly we have had an advantage in basketball in the past but other sports it was not nec. the case…. I preferred Ice Hockey with amateurs but the Russians would send their so called “amateur” team that was all grown men who were given military posts but their sole job was to be a hockey player. in that case allowing the pros evened the field a bit but i would rather watch the college kids go at it any day… played hockey my whole life and living in boston watching hockey east in general and the bean pot in particular is phenomenal… that’s the type of enthusiasm i wish existed in all pro sports
no i dont think they did it to break the rules, im from the u.s. by the way, i just think it took alot the intrigue out of it for me. so what if the other countries sent semi-pro players to compete, that usually made us the underdog, wich is a rarity for us nowadays. and we americans love a good underdog story, at least i do. glad you like your hockey in it, but mma needs to stay as far away from the iocc as possible.
The only advanatage it gave us was basketball(Even that was a bit embarassing in 2004. Baseball, between Japan and Cuba, we can barely get to the podium, since 1992 we have only take 1, 3 and 4(hell that is “Americas Sport”) or was. We generally do well in wrestling (there is nothing pro about that) last I checked…I think it hurts us when when our pros do not win.
MMA in the olympics would be to crazy. Here all the state athletic commisions give 30 and 60 day health suspensions to everyone after they have 1 fight, depending on the injury. You would have to go to the old style UFC or Pride style where fighters fought more then one time in a night, and upwards of 3 or 4 times depending where they got, and that was one of the main reason nobody would sanction it in the US originally. hen do the fighters where head gear like the boxers, do they do more of a point system like wrestling? So many points for a submission, takedown, escape, reversal, strikes, and so on….I think it would be really difficult to do and still keep the purity of the sport.
I thought about this the other day..
So did I, StabToTheLiver: I was like, that would be sooo cool! But then I thought of how difficult it would be. I don’t think we’d ever see the huge names like Silva, Fedor, Penn, because would they really give up their time, money (that many complain is low as it is), and possibility of injury for an Olympic medal? It was already mentioned that it would have to be a tournament so they’d have to fight over and over during a two-week period. They’d probably wear head-gear and bigger gloves. I personally would watch the young talent who would compete to make a name and get publicity and of course, represent their country in MMA.
We already have ppl from around the world competing against each other in MMA. It would be kind of the same thing of what it is now except under the Olympic title.
I might be one of the few here who doesn’t really care to see MMA in the Olympics. I’m not much of a pro boxing fan anymore, but the Olympic version is pretty sad in comparison. I don’t see the style of MMA that we’ve grown accustomed to following as being a particularly good fit for an Olympic sport either. Even though it’s becoming more and more mainstream, it’s still much more of a pure fight than any other Olympic sport, and I don’t think seeing athletes competing in that context would have much of an appeal to most people that follow the games. The sport as we know it also wouldn’t fit very well in a two week tournament span, and to make it into a sport that would fit those parameters would only turn it into a very watered down version. I can already see the “boycott the Olympics” posts on this site in response to the crappy Olympic version of MMA.
dana white is a douche. he aint doin much to have all orginizations work together, it makes the sport look like a joke
mma cant be at the olympics… the winners pick up too many injuries that would prevent them from fighting a minimum of 3 or 4 times in 2 weeks
the guys wouldnt get medical clearance… closest you will see to a tournament between decent fighters is TUF… the comeback
and even that is way more spread out
also there is the money issue… th e top guys wouldnt compete as they expect huge $$$ to step into the ring… as time goes on more and more fighters will be counted out from competing in a tournament for this reason
also all the guys under contract probably couldnt compete… so youd get a tournament of guys noone had ever hears of and those whod been thrown out of other orgs
some similar arguments can be used for muay thai not being at the olympics
in thailand a tournament where guys fight injured is fine… but i cant see the ioc allowing people to fight with serious injuries at the olympics…
some kind of grappling contest is a possibility… wrestling and BJJ… no kicks or strikes
I can’t see MMA in the Olympics. It would be impossible for a fighter to fight often enough in 2 weeks. The better option would be submission wrestling. That way you could have multiple fights in a day, some exciting finishes, and incorporate all different styles from around the world. It would probably be pretty easy to do. The only hard part would be selling it to NBC, but hey if they have trampoline they should be able to fit in some sub wrestling.
I agree that MMA would be tough as a sport in the Olympics, due to the injury factor. But then you see crap like trampoline and handball as an Olympic sport and you think, how in the hell can MMA not be an Olympic sport.
i’d be suprised if dana let his superstars BJ PENN USA, St Pierre Canada, Michael Bisping UK, Anderson Silva Brazil compete
He might, if his goal to spread mma and make it the biggest sport in the world. The entire globe is watching Olympics. You watch events you’re really into and some stuff you watch because you get sucked into the background stories. When the Olympics are on there is fist pumping and cheering in every household. Hell I even watched a few minutes of table tennis (their intensity makes me laugh). And regardless of the country being represented the UFC will mentioned a million times (just like the NBA players), the same highlights are shown 100x a day on various stations and on the news, of the fighters you just mentioned 3 of them would win gold and what are all of these networks going to be using for their highlight footage- UFC footage of course. Honestly- I think Dana would be in heaven and happier than a pig in s**t.
I thought about how great it would be to have mma in the Olympics last week watching all these great athletes perform. It would be great. No contracts or organizations- just the absolute best of the best competing against each other. *Sigh* I have a dream. Logistically- it is a problem. Almost every element of mma is an Olympic event, but combining them is an issue (injury wise) I agree. I don’t think money would be. Fighters would put aside money to fight on the world stage and sponsors would step up as well (like how Visa and Speedo step up for Phelps).
Pankration, a sport similiar to MMA, was actually a part of the Olympics for about a thousand years:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pankration
I believe that it is very possible that we may see MMA in the Olympics but much like how Olympic Boxing is a shell of what boxing really is in terms of glove size and head gear etc… They will look to do the same with MMA, I can see them implementing headgear and larger gloves (similar to the ones worn by Bruce Lee in the beginning of Enter The Dragon) and then I can also see them implementing shin guards because in Olympic competition its about the points win not the KO win.
the closest thing MMA has had to Olympic style competition were the grand prixs in Pride which Dana has done away with….I think they are something nice to have once a year or even once every 1 1/2 or 2 years, but I can see why Dana has done away with them because he doesnt want his champs losing in a grand prix and making future title matches less hyped up.
I don’t see this happening. Olympic is only 2 weeks event and “medical suspension” can’t make two weeks tournament happen. The closest thing I can see happening would be grappling/submission just like ADCC.
It will never happen….Maybe submission wrestling, maybe…Like Abu Dhabi.
trust me we do not want to see this in the olympics. it would be so watered down it would be unwatchable. leave mma to the enterprising people like the fertitas.