SMG: An interview with Kevin Iole

Sports Media Guide talks with Yahoo! Sports boxing and mixed martial arts writer Kevin Iole.

Iole says: "My job is to deliver personal and personality insights into my sports, which are the most individual sports compared to others out there. They are made up of very unique individuals. I don't get caught up in who has the best look hook or who is the better body puncher. I'd rather tell how they got there and who and what they are. That's what I do – I find out things and write about people who are putting their lives on the line to making a living."

http://www.sportsmediaguide.com/smg.asp

 

is mixed martial arts a sport?

does anybody have the cockfighting beat?
is there a cockfighting writers association?

 

Yeah
Whitlock and Lupica are members.

Oh. Oh. Wait, cockFighting? Fighting. Um, That I'm not sure about.

 

Yeah, because MMA and cockfighting are one and the same. :

 

Paging BlondeBomber. BlondeBomber, please report to this thread immediately.

 

Let's see, it has been on the cover of SI and ESPN mags, all the big national sports websites regularly cover it and most have their own dedicated MMA pages, the LA Times and the Washington Post cover major UFC events. Sounds like the people in power have decided it is a sport and it merits coverage. But god bless you for going down with the ship, henry.

 

If the cover of ESPN magazine helps determine newsworthiness, may God have mercy on our souls.

 

At the APSE convention, AP's Terry Taylor was constantly asked about MMA coverage. I suspect we'll see more coming from the AP in the coming months.

 

I don't think the major metros where UFC cards are held are ignoring it. The problem is the thousands of smaller papers that can't afford to fly a guy to Vegas to cover a PPV. We need the AP to step up the coverage.

 

So newspapers and publications should continue the fruitless pursuit of people who have no interest in reading the printed word and have already found numerous dot-com outlets for their ultimate fighting fix? Don't we gripe when idiot higher ups tell us to pursue the "young readership" instead of strengthening the relationship with those who actually WANT to open a newspaper or magazine?

This, to me, would seem to be a perfectly rational reason not to cover ultimate fighting. You guys want to read about a buncha savages knocking each other around, knock yourself out going to sites you were going to visit anyway.

 

momentarily depart from the 'coverage' issue:

the real problem with MMA as a 'sport' is that it's dull.
few clean punches. lots of grappling on the ground.
and its relatively devoid of toughness and grit.

these super-macho guys actually 'submit' - which is to say, they quit. roberto duran's career was tainted when he quit - no mas - just once. these MMA guys quit - 'submit' - all the time, and nobody thinks it at all dishonorable. i don't get it.

boxers, in a good 10-round bout, give and take more solid blows than MMA guys in a career.

ask yourself why no MMA champion ever will be a global icon like Ali: because there is a dignity and universal manhood expressed by boxing. what does MMA express? empty theatricality? useless and dubious martial techniques? (anybody with a gun or lead pipe will make the best MMA guy 'submit')

and these MMA guys, with their tatoos and fierce visages and macho posturing - whoa - straight out of a video game. a National Lampoon parody of Mulletville, USA.