thanks for contributing this doc!

its just hometown favorites. there wasn’t a bit of honest racism in the booing. when you go to a live sporting event (we’ll say football) hometown fans heckle the visiting fans, a few get out of hand, but for the most part its just part of the fun. but when the opposing team takes the field, its time for the fans to get their money’s worth a boo to their hearts content.
last nights event was loaded with patriotism, and the booing was simply good fun. no reason for a diatribe on last nights event.

The crowd booed constantly at pretty much everyone. If the fight went to the ground for more than 20 seconds, there was booing. No punching in 5 seconds? Boo. The crowd was the worst I’ve ever seen at an MMA match.

Hell, they booed Saunders for fighting dirty or some crap while he was kneeing the crap out of that guy.

Those weren’t MMA fans; they were troops who went to a big event at their base cause the tickets were free and they liked the charity. They didn’t understand the sport, and didn’t know the fighters. If you had told them Koscheck was from Poland and Yoshida was Jimmy from California, the boos probably would have been reversed. Yoshida got booed cause he was from Japan; that sucks but the crowd simply weren’t MMA fans so its kind of hard to put that on the sport.

I wasn’t too hyped for this card, what with Frankie Edgar out and Kos having just fought. But damn it turned out to be a very good show. Better than Diaz/Quarry IMO. Only thing that was missing was beer. I don’t drink on weeknights but still I was entertained by all the fights. And the liveblogging was awesome. Too many lolz you guys. I dont really like to comment while I’m watching the fights though but still great stuff BE.

Best MMA SITE EVER!

does not make any sense to me. Yoshida was not being booed for being Asian. He was being booed because an American fighter was competing against someone from Japan. This happens every single day in sports. When the Dallas Cowboys go to Philadelphia to play the Eagles they are booed relentlessly & it is not because they are from Texas. It would not have mattered if Yoshida was from Mars or Mongolia, he was going to be booed regardless.

It is common knowledge among hardcore MMA fans that American Kickboxing Academy welterweight, Josh Koscheck, is not normally a fan favorite. At the weigh-ins for his fight against Thiago Alves, Koscheck was the fighter being booed. Now pitted against a Japanese national at an event that clearly had a backdrop of emphasized American patriotism, all of a sudden Koscheck became the fan favorite.

I think saying this requires the ignorance of certain facts about Koscheck.

Koscheck has been garnering more and more fan support as his in-Octagon performance has improved. He was very well received against Thiago Alves due to taking the fight on short notice and showing incredible resilience.

Yes, Yoshida was booed a bit. Xenophobia exists in this country, even in 2008. That has less to do with this fight or the fans in attendance in particular and more to do with our values as a society in general.

I take exception to this personally.

I see. Well, I certainly cannot argue from your perspective as a man of western European descent. However, I feel that you shouldn’t limit a discussion of racism amongst MMA fans to circumstances that affect you personally. I don’t see any mention of Razak Al Hassan beign booked against Steve Cantwell despite his ethnic-sounding name (despite being from Iowa) and having a bit more melanin than his opponent. This is the same booking philosophy as the main event, and yet, because Cantwell did not previously take it upon himself to play up the role of the “heel,” there’s no smoke or fire to the notion that MMA is a sport supported by bigots. To be sure, it is; just like every other sport.

I will add, in closing, that I found it interesting that a black man was fighting a Japanese man in the main event of a fight card sponsored by a movie about the attempted assassination of Adolf Hitler and held in front of American troops.

I think people are trying to create controversy there when there is none. Koscheck was cheered because he was the “hometown boy”, not because the other fellow was not white or some other perceived racial preference. This happens with every major sport I’ve watched.
Does the article writer really believe that Koscheck will now be cheered at all the UFC events? He has taken on the ‘heel’ role and if he shakes if off (which I believe he has) it will because of his skill and game-ness, not because the people he fights aren’t white.
I never understood why people feel the need to continue to try and find racism in everything.

Like I said at the beginning of this post, I thought this card overall was good, although I’m obviously focusing on one thing I see as problematic, and now I’m more aware of all the serious injuries (wow!). I see the booing of Asian nationals as a fairly consistent trend in MMA, or at least in the UFC. For whatever reasons, I notice more booing of Asian nationals than of fighters from Brazil or Africa (Sokudjo) or Europe (Cheick Kongo). I thought this match symbolized that trend since Koscheck all of a sudden turned fan favorite. As some pointed out here, it could be more a ramification of the all military crowd. If this were at a normal UFC card, and Kos suddenly was cheered, perhaps it would be more telling.

I don’t think that patriotism/nationalism needs to come at the expense of booing athletes who are not from the host country, especially when patterns emerge. The soccer comparisons on this thread are good ones, and I actually think it’s okay to cheer the home country and boo the other if patterns don’t emerge where one foreign country/region is booed consistently while others are not. For instance, the booing of Leben in the U.K. was simple patriotism that I didn’t have a problem with since he went up against Bisping; that’s good spirited, pretty harmless patriotism. If, however, American fighters were more consistently booed at U.K. events, that’d be a concern.

An example could be GSP vs. Fitch. I believe fans at that match were chanting “USA” periodically, but not necessarily booing GSP simply because he’s a foreigner. And of course many cheer for GSP because he’s so talented. Or even last night, Goulet vs Swick – Goulet wasn’t received in the same way as Yoshida. Was it just because that wasn’t the main event match, or was there more to it?

that sexism is something that should probably be thought to be addressed more than racism at this point. The things that are said about and to women (especially ring girls) at MMA and boxing shows are disgusting. At an IFL event I witnessed a man walk up behind a ring girl (about 10 feet from me) and ask one of the more vile questions I’ve ever heard asked to someone. At boxing events I’ve seen a man try to pull a ring girl’s top off.

I think the issue here is the escapism for the crowd. Much like in professional wrestling, to a portion of the crowd there are no human beings inside the fenced off “action area”

I think something that needs pointing out is that Asian fighters haven’t met the same success in the UFC as fighters hailing from other parts of the world, because Asian athletes have traditionally not been very marketable in the US. That extends beyond MMA to other sports, including the NBA where Yao Ming (who is a perennial All-Star and All-NBA center) regularly sees poor jersey sales domestically. Another example is pro wrestling, where Asians are the only race of wrestlers who have had no success in the mainstream with an identity that is not stereotypically Asian. This lack of enthusiasm towards these fighters actually endears me to them and attributes to my enjoyment of them and their abilities as individual fighters (which can be considered ironic, given this discussion)— as many of you are well aware that I’m a big fan of the Stun Gun, as well as Okami and yes, Yoshida.

I think market perception extends to the crowd we saw (and heard) last night, so some commentary on the issue is acceptable. But I think it’s a more broad topic than one that is specifically relegated to last nights event. I do wish we had a climate of fandom that would allow for more of the top Asian fighters to come overseas and do battle with the best that the UFC has to offer. I long for the day that we’ll see the likes of Kid Yamamoto do battle with Urijah Faber, or see Aoki fight, well, just about anyone.

Sadly, that day appears to be very far away.

probably had nothing to do with it, but it was my first reaction when I saw military personnel booing a Japanese fighter.

Mixed Martial Arts didn’t create nationalism or racism, but it’s certainly reflecting those unwholesome aspects of our society.

The debate shouldn’t be about whether or not it’s there- it is. We should be talking about whether or not our little slice of society is making it worse, and what the sport can do to ameliorate it. Not throwing up foreigners to be obvious heels for military service personnel to boo would be a good start.

throw him in a real heel situation*

blind nationalism is the enemy. I mean, what do you people do when the olympics roll around? for petes sakes people. It wasn’t Peruvians who eliminated fascism, so I give props to my country and the countries i respect.

And the BS about you dont choose where your born or whatever is null and void becuase you ARE allowed to move.

Your citizenship is almost always a matter of choice, if not practicality.

unbelievable. i dont want to bring kids in to this world

First off, i would never try and change the way Dr. Mayeda feels. I can’t relate to it, so all I can do is respect his stance over what was a truly despicable time in our country’s history. I have read several articles about the interment of Japanese Americans during WWII, as Colorado was the location of some of the camps and the local media has covered the events to a certain degree.

Now, I think it was a poor choice by the UFC to place Yoshida in a fight where that type of reaction was going to be obvious.

I also think that the booing, was not because he was Japanese, simply because he wasn’t American, not that it is better, just that I don’t think there is an anti Asian feeling amongst your average American.

The booing was more of a “boo anything” type of mentality, where fans will boo jsut for the sake of booing, which I will never understand.

If you go to any country, you are likely to find the same thing. Damn, seems like every day I read about some soccer fan or F1 fan doing unbelievably racist things over in Europe.

Bottom line, as much as most of us would like to think that racism, nationalism, sexism, etc… are no longer an issue, we are sadly mistaken. It may not be as commonplace as it was 50 years ago, but it is still there and we can only hope that it gets better with every new generation.