Will Rampage Jackson's Rampage Hurt MMA?

Not hardly. I agree with Kelsey Philpott:

When an MMA fighter finds himself in trouble with the law, the immediate reaction of just about everyone in the community is to ask "how badly will this hurt MMA?"

Truth be told, Rampage's incident won't. Not really.

If anything the instinctive reflex of the MMA community to hold its breath and brace for a media ass whooping is probably more of a problem than the "bad" publicity that stems from one of these incidents.

The promoters, fighters, media, and fans alike must show more confidence in their sport and stop walking on egg shells. After all, how can the MMA community expect anyone else to believe in the sport if the community is constantly second-guessing itself.

These fighters are human, they're going to make mistakes, and they will be held accountable for their actions. However, a case of hit and run is not going to send MMA back to the dark ages; forcing deregulation or negatively impacting buy-rates and merchandise purchases.

Joyner offers a few other reasons in his post, but I would simply add that most of the problems MMA critics have are with the sport itself. Granted, those critics are also trying to tar and feather the sport's participants as being prone to violence. But while Rampage's actions yesterday were certainly destructive, it's unlikely they were sinister - something Adam "Pacman" Jones can't quite claim. I'm not suggesting the damage Rampage could've caused wouldn't rival or surpass the harm Jones has caused, but whatever the motivations of Rampage, it's unlikely he was trying to be nefarious. It would take very flimsy logic to point to yesterday's terrible incident as an indictment of mixed martial arts as a whole. I wouldn't put it past some critics, but I also wouldn't put much stock in the validity or power of any such claims.