hybrid fighter/actor Bobby Lashley engaged in something billed as a “submission” contest against the very dangerous Samoa Joe.

You know…if you want to get down to it…wrestling has had submission matches since before MMA existed. I mean, they’ve been a part of the “sport” for a long ass time. Shit, Bret Hart’s heyday was before MMA truly blowing up and he was doing submission matches as his bread and butter for most of his career.

Traditional Martial Arts are a fall back for the computer geek/progressive rock/Dungeons and Dragons set.

I really like this line. Though I point out that the guy who got me into MMA in the first place is a Shorin Ryu black belt, and he’s not a part of any of those sets. If anything, he’s a red neck. I’d qualify his sensei as such too, though he’s also a Mormon, which I only point out because that’s kind of an odd combination.

And lastly, f**k you if you can’t take a joke.

I was gonna say the same thing! Seriously, who cares? Honestly, if Pro wrestlers want to try to make it in MMA, I got no problems with it, and vice versa. When it comes down to it, MMA is real, and it can be dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing. The posers will be found out very quickly. For those that can actually fight, all the more power to them I say. And so what if some pro wrestling even features “submission fighting?” That’s a good thing, in my opinion, because that just means MMA is becoming more and more accepted.

But even the most dyed-in-the-wool fan has to have a problem with wrestling’s latest gimmickry: Aping a shoot-style MMA template in the service of a choreographed match.

This is so fascinating in its stupidity. To think that this is the first time in the history of pro wrestling that a worked match has been presented as a shoot, and then to be offended by it, is beyond words. It is 2009 and people are still taking the goings-on of the wrestling business seriously, even if they think they aren’t. It’s fascinating.

Brock was jacked and cut-up back then, and tanned. lolwut

Problems tend to occur when one writes about something one doesn’t really understand. I think this is what happened to Rossen. If he did some research, he would realize that Samoa Joe’s entire character is loosely based on some dangerous submission grappler type dude and he has been incorporating MMA moves into his act for YEARS.

Rossen seems shocked and offended and he shouldn’t be. Pro-wrestling is a gimmick business and what ever is popular in pop culture becomes the next gimmick. MMA has been growing in popularity for some time and pro-wrestling has been pushing characters and story-lines that are MMA-influenced for some time.

Rossen seems out of touch, like a curmudgeon boxing writer. Oh snap!

The accusation of being like wrasslin and the implication of the “fake fight” tend to freak me out a bit.

…pro wrestling is fake. people have known that for decades now. Perhaps in the 70s and early 80s some adults may not have known the extent to which it is rigged, and kids might have bought into it for a while, but I used to watch it all the time from the mid 70s until the last Wrestlemania Ric Flair was in. I remember talking to friends when i was like 10 and we knew it wasn’t totally up and up, we knew the fighting was fake, we were just not sure how much the guys ‘hated each other in real life’.
   I don’t get the worry that people are throwing out. Prowrestling was side by side with boxing for like 115 years and while they had some cross breeding, no doubt those boxing fans never thought wrestling was real and (ironically) if boxing was fake.

I am 100% sure that people who watch pro-wrestling will NEVER think those guys are fighting for real. Everyone knows it is a show. You can watch Lesnar fight now and know it is real.

Its because years ago before MMA was popular, people didnt really understand the concepts and the danger of moves that look fairly plain like an arm bar.

So if you were watching WWF years ago and someone threw in an arm bar, it wouldnt have been half as cool because you havnt seen the power they have from the years of MMA we have now watched.

Flash forward to now, and people who watch WWF can relate to the actual fight stopping power of a relatively mundane arm bar move because MMA have been in the lime light for years now.

Let’s face it, it’s all the same stuff — dudes fighting in a controlled environment. The only difference is the different combat sports and sports entertainments target different demographics.

I find this statement baffling, as it ignores the significant difference between staged fights and true contests. It’s like saying that watching Little League is the same as watching MLB is the same as watching The Natural (the movie, not Randy Couture).

I actually agree with Rossen, stop copying off of MMA, wrestling! Wrestling in America should try and be HYPER-violent like it is in Japan! We have all seen chairs and ladders used as weapons in the wrestling ring, now they should use chainsaws and shot-guns.

A lot of people have clearly not read Jonathan Snowden’s superb historical reference for MMA, Total MMA.

Buy and read it immediately. Not later on, not tomorrow, but right now.

Can you imagine BJ Penn putting mo’fuckas in the Figure Four?

The Fight Network has become the Pro Wrestling/Fight Network. I can’t watch 5 minutes of that channel without hearing about TNA or Shane McMahon leaving WWE. I personally don’t care. I ordered the Fight Network for fights, not pro wrestling, but it seems that they won’t give you MMA news without a side of TNA or WWE. I appreciate that the pedigree of MMA includes the whole shoot or show schizm, but Martial Arts has been around a thousand years, how does pro wrestling claim so much credit for the creation of a constantly evolving combat system. Pro wrestling style promotion has more to do with MMA’s angle of promotion now than the Martial Arts themselves.

Man, I used to love wrestling back when it wasn’t forty-five fucking different storylines I had to follow. I swear to God. I used to date a girl who watched soap operas and would try to tell me about it when I got home from work. Guess what? Days of our Lives could be adapted to wrestling by changing the names. It’s way too much.

Back in the day, all you had to worry about was Ultimate Warrior saying off the wall shit about the Moons of Zortok or Hulk Hogan “big legging” someone in the face. The whole Undertaker slamming Ultimate Warrior in an air tight coffin was about as elaborate as it got, and then all of the sudden… POOF. There are 14 storylines per show and nobody can keep up with the bullshit.

All of that and the fact that it’s fake is just too much.

It’s fairly simple. MMA is an attraction over pro wrestling by far. When you were in HS and some kids were beating the shit out of each other in the parking lot, EVERYONE ran to watch. If I was in high school and someone said… “HOLY SHIT, JOHNNY IS MIMICING ULTIMATE WARRIOR AND BOBBY IS MIMICING SUPERFLY IN THE PARKING LOT”, I’d probably burst out in laughter and punch someone in the face to divert attention.

I don’t disagree with this article, and this is more of a simple rant. I used to like watching it when I was little, but it’s just a novelty. They can do whatever they want. Submission matches, okay… it’ll just help our sport attract some more fans who actually want to see legitimate competition versus fixed fights.

Pro Wrestling is for 10 year olds and old ladies. MMA is for young men. Boxing is for the old. Traditional Martial Arts are a fall back for the computer geek/progressive rock/Dungeons and Dragons set.

The only one you didn’t offend is MMA, so you’re obviously a biased fan boy. You shouldn’t be writing.

Btw, if it wasn’t for Traditional Martial arts, we wouldn’t have MMA.

So, We are all douchebags cause we like MMA?

Arm bars arent new to wrestling, from 1998:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faaDz7p5X3A