An Open Letter to Matthew Roth

That’s exactly how we do go about changing the landscape of MMA journalism. We, the fans, should demand better professionalism from the people who cover this sport, if we are to consider this a sport to begin with.

In order to see some sort of change in the way this sport is covered, it has to start as close to the top as it gets. The top being the people who run the sport, the middle being the media, the middle-men who report the news, who bring the breaking stories from management or from the fighters(the top), who then bring the news and stories to the fans(the bottom).

I’ve railed forever about how pathetic the coverage pertaining to this sport has been. Atrocious really. Even the people who are considered “the best” in the business, most of them only got where they are today because they were fortunate enough to be one of a handful of writers (I’m not ignorant enough to call them journalist) around early enough to be considered “journalist”, and I use that term as loosely as possible. People can say Josh Gross is a journalist all they want, I’m not buying it. Same for Tomas Rios, Sherwood, etc… Covering something almost from it’s inception does not make someone a journalist. Bloggers are not journalist unless they actually went to college to get a degree of some form in journalism, then they end up starting a blog on the side. Doesn’t mean they give up their day job, it just means they still cover the sport, but are able to take the time and take their knowledge and put it into a form that’s easily accessible for the viewing public in small, easy to digest publications. Anyway…

The strangest thing I’ve seen are people who consider themselves actual media members, actual journalist, either talk shit or try to bury Iole, Gareth A. Davies, Franklin McNeil and one or two other actual, professional journalist for their style of coverage.
If anyone actually believes any one of those guys I mentioned are not Journalist, I’m afraid you are a lost cause. You’ve been exposed to the HuffPost’s of the world for far too long.

That type of news is the furthest thing from actual, college degree toting, “card carrying” media members who can accurately cover the news without some form of bias that doesn’t show thru. Does Iole shill for Dana White? Of course he does, but that gets him actual news stories.

Nothing wrong with that and if any of you knew anything about how stories are broke and actual news is reported in other areas, one would recognize who truly is capable of doing this sport a service, unlike 98% of the blogs, rumor sites, joke word press pages, bloggers, snarky ass critical hypocrites, and all around negative assholes that currently make it harder and harder for people who actually enjoy keeping up with every little detail about such a small yet quickly booming sport, still in it’s infancy.

 It’s one of the reasons I’ve turned to twitter more and more over the past 2 1/2 years. I get more intelligent, accurate, and speedy news breaks on twitter, from the people who know how to break a news story, long before most of these glorified blog sites are capable of.

They’ve actually caught on to how things are on twitter lately. It wasn’t always like that though. Even still, UFC has learned the best way to control who learns about what and when, is to break things theirselves.

There is something inherently wrong with that, and the reason why goes back to the whole point of this argument. If there were more professional writers and journalist covering the sport, willing to do their jobs and go out and cover MMA as if it were any other topic any other actual member of any other type of media would, UFC wouldn’t feel compelled to turn to social media to do their jobs for them.

That’s probably a lie, UFC would still turn to twitter to try to subvert the narrative, to control the print the best they could, but at least there would be some form of legitimate resistance, unlike there is today.

Tomas Rios telling fans, people who help make this sport what it is today, their participation of the sport, telling them “I’ll shut you down so fast, It’s not even funny”, all because some fan had a criticism of a fight/fighter and called into a radio talk show?

Josh Gross writing a snarky, arrogant open letter to the owners of the single successful mma organization, coming off as an immature prick who felt like mma was his sport and his sport alone, telling said owners how they should run their business, and doing it in such an open forum, what else did he expect Dana to eventually do, other than ban him.

How was any of that professional journalism, forget professional behavior.

I remember media members, (the longer this post runs, the more embarrassed I am at calling them media members) some of which worked here at BE, kidnate I’m looking at you, criticized Franklin McNeil for the information he broke hours before the fight, that Shogun had actually damaged his knee on the run up to the week of the fight, yet was willing to continue anyway.

They bashed the shit out of Franklin and to this day I still have yet to hear a valid excuse on why. Maybe it was how he did it, hours before the main event, but when else was he supposed to break the news?

As soon as he find out anything that could be considered breaking news, that when.

The point being, most of them bashed the hell out of him, until there was enough doubt cast on whether or not his reporting was accurate, only to find out on 3 different occasions, at 3 different times, that yes indeed Shogun had tore his knee up, exactly how McNeil had reported.

Last I checked, from all the years of following other sports, other entities where breaking of the news is involved, that’s what professional journalism is supposed to look like. Not some stupid fucking blog.