Larry Merchant Reacts To Dana White's Insults, Respects UFC's Street Fighting Revenue

My dad is 62 and used to be a boxer in his youth, but he appreciates MMA. He preferred Pride though, too much wrestling in the UFC (and he hates GSP with a passion, I never dared to show him a Fitch fight though, I don’t want to alienate him forever).

I understand where’s he coming from. A totally different era in American history.
I can understand how watching a fighter break his opponent’s arm is not appealing. Yes, it doesn’t happen often in MMA but . . . yeah, the sport is beyond brutal.

I agree with Merchant on his take concerning fighters that highly regard in MMA with less than 10 – 15 fights. Yes, I’m still baffled about Lesnar’s ranking prior to his fights against Carwin and Velasquez.

And can we stop dissing Merchant because of his age? He’s very capable at doing his job. Yes, he has personal issues (blatantly disrespectful) with Mayweather, Tyson and I recall him throwing shade towards Roy Jones Jr., but at least he’s not trying to kiss ass.

Larry…….Merchant……….should…………retire…………

Seriously though, I don’t expect my parents to change and they’re only in their 60’s and they do and say some strange shit. He’s an old man from a bygone era. That’s about all there is to that.

that guy has no respect to nothing. all he does is talking shit even in boxing business.

i think mayweather went too far but i understand why. it wasn’t his first time, merchant talked shit when mayweather fought with one injured hand (cant remember which fight it was) and he said mayweather doesnt even know how to box.

and this now? dana wasnt talking shit about boxing he was talking about merchant’s attitude and now he talks shit about mma? hes too stupid and too disrespectful to be a commentator

anyway my point is hes too old and has no respect towards anything. i doubt that HBO will actually fire him but i hope they do.

I’ve never understood the complaint about o these guys have more than 3 losses they must be all utter shits.

because they have easy fights before they come up to major organizations.

for example, pacman’s record before fighting for WBC was 24-1 already

and also they fight some lower-tier level boxers even when they are in major organization.

yes i think brock was some extreme case but look at other fighters. cain was 8-0 when he fought for the title, gsp 7-0, 12-1, 15-2, and a siva 18-4. i think those records are worthy enough to get a title shot

I don’t get a so-called sport in which you can have a 6-2 record and be called a world champion.

Well the Packers were 5-3 last year through 8 games and 14-6 once you include the playoffs.
The Giants went 103-74
The Bruins 62-34-11
Mavericks 73-30

Context my friend, context.

Why get outraged about this? Merchant doesn’t understand MMA. Boo-hoo.

The only thing that irks me a bit is the “6-2 record and be world champion” comment. People fight, not many gimme fights, no padded records just trying to be the best to get one undisputed belt, not 3 paper belts and one legit one.

He offered a coherent explanation of why he doesnt like it. That’s hardly criticism.

And by his own reasoning, he doesn’t understand any of the major sports. Imagine him trying to understand baseball, where the best team each year loses over 50 games. So that Larry Merchant doesn’t “get” MMA isn’treally a knock against MMA, and I think even Larry Merchant knows that.

oh grandpa.

I really don’t see what Merchant said in his response that warrants such bile and hatred sent his way. Seemed like a perfectly reasonable, calm, and gentlemanly response.

Some of the comments here are rather disturbing and make me feel somewhat ashamed to be a member of this community.

1. Dana has every right to criticize Larry’s behavior and performance. But does anyone notice the irony in him calling him disrespectful and embarrassing and then following it by calling Merchant 102-years old, senile, and out of his mind? Way to demonstrate how it is done, Merchant’s response was pretty respectful, all things considered. But hey, he did lavish love on MMA so obviously he was dissing it.
2. As Brookhouse has pointed out (as I have in previous threads as well) those boxing records aren’t really padded. Sure there might be some showcase fights in there but boxing has evolved over the century of Marquess of Queensberry Rules, AAU, and NBA. There is a great filtering and development process that goes into making a boxing, redefined over the decades. Fighters come out of the amateurs and are given a winnable fight to get their feet wet and confidence up. They are then given a new challenge at every step to work on speed, defense, stances, defending against a good left hook, how to handle power, etc. If they don’t go through this process you can ruin a young fighter completely. For an example see what happened to Luis Resto’s career when he was thrown to the wolves early.
But after that development phase where are the cans? Manny is 53-3-2 and his last 20 matches have all been against world class top 10 ranked fighters. For the last decade Mayweather has only been facing the best fighters in the world.
Maybe Brock would have benefited on getting a chance to work on his fight game more before getting thrown into the deep end? Maybe if he faced a few strikers to work up his confidence against he wouldn’t have looked so lost against Carwin and Cain?
3. If you are worried about all the champions focus on RING magazine’s #1. There, now you have a champ in each division.

instead of nutt-huggin rogan and goldberg. it’s like those guys are afraid to say anything negative about UFC cause uncle dana might whip them?! it’s a shame when a 80 year old is more colorful than guys who consider themselves “edgy”

People say MMA doesn’t have a long history, but in a sense it does. The history of wrestling, judo, bjj, kickboxing and muay thai are all in a sense parts of the history of mma.

i prefer the world champ’s @ 6-2 in MMA rather than the world champs of boxing who build their undefeated records largely in part on guys that are 3-12

I was playing Fight Night Champion today, and I had an 1-2 record in 3 bouts I had played today, but two of those opponents were some of the biggest jerks I had played against. In my lone win, the SOB I was playing against picked Mike Tyson right as the boxer select screen came on. I picked Muhammad Ali to fight him (he pushed me to it) since Tyson is a cheap ass character. And when the fight started he was throwing low blows and headbutts right out of the gates. It didn’t throw off my plan so I kept jabbing him on the outside, until he got rocked, and got a knockdown in the first round. I kept doing this until the third, where he got hurt again, so I went in after him. But right as I was about to throw a left hook that would have ended the fight, he threw a headbutt that got the ref to stop the fight and deduct a point, but he had recovered by the time the fight was restarted. I ended up knocking him out in the 5th but this was really annoying.

On the other dick online opponent, he had highlighted one of the mid-tier ranked fighters in the weight class (heavyweight). So in attempt to have a fair fight, I had selected a fighter who was at about the same level. And right after I had selected him, the bastard turns around and picks Isaac Frost, who has the highest stats and attributes in the game. For those who play UFC Undisputed 2010, this is the equivalent of seeing your opponent have his cursor over Drew McFedries and you select Nate Quarry as a show of good faith, and the guy turns around and picks a 6"6 CAF with maxed out stats while you don’t know what hit you. And he is the only guy in the game who can get away with spamming uppercuts, so I got my ass kicked by a goddamn spammer.

Sorry I went on too long, I’m just so aggravated about it.