The most annoying kinds of MMA fans

In all fairness Bellator has always had champions the lower weight classes that match up pretty well against their UFC contemporaries. More recently Nemkov at LHW would have a very good chance at beating the last few belt holders.

 

Ok Mark you go back to school and work on your reading comprehension. Nowhere in my post did I dispute that the UFC has the majority of the worlds best fighters.

 

Ok?

 

The ones who get furious when you point out that their favorite fighter isn't a world class specialist in every discipline even if he's the best at mixing different arts together in an MMA context. I saw people on youtube who legitimately believed that Jon Jones was a better pure submission grappler than Gordon Ryan and were incensed at the idea that Jones was the student in their training relationship.

 

Worse MMA fans are the haters. Whether Dana White haters, fighter pay haters, UFC haters, ACA haters...

 

The Dagestani meatriders and the fans that only follow fighters based on their religious affiliations nearly border on subhuman, I've found.

The new phenomena of MMA fans turned boxing analysts from one viewing of the Fury vs. Ngannou fight is a close second. I can feel my brain start to shut off every time I see or hear the phrases "but in a real fight though..." or "you don't see any boxers coming over to MMA." They almost make Fury look like a sympathetic character by comparison.

Every sport probably has these guys, but another one are the people who go back to month old YouTube comment threads to find and ridicule other fans that made an incorrect prediction for a fight. Like, if you were that confident in the result from the beginning, you should have bet everything you had on it and moved yourself out of your mother's basement.

 

I think this is just something that happens in sports in general. Sports have always functioned as a substitute for tribal warfare for many people. As an ever increasing amount of people continue to get disenfranchised in their own personal lives, they turn to sports to feel like they're a part of something bigger than themselves and so they can feel empowered by sharing in that victory. This is more common in team sports, obviously, but you see it in individual sports as well. Regular people feel empowered by the success of a fighter who shares their racial, national or religious background.

I don't think it's necessarily evil to support a fighter of your own race, nationality or religion. People want to support somebody that they can relate to, and there's nothing inherently wrong with that. And it's something that every group does to some extent. The Filipinos supported Pacquaio, the Mexicans supported Barrera, Ukrainians supported Usyk, etc. The problem is that some people take it way too far and use it as an weapon to denigrate other groups of people. At the end of the day, it's just a stupid prize fight.

 

With all sports casual fans are the worst to talk to.