Bad news story of the day: MMA Underground's "Is the outrage over Cyborg really about aesthetics?"

In just bad news reporting, MMA Underground has an article that is titled "Is the outrage over Cyborg really about aesthetics?"  It mentions how Cris Cyborg seems to be excortiated for steroid use in a way that many other male fighters aren't.  He mentions how the most popular women's fighters - Gina Carano and now Ronda Rousey - are attractive as if it's relevant.  It is not.

But . . . what makes the article horrible isn't that it wonders if Cris Cyborg is being discriminated due to comparisons with prettier fighters.  What the article does is talk about how, y'know, when men are caught for steroid use it doesn't effect their popularity.

The question asked isn't if Cyborg is being discriminated against because she's not pretty but if she's being discriminated against because she's a woman.  Not because she's a not a pretty woman, but more because she fails to satisfy the criteria that most men have for "womanhood".

The answer to that is, "Well, duh, yeah."

A deeper analysis would talk about how men like to define acceptable womanhood and Cyborg has always been a contentious fighter because she destroys male stereotypes about what a woman should look like and how a woman should be.  The idea that a woman should be as physically powerful as a man, more than most men, with the kind of aggression in a fight that one associates with someone like Wanderlei Silva . . . well, that's disturbing to a lot of men.  That she then totally fails to court any particular image of conventional womanhood is doubly troubling - which is why male fight fans embrace fighters like Rousey and Carano, because while they fight, they still "look like women".  They don't challenge as many stereotypes about what a woman should "be", or, more precisely, what a man thinks a woman should be.

So when this unrepentant physical woman fighter, incredibly strong, not just for a woman but period, who has the kind of aggression we associate with the most terrifying fighters, who then goes on to reject most of the forms of womanhood - she doesn't try to go around pretty, she walks around pretty much exactly like any elite male athlete might go, lots of t-shirts and comfortable shoes, sexist men look for a reason to hate her.  Her steriods bounce merely gave them that rationale.  They can say she's bad for the sport, she's a cheat, so forth and so on, even when they're far less interested in condemning male fighters for the same misdeeds (much less the discussion about testosterone replacement therapy, where men can legally acquire anabolic steroids!).

The question isn't if Cris Cyborg is discriminated vis-a-vis other women.  It's simply how much she's being discriminated due to sexist bullshit.  (Right answer: a lot.)

So, bad article!  Bad!

Ronda Rousey might not be very good for MMA's image

For my own part, I don't care if she's good for MMA's image.  For crying out loud, it's a semi-legal fistfight in a cage.  Pretending that sports in general and MMA in particular encourage good, upstanding people is an exercise in futility.  They are people looking for a legal way to beat the shit out of other human beings.

That said, the UFC is pretty interested in creating a good image for MMA.  Which is why they are forced, against their personal preferences, to support a fighter like Georges St-Pierre.  He's so wholesome, amirite?  They initially tried to pitch John Jones like that, a good Christian family man, but he turned out to be too weird.

I think they're making a slightly different, but related, mistake with Rousey.  Unlike Jones, who is hard to like because he's weird, Rousey is hard to like because she's so petty and mean.

So, recently, she said she would love to "beat the shit" out of Brian Caraway, Miesha Tate's boyfriend, because of stuff he said on Twitter.  She won't because she thinks he's the kind of "bitch" who would "sue". (Perhaps she doesn't understand that assault is generally charged under criminal statues and the real risk is prison.)

She is hardly, of course, the first fighter to hate another fighter.  (Though it is, perhaps, the first time a championship fighter has had such a public fight with two other fighters who are a couple.)  And it's interesting to see such an aggressive woman (though, let's be fair, she's doing something I find pretty chickenshit - she's the one hiding, saying she'd beat up so-and-so if not for the law . . . . I mean, I feel the same way, I'd totally beat the shit out of John Jones except it's against the law; that's what's stopping me, the law, really, I swear) but the more she opens her mouth, the more shallow, petty and mean she comes off.

Seriously, you'd beat a guy up because of what he says on Twitter?  Ronda, grow up.  It's fucking Twitter.  You don't want to get bent out of shape?  Stop going on Twitter.  Or use some sort of filter so you never see or hear what Tate and Caraway say.  It's not that hard.

But, no, she's the kind of person who gets bent out of shape over Twitter and then says she'd beat someone up if the law didn't stop her.  Ugh.  That's so . . . thirteen year old asshole on the Internet.  The faux bravery ("I'd beat them up IF . . .") combined with the juvenile rationale for the problem.  Rousey ends up looking, to me, like a twerp, a childish Internet bully who just happens to know how to armbar people.

I suspect there's going to be a Frank Shamrock thing going on.  Sure, she's the baddest woman in the world - well, except when she dodges fights with Cris Cyborg, so the second baddest woman in the world, let's be honest - but, like Shamrock, she's a not-too-bright bullying asshole.  She is going to remind people that MMA is a sport of brutal jerks.  For a bit, little girls will go, "I want to be like her!"  But, like Shamrock, as time goes on and she becomes absurd, those same people will sigh and shake their heads, reminding themselves that they were children when they admired her.