{"id":231010,"date":"2025-10-21T22:59:06","date_gmt":"2025-10-21T22:59:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/231010\/"},"modified":"2025-10-21T22:59:06","modified_gmt":"2025-10-21T22:59:06","slug":"mma-has-become-an-aggressively-right-wing-sport-per-prominent-analyst","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/231010\/","title":{"rendered":"MMA has “become an aggressively right wing sport”, per prominent analyst"},"content":{"rendered":"

MMA has been quite overt about its political partisanship as of late, according to one of the most widely known analysts within mixed martial arts. This was discussed during a recent interview conducted by acclaimed MMA great Demetrious Johnson<\/a> when he had Luke Thomas as a guest on his personal YouTube channel. On his channel Mighty, Luke Thomas got into which part of the political continuum the UFC is nestled in, Thomas said,<\/p>\n

\u201cDude, like let\u2019s just be honest, it\u2019s become an aggressively right-wing sport. I bring this up to say, some people will like that, some people will not like that. I\u2019m not trying to tell anybody they don\u2019t have to like that if they, in fact do. In fact, what I\u2019m quite aware of is even if I did, they wouldn\u2019t listen. It\u2019s not really about that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not just because someone has a separate set of politics. Believe it or not, I have actually just endless people in my orbit who don\u2019t share my political opinions on a personal level, it\u2019s not even that. It\u2019s just that it has gotten to a point where they\u2019ll espouse things and say things and then do things that I just don\u2019t rock with.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt makes it a little bit harder for me to personally connect to their stories. But I want to be very clear about this, that\u2019s different than me saying you shouldn\u2019t do that. That\u2019s not what I\u2019m saying. I only live for myself. That\u2019s what I mean.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

MMA discourse and what causes \u201ca little bit of friction\u201d for Thomas<\/p>\n

To Thomas\u2019 characterization of the politics that exist so prominently within mixed martial arts today, Demetrious Johnson<\/a> responded,<\/p>\n

\u201cThe beautiful thing about like you having your platform, I have my platform, somebody else has a platform, they can follow somebody\u2019s story. If somebody does something that you don\u2019t agree with, you\u2019re like oh, f**k that guy. Like I\u2019m not going to follow his story. I mean why the f**k? I mean sometimes I do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thomas further clarified his positioning by offering up an example as he retorted,<\/p>\n

\u201cAgain, this is just living for me. This is not \u2018this is how everybody needs to live.\u2019 That\u2019s not it. Ilia Topuria<\/a> as an athlete is like, I mean can\u2019t miss for me. Like when he\u2019s fighting, it\u2019s like let\u2019s f***ing go, right. Because it\u2019s going to be big stakes and more often than not, he\u2019s going to do something that is probably going to be spectacular one way or the other.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s just important. Like I can\u2019t wait for his next fight. However getting out there and praising the Nelk Boys for a disaster of an interview with a guy wanted for war crimes put a bad taste in my mouth. So that kind of thing, it makes it; a little bit of friction for me.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MMA has been quite overt about its political partisanship as of late, according to one of the most…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":231011,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,66052,786,139334,785,85,787],"class_list":{"0":"post-231010","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-demetrious-johnson","11":"tag-fighting","12":"tag-luke-thomas","13":"tag-mma","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-ufc"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231010"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231010\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/231011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}