RANDOM THOUGHTS

MMA is growing fast, all over the world in fact, UFC is now on Fox, the money in the fight game has not gotten better, its actually gotten worse with the rest of the economy, at least here in the USA, but the opportunites are better, the door is open for guys to really get good at fighting, better training, better facilites, the rest of the world is catching up,  the world has a way of weeding out the pretenders, no more padding records, no more single style training, it is much more difficult for a guy to be a weekend warrior and maybe get a lucky break and fight for a living and live the dream, this is a good and a bad thing, years ago in boxing there really were Rocky stories, these days not so much, back in the day a big puncher could get in shape, learn how to be a banger and with the right management and a couple well placed knock outs he could challange the Champ and maybe be the baddest man on the planet, a gifted kid like Mike Tyson could  fight and punch his way to the top, even now in mma we see Rocky stories, Brain Stann, Tank Abbot, , Forrest Griffin, to name a few, guys who took advantage of the oppurtunity in front of them and the right place and the right time rise to stardom with little more than heart and desire, I hope we dont lose that in mma, we lost it in boxing, boxers are so good at boxing we dont see a good fight very often, if mma gets to elite we might lose our connection to what so many fans identify with, which is what most in the mma world call lving the dream, a wrestler, a boxer, a karatee kid who took what he had, trained hard and dreamed even harder to be a pro fighter, to be able to train and fight for a living and maybe one day fight for the strap, become famous, retire and open a gym and share his wisdom and experience with the new generation,  life and destiny brought about by 2 guys matching skills in a cage, wow the Ken Shamrocks and Royce Gracies of old really gave us a special gift--lets not lose it or let the big corprate players take it away from us, its our thing, our dream, yes lets prosper, yes lets get better, yes lets get world wide recognition, but lets not lose the Spirit that makes mma unique, some are haters, some are trainers, some are fighters, and some are fans--lets keep it this way, what good would it be to gain the whole world and lose the very soul of mma???