With the past weekend’s CBS broadcast of an MMA fight and the subsequent mass reaction this week, I figured now would be a good a time as any to describe why I am, at best, suspicious of this new trend. Mixed Martial Arts fighting seemed to have popped up over the past decade as a largely organic movement. For the most part, there was little mainstream coverage, but the sport still managed to grow rapidly. And that’s about the one thing I find impressive about the whole MMA craze.

One of the tenets of modern sport is the existence of set rules of play. All sports including existing competitive martial arts like jujitsu, boxing, and kick boxing have established rules and styles. People aren’t simply free to do whatever they want, and the adaptation of players to excel within the defined rules that makes sport impressive. Take basketball for example. The fundamental rule of dribble movement makes the sport fundamentally more complicated as it forces people to adapt their style of play to fit the rules. Basketball would be out of business if it just consisted of people running up and down the floor carrying the rock and shooting Js. However these rules don’t seem to apply in MMA. The sport largely consists of setting two guys in a polygon wailing on each other with whatever style they so please, and half the time it involves both fighters locked up grappling on the floor. If I wanted to see this garbage, I’d go to my local sketchy bar and watch late-night brawls.

It is often argued that these MMA fighters are tremendously skilled athletes who train relentlessly to perfect their craft. This may be true, however in general the more people have to describe to me how much skill and athleticism is involved in a given sport, the more suspicious I get. I should be able to detect these skills on my own, and watching a couple of dudes grappling on a mat isn’t convincing me.