I believe we just watched another illustration of the perversions that the entertainment industry can do to the sports. Most readers will have a hard time making sense of this claim: you were all born under this industry’s domain. As every social institution or phenomenon, though, this association has a history. Today, most popular and/or professional sports are part sport, part entertainment. Such combination developed along many years, starting as early as the XIXth century. What we know today as the combat sports (MMA is one of them) comes from an ancient lineage of martial arts born of monastic, hierarchical and warrior traditions. By definition, they were the opposite of entertainment: extremely esoteric, practiced under seclusion and strict moral codes.
In modern sport, when the entertainment component is larger than the sport component in the chimeras in which our athletic traditions were transformed, the athlete is turned into a SHOWMAN. An entertainer.
I ask myself if Anderson Silva had any other option than to play the role he was paid for. No, I don’t think he faked it and he did not throw the fight. I believe this was a very successful show for the entertainment industry and a very unsuccessful fight for Silva.
My horror listening to the nationalist cries from the crowd – “USA, USA…”, “Brazil, Brazil…” only adds to my conviction concerning this thesis.
That is why I fell in love with Syndicate Strength Alliance’s motto: NO IDOLS, NO HEROES, NO LEADERS – JUST PURE INNER STRENGTH. This is sport – the rest is industry.