By Raul Rangel
So, another UFC event has come and gone, two fights ended in controversy; luckily the main event will get a rematch. But, after all is said and done I picked up the local sports paper, The San Antonio Express News, and not one mention of the event. Now I should not be surprised anymore about this subject as much as this sport keeps moving forward it’s the old school thinking that keep this sport from becoming fully mainstream. So let me go section by section and tear apart this dinosaur of a newspaper.
Front page, not like I’m expecting front page cover, but here is what is on it. Okay the night before San Antonio was packed with sports; Spurs were playing their final home game before the Rodeo Road Trip and Julio César Chávez vs. Marco Antonio Rubio were headlining HBO Boxing at the Alamodome. And, then there is a small excerpt about the something called the Super Bowl. This I am fine with makes sense to add all these articles to the front page.
Page 2 is usually filled with news clips that the local papers get from the Associated Press, sometimes the writers will take credit as it being their own stories. So the top section is called, Sports News Scanner, the night before the Super Bowl the yearly awards were given out and it went into detail about the winners. But, then there are two little news clips on one on Serena Williams winning her match at the FED Cup, and then there’s a article on Lindsey Vonn winning her 50th World Cup…in Germany. We live in Texas barely any snow; we can’t even have a decent snowball fight when it does snow here. So, not taking anything away from Mrs. Vonn but who cares really? Then there is more football, again understandably, and an article on golf written by the Associated Press.
Page 3 is all about boxing and that’s cool, not so bad. The top has an interview with MMA’s best friend Bob Arum, then a few articles on the previous night event at the Alamodome. Then there is a lower section that goes into boxing around Texas. Okay I still get this due to the fact HBO boxing was there the night before.
Page 4 once again more football this time it is the local hall of fame and then it goes into who will be in the Football hall of fame in Canton.
Page 5 is all about the NBA and recapping the box scores.
Page 6 more NBA top article has an unimportant story on an early MVP. The middle article has to do with point gaurds in the NBA, and then at the bottom of the page is power rankings and for some reason an clip it on Kevin Love being edged out of the All-Star game by Blake Griffin. I still get it basketball has been around.
Page 7 is mostly San Antonio Spurs and that’s understandable.
Page 8, 9, and10 all Super Bowl maybe a little much I’m getting tired of it already.
Page 11 high school sports actuality I am happy about this as they finally made mention of wrestling in high schools. San Antonio has been far behind when it came to amateur wrestling and now some schools have started up programs. I’m not going to take away anything from this section as these kids should be mentioned in the paper.
Page 12, 13, 14 now I’m pissed nothing but college basketball, really does there need to be 3 pages dedicated to college basketball? All they talk about mostly teams not in Texas and when they do talk about Texas teams they are very small articles. And to top it off at the bottom of page 14 they give the box score to every single college game. Enough with college basketball wait till March when people give a damn.
Page 15 now there finally has to be something on MMA as this page is dedicated wrapping up all the sports…nope. It just recaps all the previous sports that were just mentioned on the other pages, but they added important sports such as skiing, fishing, and the American Hockey League. Really, not one mention at all in this section, it’s a shame on these writers and shows that they do not care about younger readers. Oh wait a minute!
Page 16 the last and final page it has to be here, and no. All that is on there is the weather a small Associated Press article on horse racing and car ads.
What else does this sport need to do in order to get the proper recognition it deserves? The UFC has done all the right moves working with the states officials, getting on national television, and getting mainstream sponsors. I blame one man in San Antonio named John Whisler, the boxing writer for The Express News. He has covered less and less when it comes to MMA, when Bellator and WEC came into town he had a look like this was beneath him. But, when I covered boxing events and saw him there he was all over the place covering everything left to right. Now, I do like John and have even offered to show him some stuff in order to understand MMA, but to no avail he never took me up on the offer. I have talked to pro MMA fighters that live here in San Antonio and they have made mention of their dislike foe his reporting on them. Three fighers he lacks mentioning that have/had great careers in MMA that he has hardly covered are Aaron Rosa who is in the UFC, Pete Spratt – former UFC fighter that has had a great career fighting for different organizations, and Richard Odoms who is right now in the finals for ProElite heavyweight tournament.
Something in me thinks that maybe we should stray away from the mainstream press and do our own thing. It seems to be working as the UFC is doing tremendous work on the FUEL network and ESPN doing a somewhat decent job covering the sport. Also, websites like mmajunkie.com, mmafighting.com, and TXMMA.com continue to do a great job of providing coverage until the mainstream media decides to join us in the now. It’s about time.
You can follow Raul Rangel on twitter @rrangel81 and you can also listen to his weekly podcast Undefeated Radio on iTunes. LIKE TXMMA on Facebook for more in-depth news and coverage of the MMA & grappling scene along with fan contests to win great prizes courtesy of TXMMA.com and much more. Also feel free to check us out on Twitter and Google+ for even more in the world combat sports!
