Look, I'm all for the rights of the handicapable to live out their dreams. I firmly believe that they can do whatever they set their minds to. And like most people who haven't replaced their hearts with a cast iron furnace, I'm a sucker for a feel-good story about a guy with no legs who ran a marathon or a kid with no hands winning a Madden tournament or something like that.
But sometimes, the effort to be inspiring goes a bit too far.
Kyle Maynard is an aspiring MMA fighter who has no arms or legs past his joints. The word is, he was a pretty good wrestler in high school, but since there's no real money in professional amateur wrestling (mostly because there is no such thing), Maynard decided to do like all amateur wrestlers are doing these days: Become a shootfighter.
Since the state of Georgia wouldn't issue him a license (state regulators were quoted as saying, "Be serious,"), that only left fighting in a state that singlehandedly makes the case for federally mandated education standards: Alabama. They don't regulate MMA there, because it takes time away from NASCAR.
Basically, to make a long story short, Maynard lost his fight to Bryan Fry, a guy who, while most likely won't ever make the big time, was at least smart enough not to get down on all fours and wrestle Maynard. And to drive home the complete professionalism in this fight, the cage was set up in an open field, with people just standing around and watching.
I'm not going to make fun of the guy, because if I had acheived all of my dreams in life, I would be writing this from my platinum toilet on a NASA computer that I had installed in my bathroom. No one should be allowed to take away your dreams. It's just that someone needs to be there to let the dreamer know that his dream is insane. A limbless cagefighter is about as realistic as expecting radiation to give you superpowers. You can give it a shot, but the humiliating results are only going to relegate you to "YouTube Superstar" status, at best.
I'm pretty sure that Kyle Maynard isn't the only disabled person who wants to be involved in MMA, just like I'm pretty sure that none of them stand a chance against a real MMA fighter. And that has nothing to do with their skills, heart, or anything like that. I say that because the other guy has both hands and feet. That's going to give him an awfully distinct advantage.
So instead of trying to break some sort of imagined barrier for the handicapable, why not just fight against other people who don't have hands? It least then, it can be legitimized and you run less of a risk of getting exploited by greedy fight promoters, like I'm sure you did here.
No comments:
Post a Comment