Friday 3 June 2011

UFC cannot condone sexual harassment

Tell me if you've heard this one before: Quinton Jackson is interviewed by a female reporter and acts inappropriately.

Sorry, there wasn't a punchline, just a behavior that has occurred so often that I consider it old hat. Earlier today there were two posts made in the MMA blogosphere regarding Karyn Bryant's interview with Rampage following his win over Matt Hamill at UFC 130 this past weekend.

Ms. Bryant titled her interview "UFC 130's Rampage Jackson on Revenge Fights, His Black Fans + Motorboating".
The first blog to write about this was Cage Potato. The general idea is a look at the definition of Sexual Harassment in Corporate America and a reflection on Rampage's infamous interview with their own video reporter Heather Nichols , where Jackson literally dry humped her for a large portion of the interview. Just so you're up to date on what happened, the video is below:
Ms. Nichols did an interview with Sports Illustrated where she explained she was extremely uncomfortable with the situation and was close to kneeing Jackson in the groin. Cage Potato's quote on the two interviews is sums it up pretty well
If you look back at Quinton Jackson’s history of dry-humping and sniffing the behinds of female reporters, it’s not surprising that he told MMA Heat’s Karyn Bryant following his UFC 130 win over Matt Hamill Saturday night that he wanted to "motorboat" her and that she better get away from him before he "humps" her like he has other women interviewers like our own Heather Nichols.
Following this post, Bloody Elbow's Brent Brookhouse wrote a piece of his own regarding the MMA Media and Fanbase's lax attitude towards females in the sport. He pointed out the apparent hypocrisy of Cage Potato who have a section of the site dedicated solely to Ring Girls. He further acknowledges Bloody Elbow's own exploitation of photo shoots as they are major traffic drivers.
MMA is a testosterone driven sport and with the target market between 18-35 years old, websites are choosing to exploit this by hiring attractive females to interview fighters on camera. Cage Potato chose to have Nichols interview fighters as opposed to hiring a less attractive woman. Heavy.com is guilty with Megan Olivi as their female interviewer. If the media is willing to exploit attractiveness for more views, are they in any position to crucify each other for grandstanding on a soapbox? Karyn addressed the issue today on twitter:
Since every1's asking: if it wasn't already obv, I wasn't offended by @Rampage4real at all. We were clowning around. I thought it was funny!
So if she wasn't offended, why are we? In MMA, women exploit their own sexuality and attractiveness to further their own careers. You don't need to look any further than Miesha Tate, Gina Carano, and Felice Herrig who are all using their looks to become more well known. Have we truly gotten so politically correct that we are offended by anything resembling exploitation? I don't know about the rest of you but I'm in agreement with Karyn, it was a joke and there is no reason for any of this over reaction. Instead of looking for reason to kill the man, how about we all recognize that there are short comings in all of us and we should address those first.

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