For the first time in history, the UFC will have an event on the most publicly accessible channel in the United States, ABC. After coming off of a year where the UFC was the first sport to return after the hiatus, Mixed Martial Arts was for the first time in the main spotlight of all of sports. And the UFC absolutely delivered. They continued on this path delivering massive event after massive event. Their deal with ESPN has been a lucrative one for both ends, even without fans in the arena. And with the UFC on the biggest stage of ABC looming, there is yet another opportunity for the sport to become that much bigger. But why is this so big for the UFC and the sport of MMA? 

 

In 1996, the Late John McCain wrote a letter to all 50 governors requesting them to not hold UFC events in their state calling the sport no more than “human cockfighting”. With this, the UFC had a hard time getting shows done and even getting on TV. But due to this, they were able to create sanctioned rules and thus allowing the UFC to have more longevity. Without the criticism of the early UFC events, the sport wouldn’t have developed the legitimacy and the set of unified rules that they have today.

 

The UFC’s problems did not end there. In the early 2000s, the UFC was losing money and not making a profit. The only thing that saved the UFC and maybe the future of MMA was the deal with SpikeTV. The reality show The Ultimate Fighter brought more eyes to the sport and created a new influx of fans. The show’s epic finale allowed for the relationship with SpikeTV to continue and allowed for the UFC to survive when they were on the path to bankruptcy. 

 

With the UFC set to have their debut show on ABC, it’s good to remember how far the sport has come and how far they have still to go. Going from a sport that was nearly outlawed to now being on public TV, MMA has become bigger than it ever has been breaking through multiple barriers. Dana White has clearly stated that he wants the UFC to become one of the biggest sports globally and with the diversity of fighters signed to the promotion and the platform that it’s on, it’s well on its way to doing that. The UFC on ABC is coming at a perfect time for the sport, now that it’s bigger than ever. With more and more superstars coming out of the sport, the UFC is more recognizable than ever. Having ABC’s platform on Saturday, look for the UFC and the sport of MMA to become one of the mainstays of global sports. 

 

You can follow Johnathan on Twitter @ThreePieceCombo

Armando Salguero, an amorphous globule of spurious right wing sanctimony, dropped a statement on Sunday on Twitter that was supposedly an apology for being an unrepentant insufferable racist-apologist after he got so angry at Ryan Tannehill saying America was founded on racist ideas, his asshole puckered up so tightly it swallowed itself into another dimension like a collapsing blackhole.

Let’s break it all down!

“As our nation grapples with racism and the legacy of slavery, I made some comments on Twitter Thursday night that I would like to address:”

The nation isn’t grappling with racism, Armando. The nation is racist. And it has been so since it was founded. And lots of people are marching in the streets yelling about how racist the nation has been and would like things to change because black people keep getting murdered by white cops for no other reason than being black. And a lot of other people are cheering on the racists who are shooting and murdering those protestors — people that live on the side of the political fence you have firmly planted your flag on. There’s no grappling going on here. You’re either a thing, or you’re not. I don’t grapple with whether or not I hate pineapple on pizza. I fucking LOATHE pineapple on pizza. It’s like some drunk asshole in a Hawaiian shirt jumped up onto the table and took a piss on my perfectly delicious cheese pizza. The fuck, drunk asshole?? Not cool!

See? There’s no grappling there. I don’t wrestle with my hatred of pineapple on pizza. I am a pineapple on pizza HATER. Pineapple on pizza should die of gonorrhea and rot in hell.

“Racism in all its forms is disgusting, wrong, and an anathema to every fiber of my being as both an American and a Christian.”

We’re two sentences into this statement and it’s already devolved into a word salad made up of Armando’s religious beliefs and patriotism, and how being those two things somehow disqualify him as a racist.

Also, how can being an American make racism an anathema to every fiber of your being when every fiber of America’s being IS FUCKING RACIST UP ITS GAPING RACIST ASSHOLE?

You could Google “which Founding Fathers owned slaves.” But it’s probably easier to answer the question, which Founding Fathers did not own slaves (hint: a handful of them did not own slaves while a SHITTON of them did).

The Founding Fathers bought, sold, and traded black people kidnapped from Africa. This is not in dispute. This is not in question. They tore children from their mothers, separated siblings, destroyed human lives, and treated human beings like chattel all so that they could grow crops and cotton and sugar and make lots of money so that they could own even more people. One or two of our Founding Fathers even raped some of the African women they owned multiple times. And then they wrote a document calling for all people to be free (people, in this case, being other whites).

And Americans LOVED that shit. They loved it so much, in fact, that it took them almost 90 years to realize that it was bad to own people and that they should change the laws about it (but not too much because Africans aren’t actually people, after all). And even then Americans had to go to war over this change and murdered the cool president with the beard and made heroes out of the people that founded the KKK because America loved the shit out of owning and subjecting black people.

And then, of course, there was the Jim Crow era and all its various laws and injustices, red lining, segregation, and the murder of Emmett Till and countless other incidents of lynchings, killings, and, of course, Tamir Rice, and Trayvon Martin, and Sandra Bland, and George Floyd, and so and so on and so on and…. But, anathema and fiber and being and whatnot.

“I believe every one of us is made in the image of God and we are all literally related, dating back to Eden.”

Armando’s connection to not being a racist starts with his religious belief that the human race was made in the image of God (weird) and that we as a species originated from the Garden of Eden (rather than, you know, humans migrating from Africa into other parts of the world after billions of years of evolving from a single-cell organism into early hominids like Afarensis into Homo Habilis all the way down to Homo Sapiens, and eventually, into Skip Bayless. BUT I DIGRESS). Which, okay. But what in the holy fuckmonkeys does any of that even mean? I can’t be racist because JESUS and AMERICA.

“I do not deny that the truth about on-going racism or that slavery has been a stain on the entire Earth.”

Holy shit rockets, Armando just pulled a whataboutism on the entire Earth!

“That would be historically illiterate and immoral.”

Yea we wouldn’t want to be historically illiterate, guy who just said that the human race originates from an invisible land where snakes talked.

“So if anyone who sincerely interpreted my comments to suggest otherwise I assure you that is not what I’m about and it was not my intent to cause anyone pain.”

Jesus, is that a sentence?

So, we have three paragraphs of a statement where Armando never actually addresses his original comments, fails to acknowledge his ignorance (or his purposefully ignoring of) historical facts about America, and never actually apologizes for anything. Cool.

Never mind the fact that this entire thing began because Armando was APOPLECTIC over an extremely accurate and correct comment made by former Dolphins quarterback Ryan Tannehill about how America’s history is steeped in racism.

HELL YEA, ARMANDO. How could anyone possibly DARE accuse the great American Land of Patriotic Americans of America of being historically shitty towards black people that’s completely accurate and correct?! That’s an anathema!

The video that got Armando all hot and heavy shows the Tennessee Titans expressing their anger over the shooting of Jacob Blake in Wisconsin last week.

“We want to show solidarity,” Titans safety Kevin Byard says in the video. “And be unified and to say that we’re tired. We’re sick and tired of seeing […] our black brothers and sisters murdered by police like it’s nothing. And I feel like it’s time for a change.”

This is followed by a visibly moved Tannehill saying, “These systematic oppressions have been going on for a long time. For hundreds of years this country was founded on racist ideas.”

Armando stopped there and reached for the nearest pearls to clutch because Tannehill said a thing that insults the Greatest Country In The History Of Historical Things so THERE MUST BE A RECKONING.

Armando logged on and commenced with the tweeting. And then he was justifiably met by the usual replies one gets when one tweets ignorant shit. But as the replies came down, Armando doubled down and began to justify and defend the three-fifths compromise, of all things.

And the source he used to defend it was an article from Prager University, a right wing non-profit organization that denies climate change, promotes fracking, posts videos of dudes saying that “racism, bigotry, xenophobia, homophobia, and Islamophobia are meaningless buzzwords,” and whose founder, Dennis Prager, once said, that the acceptance of homosexuality as the equal of heterosexual marital love signifies the decline of Western civilization. So, you know, more Jesus and America loving non-racists.

So, Armando got all mad at someone saying America is racist and then dug deeper by justifying the clause placed into the Constitution in 1878 that basically used slaves as political chips.

Let’s count the black people as people now so that we can have more representation in Congress!

HERE, HERE.

But let’s not actually count them because, they’re not actually people.

HERE, HERE.

I mean, black people are people… but not like white people are people.

Well that’s a good compromise all us white men in power can agree on!

HERE, HERE.

While most of us sports fans down here are all too familiar with Armando’s bullshit, this time he went NATIONAL. His tweets went viral and he was called out by all manner of people, including some of his own colleagues at the Herald and, eventually, his weak-ass bosses. 

Many have called for his ousting from the Herald because, fuck racism. But the Miami Herald is a news outlet that endorsed the re-election of Katherine Rundle for Miami-Dade state attorney — a woman who has never gone after bad cops her entire 27-year career. So, we suppose we’re probably expecting a bit much when people ask the Herald to shit-can Armando so he can go away and spew his nonsense for Clay Travis and Uncle Tom Whittz.

So, after three days of getting his doughy ass kicked by Twitter (and several Dolphins camp tweets in between), Armando went and released his non apology apology and is now free to continue reporting on the Dolphins and hoping they sign Satan before they sign Colin Kaepernick. And referring to NFL owners as “masters” and the players as “dogs.” And he is free to keep insulting Vietnam veterans who actually fought for this country (incidentally, his apology for that fiasco sounds awfully familiar to his latest apology).

Because Armando says that racism is an anathema to his very fiber. Never mind the fact that he has a long history of spouting right wing horsecockery and never mind the fact that what caused him the most outrage in a video about the evils of racism was not the comments about the evils of racism but the comments about how America was founded on evil racist ideas.

Lost in all this is Ryan Tannehill’s comments. He didn’t just say that America was founded on racist ideas.

He also said this:

“We’re tired of dealing with systematic oppression, we’re tired of dealing with excessive force, we’re tired of seeing black men and women die in situations where they should be walking home and spending time with their families. I have two young kids that, because of the color of their skin, I never have to worry about if they get pulled over by a police officer are they going to make it out of that interaction alive.”

So, instead of hearing a white quarterback acknowledge his own white privilege with regret because black people live a daily terrified existence over losing their lives every single fucking time they get pulled over by a cop, and getting angry at the systemic racism that has allowed this to go on with impunity since the first white guy stepped onto this land and decided to take a shit on people that didn’t look like him, Armando Salguero decided he drew the line at “America was founded on racist ideas.”

If Armando Salguero wants to express his derision toward Ryan Tannehill speaking some hard truths, or about how Kaepernick is the devil incarnate  — as racist and misguided as that derision is — okay. I mean, people are free to tweet out that they believe that magical wish-granting bats will blow out of their assholes when they chant the chorus to Karma Chameleon three times in a row.

And he is free to issue statements about how he loves Jesus and America and the troops, so that automatically disqualifies him from being racist.

But that doesn’t make him any less of an asshole.

He’s not even three-fifths of an asshole.

He’s a whole asshole.

 

Chris Joseph (@ByChrisJoseph) is a host of the Five Reasons comedy podcast, Ballscast. He’s written about sports and movies for Deadspin, Miami New Times, CBS Sports, and several other outlets.