Meryl Streep invited backlash from the MMA community by declaring that MMA isn’t an art.
What’s the story?
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The 74th edition of the Golden Globes Awards took place on Sunday, January 8th 2017. This event is a huge occassion, particularly for Hollywood personalities and fans alike. On this momentous occassion, renowned Hollywood actress Meryl Streep, rather unknowingly, took aim at the very foundation of the legitimacy of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) as an art.
Meryl Streep went on stage to receive her Cecille B. DeMille lifetime achievement award and in the process of giving her acceptance speech, went on to make statements that would result in her drawing the ire of the entire MMA community.
Streep, initially, started off her speech taking potshots at newly elected US President Donald Trump, however, in closing, she made a highly discriminatrory statement against the sports of MMA and American Football.
The backlash that she has raceived over the past few days has involved multiple big name personalities from the MMA community. Now, we can also include Conor McGregor to that list as evidenced by the animated parody posted by him on his Instagram page.
In case you didn’t know:
Meryl Streep is one of the most famous Hollywood actresses of all time. She has won multiple awards and been nominated for several other honours. Just like most of Hollywood, Streep is, apparently, strongly anti-Trump in her political views due to Trump’s past misdeeds.
Streep went on to accuse Trump of being discriminatory towards, the so-called ‘outsiders’, in America. On the other hand, Conor McGregor is, currently in the top 5 pound-for-pound list in the world MMA rankings.
McGregor is never one to shy away from the spotlight, and regardless of who the person concerned is, he always seeks to get in the final word.
The heart of the matter:
A few excerpts from Meryl Streep’s award acceptance speech are as follows-
"Who are we, and what is Hollywood anyway? It's just a bunch of people from other places," proclaimed Streep during her acceptance speech. " ... So, Hollywood is crawling with outsiders and foreigners. And if we kick them all out, we'll have nothing to watch but football and mixed martial arts, which are not the arts."
In response to this big time diss to MMA, several top MMA personalities have weighed in on this issue, most of them strongly disagreeing with Streep. Most recently though, MMA’s biggest pay-per-view draw and the Undisputed Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) Lightweight (155 pound) champion of the world, ‘The Notorious’ Conor McGregor, posted a hilarious parody video involving animated versions of himself, Streep and the movie character ‘Rambo’.
The parody also features animated versions of Ronda Rousey’s coach Edmond Tarverdyan, UFC President Dana White and longtime UFC commentator Joe Rogan.
The scene involves Streep taking the stage to give her award acceptance speech, then going on to declare that MMA isn’t a part of the arts. In response to this, the animated version of McGregor throws a ‘Monster Energy Drink’ can at Streep, however, ‘Rambo’ steps in to save the day, and then, goes on to attack the White and Rogan characters.
What’s next?
As of now, the iron is still hot, and Streep is facing severe backlash not only from the MMA community but from martial artists all over the world. Streep clearly stated her disdain for MMA and refusal to consider it as an ‘art’, however, her discriminatory statement looks all the more silly when you consider that her entire speech was about equality and non-discrimination.
In the process of throwing shade at Trump and appealing to the people to stand against discrimination, Streep made a mockery of herself by ending her speech with such an ignorant statement regarding MMA.
In stark contrast to Streep, ‘Notorious’, simply, seems to be making light of a controversy that Streep created by her sheer ignorance. Regardless of what Streep or any famous pop culture personalities think about MMA, MMA is marching on towards mainstream media dominance.
As far as the video is concerned, the premise is hilarious and all the criticism about Streep shouldn’t really be taken seriously. The video has purely been made to make light of this hilarious situation.
Sportskeeda’s Take:
Meryl Streep is a huge global superstar- this, in itself, is an understatement. Streep, like each and every one of us, has every right to express her personal opinion. However, using such an incredibly huge public platform to disrespect an entire sport doesn’t seem like a good idea for anyone, let alone a highly respected artist like Streep.
Streep should’ve exercised an amount of restrain while speaking about a community that she, obviously, isn’t really knowledgeable about. Streep has, quite literally, made a mockery of herself owing to her ignorance and elitist disdain for things that she isn’t familiar with.
Meanwhile, the MMA community continues to make Streep the butt of all their jokes. Conor McGregor is the same. All this chaos has, in fact, served to further MMA’s popularity and acceptance in the mainstream media since a multitude of MMA fans have come out in droves to criticise Streep’s offensive comment. And the ‘Notorious’ one, being the media darling that he is, didn’t let go of this golden oppurtunity to promote himself by mocking Streep.
For now, we’ll just have to wait and see where this MMA vs Meryl Streep circus moves our beloved sport to. Till then, rest assured MMA fans, because MMA, most definitely, is an art.