USA TODAY has an article about judo and its applicability to MMA. It focuses on a female competitor named Ronda Rousey who’s among the top competitors for a gold medal at the next Olympics. While we’re always happy to see judo get some publicity in the media, this article comes off as somewhat clueless:

The frenetic competition in the cage has enticed several accomplished college and international wrestlers — such as Randy Couture, Brock Lesnar and Urijah Faber — to sign up with MMA promoters. But MMA also has plenty in common with one of the Olympic martial arts — judo.

Judo resembles MMA’s grappling aspects, particularly when both fighters are on the ground. MMA fans would easily recognize judo’s submissions — a fighter might “tap out,” or concede the fight, when caught in a chokehold or an armbar.

It’s little wonder Ronda Rousey, known for winning many of her bouts by armbar, has heard people suggesting she could switch sports.

“I have quite a few people who have been trying to get me to do MMA,” Rousey says. “A coach has been talking to me about teaching me striking (punches, kicks) after the Olympics.”

For now, she’s focused on Beijing. Then she might focus on education and, perhaps, twisting her mother’s arm.

“My mom’s generally not a big fan of the idea, so we’ll see if I can convince her,” Rousey says.

Ryan Reser hopes that curious MMA fans will check out his sport.

“I just try to promote our sport as much as possible and say, ‘Look, we’ve been doing this for years.’ ” Reser says. “Obviously we’re not into striking and all that stuff, but the same competitive takedowns, arm locks, chokes … we’ve been doing that forever.”

The whole tone–as well as the title of the article–suggests that fighters with a background in judo don’t exist currently in MMA. That would be news to Hidehiko Yoshida, Karo Parysian and quite a few others. Granted, an amateur wrestling background is more common, but there’s already a significant judo influence on MMA. Since Parysian has been relatively high profile in the UFC over the past couple of years this ‘head in the sand’ approach to judo in MMA can’t be rationalized by the mainstream media’s view that the sport begins and ends in the UFC’s octagon.

Do judo stars have MMA chops? @ USA TODAY