Jordan Breen @ Sherdog has an excellent crackback on the surprising number of people who had issue with Brock Lesnar’s “roping the imaginary bullrope” move after his wall to wall teabagging of Heath Herring at UFC 87. Best line was some crank who responded that he should take some lessons from the two fighters in the main event–to which Breen responds:

My only question: Which guy in the main event? The guy who breakdances and back-flips after victory, or the guy who mean-mugs at the camera, snarling and sneering?

Here’s what is going on here, which Breen alludes to in his column: MMA noobs have an issue that Brock Lesnar used to be a pro wrestler, not realizing that there’s a “who’s who” of MMA fighters who’ve also participated in pro wrestling before, during or after their MMA career. Or that during the “dark ages” of MMA before the NJAC came up with the unified rules and/or before the Fertitta brothers bought the organization that the only people who *cared* about MMA–aside from bloodthirsty meth addicts and bikers–were–you guessed it–pro wrestling fans. Or that there’s a good chance the sport wouldn’t even exist without pro wrestling, particularly in Japan where to make a long story short “shoot wrestling” groups like RINGS and Pancrase and later storied MMA organizations like PRIDE directly evolved out of pro wrestling promotions.

Here’s a quote from an article written by the SAVSCI’s own Malakai the Big Samoan earlier this year where he runs down a few of the many MMA fighters with a pro wrestling pedigree:

Pro wrestling begat MMA, certainly in Japan and a good case can be made for the US as well. Back in the infancy of the UFC the only people that paid attention to the product were bloodthirsty degenerates and pro wrestling fans. Lesnar’s problem wasn’t that he came from a pro wrestling background, rather that he was a superstar in pro wrestling–in the US at least he’s almost certainly the biggest name pro wrestler to involve himself with MMA. He’s far from the first, however. I specifically remember a fighter who’s career began as a pro wrestler. His name was “Mr. Wrestling” Vince Torelli and despite showing a lot of promise in worked matches he soon transitioned into “shoot” wrestling matches in Japan and later the UFC. Don’t remember Torelli? You probably remember him by the name “Ken Shamrock”. He took essentially the same path to the UFC that Lesnar did, only Lesnar had more success as a pro wrestler. Aside from Lesnar and Shamrock there’s any number of MMA fighters that have been involved in pro wrestling in some capacity including Don Frye, Josh Barnett, Kevin Randleman, Mark Coleman and too many Japanese fighters to name. For the UFC to call into question Lesnar’s background when the entire lineage of the sport traces back to pro wrestling is not unlike the great scene in the classic film Casablanca where Claude Rains closes down Rick’s Place after “discovering” that gambling is going on there–and simultaneously collecting his own gambling winnings. It’s an amusing bit of hypocrisy, but not the action of an organization seeking to enhance the legitimacy of MMA.

So if you’re a MMA neophyte (that’s a nice GRE level word that means ‘noob’) thinking you’re showing your “expertise” by panning Lesnar for his pro wrestling background, stop it. You’re only showing that you know nothing of the sport–past or present–beyond what the UFC spoonfeeds you.

Here’s some more of Breen’s excellent column:

Instead, I have been swarmed with and puzzled by dozens and dozens of choleric and venomous messages from incensed fans who have apparently suffered damaged psyches at the hands of Brock Lesnar’s in-cage antics.

That’s right: Lesnar’s curb-stomping of Herring is no longer the issue. What’s really important, what’s really stuck in the craw of fans, is Brock Lesnar laughing at Herring while assaulting him, and an imaginary bull roping of the Texan following the fight.

This is seriously an issue?

We’re embroiled in an unfortunate era of professional athletics where major sports leagues have become comically stringent toward the perceived “excesses” of celebration. The NFL has been tabbed “the No Fun League,” has had to ban the use of “props,” and regularly hands out “excessive celebration” penalties. In the NBA, you can wag your finger to the crowd, but do it in the direction of an opposing player, and you’re facing a fine, never mind the resulting insanity if you make a throat slash, or throw up a Roc-a-Fella dynasty diamond with your fingers. Major League Baseball? Fist pump too hard in the wrong inning after a strikeout, and feel the wrath of millions of crusty octogenarians who still keep score in their pocketbooks at the ball park.

Your most hardened sports fans may see contemporary celebrations as a tad on the ridiculous side, but can still acknowledge that even the most inane dance and pantomime is nothing to be vexed by. In fact, it probably adds a little something to the game by introducing a measure of villainy. If sports fans are to lament this hyper-individualistic era of athletics, shouldn’t we have individual antagonists?

However, if this is the overwhelming sentiment from general sports fans, why are so many MMA fans angered by Brock Lesnar’s Saturday night shenanigans?

“Does he know he’s in a real sport now?” one rankled emailer wrote me. “This is not how MMA fighters in the biggest organization in the world act. He should have looked at the guy in the main event, and taken notes.”

My only question: Which guy in the main event? The guy who breakdances and back-flips after victory, or the guy who mean-mugs at the camera, snarling and sneering?

You can’t throw up a post-fight fist pump without punching another elite level MMA fighter with a post-fight trademark. Chuck Liddell (Pictures) screams. Takanori Gomi (Pictures) surfs on the turnbuckle, and Eddie Alvarez (Pictures) back-flips off of it. Thiago Silva (Pictures) and Josh Barnett (Pictures) have the market cornered on throat slashing. Yushin Okami (Pictures) shows off his swordsmanship. Gabriel Gonzaga (Pictures) assails cameramen. This truncated list doesn’t even account for those who are prone to spontaneous post-fight celebration like BJ Penn, who is liable to lick his opponent’s blood or dead-sprint to the locker room after a W, or Anderson Silva (Pictures), who has dressed up in full Moonwalker garb and given us rhythm guitar lessons after kayos. All of these actions are just as much overtures to the soul of pro-wrestling as those of Lesnar, who is still chided for his WWE wrasslin’ tenure.

So, either we have a predictable double-standard at work, or there’s some other overlooked aspect.

After responding to another up-in-arms emailer by pointing out that MMA is rife and rich with celebratory silliness, I got a response that perhaps gets us to the kernel of the matter.

“Fighters like BJ and Anderson are free to do whatever they want after they win because they earned it,” I was told. “Lesnar has two wins in MMA. He isn’t the UFC champion. He just makes an unsportsmanlike ass out of himself. Laughing the way he did during the fight was classless.”

Never mind the absurd notion that the ability to celebrate athletic triumph is reserved for top-10 fighters. Am I really to believe that four months and change removed from Mike Kyle (Pictures) getting a televised fight on one of the biggest fight cards of the year, and with Gilbert Yvel (Pictures) just having signed with Dream, that Brock Lesnar’s lukewarm cowboy impression are really indicative of unsportsmanlike conduct in MMA?

If Brock Lesnar wants to laugh at his opponents during a fight as he did to Herring, so be it. If his opponents don’t want to be mocked in the middle of a match, they ought to learn how to do more than turtle perpetually.

Some cranky old football purists lament the state of the game, but laud more contemporary figures like Barry Sanders and LaDainian Tomlinson because when they score touchdowns, they simply hand the ball to the referee.

“Act like you’ve been there before,” they all pseudo-wistfully say. But Brock Lesnar didn’t dive the pile from the two yard line. In his third pro MMA fight, he beat a perennially solid if not spectacular heavyweight, in the biggest MMA organization in the world, in front of a partisan crowd on a major pay-per-view. Let the man get his bull rope on. Heath Herring fights in a cage for a living — I think he can handle an imaginary lasso.

Bull Ropes and Bulls–t: “Respect” and other fan foolery @ Sherdog