When people begin to compare sports, MMA and rugby aren’t always the two that people will put together. However, there are a number of different reasons why the two sports are similar – with the violent nature of both games being the key similarity. While one is a team sport and the other is an individual victory, there are a few things that MMA fighters could end up learning from rugby players. One thing that both types of players and fighters have is a strict discipline to train consistently and remain on top of their weight level to ensure their best performance.
Respect
One of the main things that many people praise rugby players for is the respectful nature of the game. While there are a lot of tackles and rough clashing between the two teams within a rugby match, you can be sure that in the majority of cases this will be deemed as simply part of the sport and nothing will ever come of it. However, when it comes to MMA, there seems to be a lack of respectful sportsmanship between some of the players before the match. While trash talking is all a part of the game, as it is with other similar sports such as boxing, sometimes this trash talking can end up going a bit too far. This can be seen with the incident with the press conference between Conor McGregor and Nate Diaz prior to their rematch fight in UFC 202.
This descended into chaos as the stars began to hurl bottles at each other from across the room, with the press in the middle of the fight. This type of respect has led to a distaste for MMA fighters by many people across the world, and while the fight ended respectfully after McGregor won the rematch, it is the build-up that the MMA fighters may want to learn from the rugby players. This type of incident doesn’t normally happen within other sports, even in similar sports such as boxing and Jiu-Jitsu.
Reputation
One of the problems that the MMA sport has as a whole is its reputation for being a ‘barbaric’ sport according to some sources. To put it simply, MMA fighters will enter the Octagon and fight against each other. Although this is the same as within a boxing ring, a lot of people do not see MMA as an athletic sport carried out by professional fighters. However, the sport is beginning to grow, and is one of the fastest growing sports in history for viewership and participation, with the likes of famous faces Conor McGregor and Ronda Rousey being the faces of the sport. Other than the bets that people can put on MMA, there are not a lot of ways that people can really get involved in the sport.
However in rugby with the Autumn Internationals throughout November and December, you can begin to find a way to get even more involved with the likes of the Autumn Internationals rugby score predictor. This may be something that the MMA sport may need to improve in the future. One of the things that the MMA sport as a whole could learn from rugby is a way of building up the reputation amongst the fighters and within the sport. One of the things that MMA does have above most other sports is the fact that matchmakers will put only the best and most competitive fights on with extremely well matched fighters, to ensure that there is not one clear winner throughout the fight.
