Frye: “It’s Just a Circus Act”
John Morgan of MMAJunkie has a great article with Don Frye on the subject of James Toney and other professional athletes looking to jump into MMA.
“I tell you what: Anybody who fights an [expletive] like James Toney or Herschel Walker or Jose Canseco or any of them other [expletives] that come into our sport at their age should be required to take them down and break as many bones as possible on them and keep them crippled for six-to-eight weeks,” Frye recently told MMAjunkie.com Radio. “I’d break both their [expletive] arms so they’d have to hire somebody to wipe their ass for the next six-to-eight weeks. It should be a requirement.”
Former pro footballer Walker makes his mixed martial debut for Strikeforce on Jan. 30. Former baseball star Canseco infamously fought under the DREAM banner in May 2009.
Frye believes former professional athletes entering the MMA game at such an advanced age are hurting the current state of the sport.
“That’s why nobody respects this sport, and it’s just a circus act right now,” Frye said. “They have these morons come in at the age they should be sitting in the retirement home, and they walk in and get a high-dollar fight.”
Payout Perspective:
I certainly don’t condone breaking bones or crippling people, but the point Frye makes is well taken: MMA cannot be a stop-over for all of these over-the-hill professional athletes just looking to make a quick buck and capitalize on MMA’s popularity. That’s the surest way for the sport to be dismissed and labelled a fad.
We’ve got all of these examples in front of us – IFL, EliteXC, Affliction, etc. – that all jumped the gun with excess spending, delusions of grandeur, and freak show fights. The sooner the industry learns from these examples the better.
The long term future of the sport demands that MMA stay its course and do things the right way, but James Toney is a shortcut. He’s not 30 years old or even in decent shape; he’s a 43 year-old washed up boxer that trains MMA with his daddy.