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Stephen A. Smith recently voiced his opinion about the presence of women in combat sports and the MMA community has not taken kindly to his comments.
Stephen A. Smith was on the 'Black on the Air' podcast hosted by comedian Larry Wilmore when the two landed on the topic of women earning executive roles in sports. Larry highlighted the recent appointment of Kim Ng as the general manager of Miami Marlin, citing the increase in management roles given to women in men's sports leagues.
However, Stephen A. Smith's say about the matter was not restricted to the topic of the conversation. About the topic Larry brought up, Smith said:
"I love it. I think that there’s an awful lot of women that are incredibly qualified to do the jobs that they’re doing."
Carrying on, Stephen A. Smith added:
"Where I jump off the bandwagon is when they try to engage physically. For example, I don’t ever want to see a woman boxing a man. I don’t want to see that. I don’t want to see a woman in the UFC fighting a man even though there are some women out there that’ll kick a dude’s butt. We get all that."
While the UFC has not seen a 'male vs female' contest yet, that was not the only thing that Stephen A. Smith was worried about.
"When I think about pugilistic sports, I don’t like seeing women involved in that at all. I just don’t like it. I wouldn’t promote legislating laws to prohibit them from doing so, but I don’t want to see women punching each other in the face. I don’t want to see women fighting in the Octagon and stuff like that, but that’s just me," said Smith.
"What I would adamantly be against is them fighting men. I don’t think that’s cool. Plus, you don’t ever want to give men license to believe that it’s all right to be physical with a woman, to be quite honest with you. You don’t want to do that," Smith added.
Here's how the MMA community reacted to Stephen A. Smith's comments
There was a largely unilateral response to Stephen A. Smith's comments about not wanting women to fight. The MMA community does not want Stephen A. Smith talking about the sport.
This is not the first time that Stephen A. Smith's take on the sport has received backlash. When Conor McGregor returned to UFC in January 2020 to face Donald Cerrone, Smith had some interesting takes on the fight. His post-fight comments did not sit well with the MMA community.
In fact, color commentator Joe Rogan, too, strongly expressed that Stephen A. Smith should not be allowed to talk about fighting.
