Is "Honor" important in MMA?

IP  - There's a lot of ritualistic respect that goes on in TMA McDojos.



 fixed

 I don't think its as important in MMA altough you still see a lot of the formalities that are associated with respect in TMAs--bowing before entering the cage, touching gloves before the fight, congratulating the winning fighter after the fight--but the reality is that winning takes precedent over how the fight is waged in MMA.

TheClips -

In some sense you are right, but if you take two people with equal fighting ability and one has honor and respect and the other doesn't and you had to label one as being more of a martial artist than the other, which would you pick?



Which would Dave Camarillo pick? Anderson Silva? Bruce Lee (if you wanna go that direction with the argument)? Other authorities on the martial arts or mixed martial arts?



I'm saying that to be a COMPLETE martial artist, you have to have honor, at least in my opinion. Otherwise you're just a fighter.
I feel that a man should be honorable regardless of what he does.  I think that different disciplines would like to see people of good character represent their art and therefore try to instill those qualities in their students.



I still don't think that Martial Arts and Honor are interdependent.



Martial Arts are defined as:

  any of several arts of combat and self defense (as karate and judo) that are widely practiced as sport.


Nothing about honor in that definition.