ESPN sports television personality Stephen A. Smith appeared recently on the “Black on the Air” podcast and discussed women in sports. The conversation began with recent strides women have made in sports, like Kim Ng becoming the first female GM in MLB, and Becky Hammon being the first woman head coach in an NBA game. Smith was positive, but quickly segued into women in combat sports. Then he was not positive.
“First of all, I love it," said Smith, as transcribed by Simon Samano for MMA Junkie. "I think that there’s an awful lot of women that are incredibly qualified to do the jobs that they’re doing. 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."
The vast majority of people would agree with that of course. But then Smith said he didn't like women in mixed martial arts in general.
"When I think about pugilistic sports, I don’t like seeing women involved in that at all," said Smith. "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. 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.
“And so, outside of that, when you think about them in executive positions, first of all they’re smarter than [men] a lot of times, they’re more composed than us a lot of times, they’re incredibly knowledgeable about these respective sports. They’ve had to go through trials and tribulations one couldn’t even imagine most of the time. For them to get to that point, they deserve the opportunity to showcase their skill sets. Just like we have women in corporate America doing an incredible job leading companies, being executives, pushing businesses forward, etc., etc. There’s no reason on earth why they can’t do the same in the sports world. I support it, I’m a fan of it, and I hope we see more of it.”
Below, Smith shows off his Cock Punch technique, imparted by his head sensei, blues musician, philanthropist, environmentalist, animal rights activist, producer, writer, reserve deputy sheriff, 8th-dan black belt in Aikido, and somewhat boyishly handsome action film star, Steven 'Fritão' Seagal. Commentary provided by WMA fan Teddy Atlas.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXNUwh6xbh0
Fritão showing it's really done.