ESPN says basketball is more difficult than MMA
I have seen a lot of people spew nonsense in my lifetime, but ESPN saying basketball is more difficult than MMA might be the most outrageous take I have ever heard.
ESPN published a study that ranked sports on physical difficulty which reported that basketball is harder than martial arts, wrestling, and several other sports. Check out the full results below:
ESPN ranked sports by difficulty. Golf at #51??? pic.twitter.com/zZOGPrEi2P
— Tour Golf (@TuorGolf) June 28, 2023
How did ESPN determine these rankings?
The ESPN study had a “panel of experts” that determined the final rankings. The results were based on 10 factors: endurance, strength, power, speed, agility, flexibility, nerve, durability, hand-eye coordination and analytic aptitude. In the study, for each sport, the experts ranked how important each factor is to success on a scale from one to 10. The compilation of those rankings determined the final standings.
Before we break into how wrong the study was, I want to acknowledge how biased the panel was. First of all, the panel had eight people. If you know anything about statistics, you know that is a terribly small sample size.
On top of that, seven of the eight experts played or covered a sport. That makes sense from a distance, but the bias jumps off the page. For example, one expert was a senior boxing editor at one point. I wonder how boxing finished first? How did tennis finish seventh? Well, two of the panel members played tennis at a high level.
Why is basketball above MMA?
As far as the rankings go, how can anyone say basketball is harder than MMA? It’s idiotic. I will admit, I am taking a leap of faith in assuming ESPN listed MMA as martial arts. I am not sure if they are trying to rank traditional martial arts and not MMA. That would be even dumber, however. Martial arts is not a single sport it is a category for various different sports. The same question could be asked regarding the wrestling listing. Are they talking about wresting or professional wrestling? Once again, I assume wrestling, but we are clearly looking at a flawed list.
Now the real point is, why is basketball higher than MMA? In what regard is it more physically demanding? According to ESPN, endurance, strength, speed, agility, durability, hand-eye coordination, and analytic aptitude. Wow.
Let’s start with endurance, what’s harder, playing 48 minutes of basketball with halftime and substitutes or fighting for 25 minutes with four one-minute breaks? In basketball, you do not get kicked in the stomach while you run up the court. You need endurance in basketball, but ask Conor McGregor what happens when you get tired in an MMA fight: Spoiler, you get beat up and choked out.
In basketball, it is nice to be strong. I will not deny that. How important is it though? Last time I checked Stephen Curry was not incredibly strong and he is pretty good at basketball. Strength is not an end-all-be-all in MMA either. It does matter though, try grappling with someone that is stronger than you. It is not always easy.
I can see why people would say basketball requires more durability. ESPN stated durability was the ability to take punishment over a long period of time. NBA players have to play 82 games. I’ll never say that is easy. In theory, MMA fighters only need to be durable for open-fight. That said, on that one night, a fighter takes extreme amounts of damage. If you take into account the durability needed to complete a full training camp, MMA is the clear winner.
The most frustrating here is the analytic aptitude result. Once again, I am not saying this is not required in basketball. It takes a lot to read a defense or run an offense. That is not easy. That does not make analytic aptitude more important in basketball than MMA though. Clearly, these people do not know how hard it is to have the intelligence to understand striking, grappling and clinch work at an elite level. In MMA, you need to have a technical understanding of every single martial art. On top of that, fighters make reads off of tendencies and movements in split seconds. If you make the wrong decision or move, you wake up unconscious.
If we are talking about physical difficulty, I have not even mentioned weight cutting yet. That only adds to the difficulty factor too.
I’ll admit, in basketball, you need speed, agility and hand-eye coordination. I won’t argue with the “panel of experts” on those.
I probably should not have given this trash ranking the respect of explaining why it was wrong. If I wanted, I could have called it idiotic and mocked it. But, man, people really do not understand how difficult MMA is. I have not even talked about how boxing is listed as the most difficult even though it is one portion of MMA. I really only touched the tip of the iceberg.
Before I end this post, let me defend the sport of wrestling as well. While the results between MMA and wrestling were not identical, a lot of the points made about MMA can be said about wrestling as well. Once again, it is crazy to call basketball harder than wrestling.
If you are with ESPN and believe basketball is harder than MMA please feel free to leave a comment. I’d love to hear a counter-argument.
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