MMA community reacts to Stephen A. Smith’s comments about female fighters

By Tom Taylor - February 3, 2021

Stephen A. Smith is in hot water after expressing his disinterest in seeing women compete in mixed martial arts and boxing.

Stephen A. Smith

Smith recently appeared on the “Black on the Air” podcast, where he expressed his objection to women fighting men in combat sports, and later, his disinterest in seeing women fight at all.

“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,” Smith said (h/t MMA Junkie). “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. 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. 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.”

Unsurprisingly, these controversial rant from Smith did not go over well with a number of female fighters and several women in the MMA media.

https://twitter.com/julesk_fighter/status/1356761684719915008

Several notable male fighters also responded to Smith, expressing their objections to his comments.

Unfortunately, this is not the first time Smith’s comments have gotten him into trouble with fight fans, and given that his schtick depends on making controversial comments, it won’t be the last.

What are your thoughts on the recent comments from Stephen A. Smith?


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Stephen A. Smith UFC