Stephen A. Smith Goes On Unprompted Rant About Women In Combat Sports: ‘I Don’t Want To See Women Fighting In The Octagon’

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Paige VanZant makes her Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship debut this Friday, February 5th at Knucklemania, the promotion’s biggest event of the year.

After two weeks of massaging, my wife has given me clearance to invite the fellas over to tune in, and I urge you all to do the same.

One man who is not invited to my place to guzzle eight-to-ten double IPAs over the fastest growing sport on the planet is Mr. Stephen A. Smith. Rest assured, he is not sad about it.

Smith, who has gotten heat for his blowhardish opinions on combat sports in the past, may have painted his Mona Lisa of buffoonery in a recent interview with The Ringer’s Larry Wilmore on his “Black on the Air” podcast.

Wilmore asked Smith about his opinion on women taking positions as coaches and executives in sports, and after Smith offered a limp “I love it,” he spiraled into an offhand tangent about his disdain for women in UFC.

“I think that there’s an awful lot of women who are incredibly qualified to do the jobs they’re doing. Where I jump off the bandwagon is where 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 will kick the dude’s butt.

When I think about pugilistic sports, I don’t like seeing women involved in that at all,” Smith continued. “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.

That’s just me.”

Credit where credit’s due: Stephen A. may be right about that last sentence.

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Matt’s love of writing was born during a sixth grade assembly when it was announced that his essay titled “Why Drugs Are Bad” had taken first prize in D.A.R.E.’s grade-wide contest. The anti-drug people gave him a $50 savings bond for his brave contribution to crime-fighting, and upon the bond’s maturity 10 years later, he used it to buy his very first bag of marijuana.