Rich Schultz / ASSOCIATED PRESS

James Thompson, Kimbo Slice and the rest of the MMA world deserve a fair shake from the media.

Mike Chiappetta • E-mail

The public trusts us less than ever, the people we cover don’t always want to deal with us, and the pay isn’t always great.

And then sometimes, it’s because of your own colleagues passing off personal opinions they should just keep to themselves.

I’m tired of people attacking MMA and its fighters. I love the sport. I see it as a human chess match, sometimes with blood but always with guts. Those of us who sit at a keyboard or behind a monitor will never have any clue how much courage it takes to step into a cage or ring and depend on no one but yourself.

Just like any other sport, it has its good days and bad days.

Last weekend, we saw the emphatic victory of Urijah Faber in Sacramento, almost three rounds of a wonderful fight between Robbie Lawler and Scott Smith, and the continued dominance of Miguel Torres. On the other hand, we saw an uneven first outing for the sport on primetime network TV, a few questionable stoppages in EliteXC and the return of the national debate about MMA’s place in society.

Follow along here: boxing is an Olympic sport. So is judo and wrestling. Karate, jiu-jitsu and other martial arts forms are studied and respected by millions around the nation, and countless more around the world.

Put them all together, though, and critics say it’s part of the decline of civilization.

Read that again: separately, they are all honorable disciplines, but as one, it’s suddenly “street-brawling” or “barbarism,” and too violent to be seen.

Keep in mind, this argument often comes from mainstream sports writers who cover sports like pro football and boxing, writers like Brian Burwell of The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, who writes that MMA is “where the absolute worst elements of human nature are sanctioned and celebrated.”

Talk about needing perspective. I guess he missed seeing Scott Smith and Robbie Lawler hug after their fight, Jens Pulver hold up Urijah Faber’s arm immediately after the final bell and say he lost to a better man, and the fearsome Kimbo walk over and kiss Thompson on the head at the end of their fight. He didn't see athleticism and sportsmanship on display?

All those critics see is violence. Worse yet, they say that the violence between MMA and other sports like football is different. They say in football, it is not the “object” of the game to hurt a man. In essence, they are saying, manufactured, man-made goals of scoring a touchdown and defending the end zone make the violence acceptable.

In football, it is legal:

• for a blitzing 280-pound defensive end to have a running start and blindside the quarterback at full speed
• for a 250-pound linebacker to get a head of steam and T-bone a receiver coming across the middle trying to make a catch
• to dive at a player’s thighs, regardless of how many catastrophic knee and leg injuries we’ve seen

It is perfectly legal to hit unsuspecting, even defenseless players, as we often see in the kick return game when a would-be tackler is focused on the ballcarrier and gets hammered by a blocker. This is all OK, critics say, because violence isn’t the “object,” so apparently their injuries mean less.

And boxing is the “sweet science,” so giving a fighter a standing eight-count after a knockdown so he can get up and take more punishment is apparently humane.

If you are going to lambaste MMA for its violence — and that is essentially what Burwell is doing — you don’t get to give football and boxing a free pass.