Dear Editor,

I read with great interest Jon Wertheim's article "Ultimate Fighting: Too Brutal or the Future". Unfortunately Mr. Wertheim did not check his facts nor did he do appropriate research on the history of MMA.  As this new sport continues to take the world by storm, it is important to chronicle what really happened. As Lenin once said " A lie told often enough becomes the truth".  While Dana White and his organization have made great strides in furthering MMA, he and others in this sport owe a great deal to the likes of John Perretti.

As Eddie Goldman (No Holds Barred) so aptly puts it in his article "The Maestro":

 "John’s role in fashioning this sport, today known as mixed martial arts or just MMA, has largely been written out of the Orwellian mini-histories which have spread like a virus in this same mainstream media now explaining the current popularity of the UFC.

 

Simply put, it was John Perretti, in both Extreme Fighting, which ran from 1995 to 1997, and later in the UFC itself where he served as matchmaker until January 2001, who came up with the basic structure of modern mixed martial arts."

Before we all start believing the UFC's "history" of MMA, let's get the facts straight and give credit where credit is due.

Scott Ross

UFC Fan