MMA splits opinion across the board.
Many people who have watched it say that it is far too violent, barbaric in fact.
Whereas lovers of the sport will say it is brilliant to watch, all the different styles of martial arts brought into one arena and every fight is a battle of tactics, a more exciting game of chess.
On Saturday, UFC visited Stockholm in Sweden as hometown hero Alexander Gustafsson beat Glover Teixeira in the event’s Fight of the Night.
And with MMA a hot topic in the wake of the event, one of Sweden’s biggest newspapers did a poll to see where the public stood on MMA.
One of Sweden's biggest newspaper's, Expressen, ran an online poll. Almost 18,000 respondents. Appears the country is still divided on MMA. pic.twitter.com/thncXRQwKb
— Chamatkar Sandhu (@SandhuMMA) May 30, 2017
According to esteemed MMA journalist Chamatkar Sandhu, Expressen polled nearly 18,000 people asking if they were fans of the sport.
44% said that they did and they found the sport exciting.
45% said that they were not a fan as it was too violent for their tastes.
11% said they found it fun and watch it sometimes.
Yet, this isn’t the first time where a question like this has been posed to the public.
Even with Conor McGregor being the biggest star in MMA history, in Ireland, it is not recognised as a sport.
And even in Ireland, public opinion isn’t overwhelmingly in favour of it getting its recognition.
In a poll conducted earlier this year for Journal.ie, 50% of people said that they believe MMA should be recognised as a sport with 34% saying they don’t want it added to Sport Ireland’s roster of legitimate sport and 16% unsure.
