MMA battling negative stereotypes from all directions

There are some days when UFC, Strikeforce and other mixed martial arts promotions should thank their lucky stars that the sport is still on the periphery when it comes to mainstream media coverage. If the big newspapers and television networks heavily scrutinized MMA, the sport would've had a rough go of it the last few months. While there are thousands of men and women who train in MMA, are good citizens and now have structure in their lives, there are a few nut jobs who can't be saved. For the unenlightened, Ed Graney from the Las Vegas Review-Journal points out the guys hitting general sites like TMZ and The Huffington Post that put a stain on everyone in MMA. Stigmas can be impossible to break. It's a truth those involved with mixed martial arts know well, having spent years trying to overcome the barbaric tag often assigned the sport. Graney mentions two sociopaths who made recent headlines.  It is worlds away from tales such as the ones recently reported about Jason Sindelar and Jarrod Wyatt. Heard of either?Sindelar was released from a Las Vegas jail last week after being arrested in connection with the beating death of a former UNLV football player in a Strip hotel room. Prosecutors didn't file a criminal complaint. Sindelar has walked for now. [...] He supposedly has continued training in Las Vegas, but for now, calling him an MMA fighter is like calling your mailman the Postmaster General. Yet that is the level to which he has been described by many.Wyatt makes Sindelar look tame. The same goes for Wyatt, an extremely disturbed man whose murder charge was upheld by a California judge late last month. It has been reported Wyatt was under the influence of psychedelic drugs when he allegedly cut the heart out of his victim's chest, cut off the tongue and removed a majority of the face. That victim was his sparring partner.Wyatt's professional record is listed at 1-0. Translation: It appears Wyatt has more Hannibal Lecter in him than any traits of an MMA champion.MMA trainer Shawn Tompkins is irked by the insulting connections made to MMA."It's ridiculous, though, when the sport is shown in a negative way because of the actions of a few guys not known by anyone," said Tompkins, a trainer at TapouT Training Center in Las Vegas who has worked with all levels of fighters. "Just because you're wearing MMA gloves and hitting a bag doesn't make you a fighter."Good for Graney. He's one of the only sports columnists in the country who gives MMA a fair shake. He went ga-ga the next day after covering UFC 116. The Brock Lesnar-Shane Carwin main event and the guts shown by both Chris Leben and Stephan Bonnar had him stoked. Now if he and Yahoo! Sports' Dan Wetzel could only get through to the rest of the 50-plus crowd that controls the columns around the country, the sport could take that final step into the mainstream.  mma training anderson silva chuck liddell martial art