During Sunday night’s 74th Golden Globe Awards, Meryl Streep had the Mixed Martial Arts universe riled up after an off-hand insulting comment towards the sport was made during her acceptance speech.
Streep, who was collecting the Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement Award, used her acceptance speech to play politics and took aim at next U.S. President, Donald Trump. She would bring up difficulties faced in his campaign and his unpopular policies before lumping American Football and MMA into the argument about immigration.
“Who are we, and what is Hollywood anyway? It’s just a bunch of people from other places,” Streep said to the live audience and the millions watching at home. ” … So, Hollywood is crawling with outsiders and foreigners. And if we kick them all out, we’ll have nothing to watch but football and mixed martial arts, which are not the arts.”
Although receiving a standing ovation at the ceremony in Beverly Hills, the speech was not as popular on social media as fighters, fans and everyone involved with the sport of MMA quickly leapt to it’s defence.
Meryl Streep how ignorant are u. In your speech you stated "Disrespect invites disrespect" yet you ignorantly disrespected an entire sport.
— Big John McCarthy (@JohnMcCarthyMMA) January 9, 2017
With all due respect to #MerylStreep… MMA may not be the "arts" but then again, neither was "Ricki and the Flash." #GoldenGlobes pic.twitter.com/jEENO3CC0M
— #WSOF35 (@MMAWorldSeries) January 9, 2017
Fuck Meryl Streep. Talks shit about MMA then says "disrespect begets disrespect". Typical hypocritical Hollywood liberal.
— Tamdan McCrory (@TheBarnCatMMA) January 9, 2017
You lost me at mixed martial arts, Meryl. Not cool.
— Ariel Helwani (@arielhelwani) January 9, 2017
Bellator President Scott Coker was much more level headed and sent out an invitation for the actress to be his guest at Bellator 170 on January 21 in Inglewood, California to watch Tito Ortiz bow out of the sport against Chael Sonnen.
As a martial artist and an MMA promoter, here is my open letter and #Bellator170 invite to the very talented #MerylStreep #GoldenGlobes pic.twitter.com/zostN22RAK
— Scott Coker (@ScottCoker) January 9, 2017
Following on from the show of class by the Strikeforce founder, UFC President Dana White could not do the same as he replied in typical “Dana White” fashion by calling the 67-year-old Streep an “80 year old woman” and saying she’s not the demographic anyways.
It’s why we all love him really.
