Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mixed martial arts

Fight Master: Bellator MMA

Since the cast was officially announced today, I went ahead and started a page for the Fight Master: Bellator MMA reality show. Just a heads up for anyone who might want to contribute to it in the future. Udar55 (talk) 20:21, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

And please note the Marcus Aurelio listed on there is not the same one who has a Wikipedia page. Same name, different guy. Udar55 (talk) 13:20, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Muay Thai article attacks

The Muay Thai article is experiencing multiple attacks, some in the form of section blanking, some in the form of self promotion. I'd like to propose that someone with rollback User rights revert the article to a stable previous version and Semi-protect the article to deflect future vandalism. Thanks! — Jdcollins13 (talk) 16:42, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

I've reverted the article to what appears to me to be the last good version. Semi-protection is unlikely to be granted if requested at WP:RPP since there isn't frequent enough vandalism, at least I don't see it. I'll also note that nearly the entire article lacks references. The only citations are in the lead, which usually shouldn't contain references since it should be a rehash of referenced material in the body of the article. Someone who is familiar with the topic area and where sources can be found may want to give some attention to the article. --TreyGeek (talk) 17:11, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

2012 in UFC

The 2012 in UFC list links to many articles that fail WP:EVENT and WP:MMANOT, what would be the best to assess whether to merge most of the individual articles with 2012 in UFC in accordance with WP:PRESERVE.

• A single discussion thread here with a vote on all of the events that are currently wikilinked to their own page. (quicker, shorter timeframe, all information regarding relative notability in one place)

• AfD requests for each event starting with the least notable. (assess each event on an article by article basis, only way that fits in with current guidelines, could lead to differences in consensus between two similar events)

Any thoughts would be appreciated, especially from editors with much more knowledge than me. Dohertyben (talk) 22:10, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure how many people are really watching this page. By Wikipedia policy/guidelines, WP:AfD should not be used if your intention is to merge one article into another. Yes, it does happen and has happened with MMA articles in the past. In my not so humble opinion, if an editor wants to merge non-notable UFC events from 2012 into 2012 in UFC my advice would be to nominate each article, one at a time, to be merged as per Wikipedia:Merge#Proposing a merger. Just as per those directions, the merge discussion would take place on 2012 in UFC.

As has happened in the past there is a high likelihood for the potential for heated discussions, sockpuppets, meatpuppets, and overall disagreement. Therefore, I believe that after a week or more (at some point after the discussion dies down and at least a week has passed), a message should be posted at WP:AN requesting an administrator to close the merge discussion with their independent assessment of the result of the merge discussion (to merge or not to merge, that would be the question). At the same time, the admin can decide if the target of the merge should be protected to disallow people to remove the redirect. This is probably an overly cautious method of handling this potential situation, but after having endured and witnessed what I have seen, this is probably the best method.

Another discussion that probably should happen at some point is what we, as a WikiProject, believes should be contained in a 'by year' article for MMA promotions. By that I mean continuing the current practice of putting full fight card results and miscellaneous information into the 'by year' article or replacing fight results tables with prose discussing notable occurrences within the event and its relevance to the promotion and year in events as a whole. But that is probably a separate discussion in of itself. --TreyGeek (talk) 22:39, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

I'll admit I've used AfD when I wanted to merge an article on a fighter, usually due to the combative nature of the discussion, and that my battle scars make me generally avoid MMA event discussions (especially UFC ones). That said, I agree with TreyGeek's approach as being the correct WP way to go. Caution, and thick skin, is always good in MMA discussions. Papaursa (talk) 23:01, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for the replies, I'm expecting a backlash don't worry, its just the majority of the event pages contain less than a sentence or two of encyclopedic content and would be better suited to the list format. Wikipedia is a great resource when looking at past events and the results table is very useful to get the information quickly but that's a discussion for another time.

I will propose that these be merged with the omnibus article:

• UFC 142
• UFC 143
• UFC 144
• UFC on FX: Alves vs. Kampmann
• UFC on Fuel TV: Gustafsson vs. Silva
• UFC on Fox: Diaz vs. Miller
• UFC on Fuel TV: Munoz vs. Weidman
• UFC on Fox: Shogun vs. Vera
• UFC 150
• UFC on Fuel TV: Struve vs. Miocic
• UFC on FX: Browne vs. Bigfoot
• UFC 153
• UFC on Fuel TV: Franklin vs. Le
• UFC 154
• UFC on Fox: Henderson vs. Diaz
• UFC on FX: Sotiropoulos vs. Pearson
• UFC 155

And also The Ultimate Fighter: Team Carwin vs. Team Nelson Finale be merged with The Ultimate Fighter: Team Carwin vs. Team Nelson

As the articles fail WP:EVENT and WP:MMANOT. They contain minimal encyclopedic content, event background, event description and event aftermath information and would be better suited to the list format without these sections being written.

Dohertyben (talk) 00:37, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

"its just the majority of the event pages contain less than a sentence or two of encyclopedic content". It only takes a few clicks on the links above to see this is completely wrong. They all have decent informative background sections, about the same as typical sports articles. Example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_NASCAR_Sprint_Cup_Series, and click on the individual races. Try to pull something like this on those nascar articles and see what happens. I expect their admins to be less useless than the ones for MMA. 174.31.163.200 (talk) 11:03, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

Merge discussion for The Ultimate Fighter: Team Carwin vs. Team Nelson Finale

An article that you have been involved in editing, The Ultimate Fighter: Team Carwin vs. Team Nelson Finale, has been proposed for a merge with another article. If you are interested in the merge discussion, please participate by going Talk:The Ultimate Fighter: Team Carwin vs. Team Nelson, and adding your comments on the discussion page. Thank you. Dohertyben (talk) 00:49, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Proposal to deprecate martial art style from Infobox martial artist in MMA articles

I've noticed that Sherdog no longer uses the fighting style in the Fight Finder. This was the most reliable third-party source for this. Others aren't really reliable. For example, Roy Nelson (fighter) is presented in his UFC fights as a Kung Fu fighter, even though he doesn't really apply this martial art style in his fights. And previously Sherdog even had Thugjitsu as the style of Yves Edwards. As previously discussed some time ago, current mixed martial artists (probably since the first 10 UFCs) rarely rely on a single style. Because of this and since Sherdog no longer uses this parameter, I believe MMA biographical articles shouldn't use at all style with {{Infobox martial artist}} if a fighter is only an MMA fighter (this would exclude fighters who actively participate in other combat sports like Alistair Overeem used to). I would suggest instead something along the lines of "Primary fighting style" being either "striker", "grappler" and "all-around" the only parameters, but this would be too complicated to substantiate with sources and completely subjective, so I believe that it is enough with removing style altogether from infoboxes in its current form.

I propose a stronger wording in the paragraph in question where it says "Using the style parameter from the {{Infobox martial artist}} is discouraged in MMA biographical articles..." to something like "Do not use the style parameter from the {{Infobox martial artist}} in MMA biographical articles..." in order to encourage the removal of this parameter, eventually perhaps with the help of the MMABot if this is not too controversial. Jfgslo (talk) 21:17, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

As per the previous discussion I support not having fighting styles listed for "pure" MMA fighters. My definition of "pure" MMA fighters are those fighters who have never professionally fought in a kickboxing or boxing fight. Those fighters I can agree with listing those two styles as appropriate (usually denoted by the article belonging to a kickboxing or boxing category).

As a matter of fact, MMABot is already approved to remove fighting styles from Infoboxes as a result of the last discussion (See MMABot task #8 and the MMABot discussion on this task). MMABot hasn't been run on fighter articles in a while. My plan is that once I finish running through the event articles (perhaps two afternoons of my dedicating it to running MMABot on them) I'll restart MMABot to go through fighter articles. However, editors will often come behind MMABot and add them back. Yes, more of my time spent running MMABot can remove them quicker, but it'll take education of editors (particularly those who don't bother to follow discussions here) and keeping an eye on articles for the changes to really stick. --TreyGeek (talk) 21:40, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

I would disagree. While Sherdog removing fight styles from its articles does reduce the third-party verifiability (if that's even a real word), there should be enough evidence to support keeping styles. Most fighters earned their styles from actual accomplishments. The best example being high school or college wrestlers, as well as fighters with belts in any martial art. Also, the more obscure examples you listed (Roy Nelson and Yves Edwards) can be found in other third-party sources, like this for Nelson and this for Edwards. I see it as an unnecessary change, but welcome everyone's imput on the topic. Luchuslu (talk) 16:01, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

As I mentioned in the discussion a couple years back, we are using {{Infobox martial artist}}. The style parameter was intended for use by practitioners of traditional martial arts (Karate, Kung Fu, Jujutsu, etc). For those who have competed in wrestling, there is a separate parameter to denote what level they competed at. MMA fields were added to it later since there were a number of similar overlaps and for those cases where an MMA fighter is also notable for their activities in a traditional martial art. MMA fighters rarely focus on a specific martial art, instead they cross-train in multiple martial arts and combat sports. Therefore, I would argue, that if the style parameter is used for MMA fighters, the style listed would be "mixed martial arts", but that would be redundant. If you want to record that a particular fighter has a purple belt in Brazilian Jiu-jitsu, that could be listed in the rank parameter (spelling out the rank as opposed to using a color box). I also believe, that if there is going to be an effort to list martial arts ranks and wrestling competition levels in the Infobox, those items should be in the prose of the article with appropriate references. --TreyGeek (talk) 21:10, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

After re-reading the archived discussion, there did seem to be pretty much unanimous support for this change, and I'm not one to go against consensus too often. It wouldn't be a major change and it would cut down on original research by editors. It is also a bit repetitive with the "Rank" and "Wrestling" parameters already in place. I Support it. Luchuslu (talk) 00:49, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

If that happens, someone should add a "UFC ranking" parameter. Evenfiel (talk) 01:40, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

Guerrilla Jiu-Jitsu redirect & American Kickboxing Academy

Guerrilla Jiu-Jitsu currently redirects to American Kickboxing Academy, this made sense when Dave Camarillo the founder of Guerrilla Jiu-Jitsu was the head grappling trainer at AKA. However with this no longer being the case, the redirect either needs to go or if there is enough notability for either Camarillo or GJJ, changed to point to one of those.--Phospheros (talk) 19:56, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Seems to me Guerrilla Jiu-Jitsu is a good candidate for deletion. Guerrilla Jiu-Jitsu was created as a redirect to AKA from the first creation of the page which is odd to me in of itself. Especially considering the AKA article never mentions Guerrilla Jiu-Jitsu, and never has as far as I can tell. As for the martial arts style, I'm not finding much in the way of independent coverage. Everything that I see, unless I'm missing something, is as a cursory mention when discussing Dave Camarillo or appears to be a rehash of marketing hype from Camarillo's camp. Fails WP:GNG to me and would !vote that way if it were taken to AfD. --TreyGeek (talk) 21:50, 29 May 2013 (UTC)