Bloody Elbow
April 25 2010
Armenian MMA Fighter Manuel Gamburyan Says the "Genocide" Word That
President Obama Is Afraid to Say
by Kid Nate on Apr 24, 2010 11:14 PM EDT in News
International politics made a surprise cameo appearance on a major
American Mixed Martial Arts event when winner and Armenian born
fighter Manuel Gamburyan audibly said the word "genocide" on the Pay
Per View broadcast.
Mixed martial artist Manuel "Manny" Gamburyan dared to publicly say
the words that President Barack Obama wouldn’t dare to say today —
genocide. Gamburyan had just scored a big KO win over former WEC
featherweight champ Mike Brown at WEC 48: Aldo vs Faber — a pay per
view event put on by Zuffa, the parent company of the popular UFC.
For those who aren’t following the politics, Gamburyan was referring
to President Obama’s breaking of a campaign promise to use the term
"genocide" in reference to the slaughter of Armenians by Turks in the
early 20th Century.
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by Kid Nate on Apr 24, 2010 11:14 PM EDT in News 51 comments
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International politics made a surprise cameo appearance on a major
American Mixed Martial Arts event when winner and Armenian born
fighter Manuel Gamburyan audibly said the word "genocide" on the Pay
Per View broadcast.
Mixed martial artist Manuel "Manny" Gamburyan dared to publicly say
the words that President Barack Obama wouldn’t dare to say today —
genocide. Gamburyan had just scored a big KO win over former WEC
featherweight champ Mike Brown at WEC 48: Aldo vs Faber — a pay per
view event put on by Zuffa, the parent company of the popular UFC.
For those who aren’t following the politics, Gamburyan was referring
to President Obama’s breaking of a campaign promise to use the term
"genocide" in reference to the slaughter of Armenians by Turks in the
early 20th Century.
The New York Times has more on that:
President Obama, who as a candidate vowed to use the term genocide to
describe the Ottoman mass slaughter of Armenians nearly a century ago,
once again declined to do so on Saturday as he marked the anniversary
of the start of the killings.
In Yerevan, Armenians on Saturday solemnly observed the 95th
anniversary of the genocide that began in 1915 under the Ottoman Turk
government. About 1.5 million Armenians were killed.
Trying to navigate one of the more emotionally fraught foreign policy
challenges, Mr. Obama issued a statement from his weekend getaway here
commemorating the victims of the killings but tried to avoid
alienating Turkey, a NATO ally, which adamantly rejects the genocide
label.
So props to Gamburyan for slipping a rare and courageous political
moment into an MMA Event.
No American President has ever used the term since we formed a close
alliance with Turkey during the Cold War.
Learn more about the Armenian genocide from Wikipedia:
The Armenian Genocide (Armenian: ÕÕ¡ÕµÕ¸Ö? Õ`Õ¥Õ²Õ¡Õ& #xBD;ÕºÕ¡Õ¶Õ&#x B8;Ö?Õ©ÕµÕ¸
 6;?Õ¶, translit.:
Hayoc’ C’eÄ¡aspanowt’yown; Turkish: Ermeni Soykırımı) – also known as
the Armenian Holocaust, the Armenian Massacres and, by Armenians, as
the Great Crime (Õ?Õ¥Õ® ÔµÕ²Õ¥Õ¼&# xD5;¶, Mec EÄ¡eá¹’n, Armenian pronunciation: [mÉ?ts
jÉ?Ë?Ê?É?rn]) – refers to the deliberate and systematic destruction
(genocide) of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire during and
just after World War I.[1] It was implemented through wholesale
massacres and deportations, with the deportations consisting of forced
marches under conditions designed to lead to the death of the
deportees. The total number of resulting Armenian deaths is generally
held to have been between one and one and a half
million.[2][3][4][5][6] Other ethnic groups were similarly attacked by
the Ottoman Empire during this period, including Assyrians and Greeks,
and some scholars consider those events to be part of the same policy
of extermination.[7][8][9]
It is widely acknowledged to have been one of the first modern
genocides,[10][11][12] as scholars point to the systematic, organized
manner in which the killings were carried out to eliminate the
Armenians,[13] and it is the second most-studied case of genocide
after the Holocaust.[14] The word genocide[15] was coined in order to
describe these events.[16]
UPDATE: It appears Gamburyan was using the word "genocide" in his
pre-fight hype. So I might have completely misread his intentions
here. Hard to believe an Armenian fighter would trivialize the term in
that way.
/armenian-mma-fighter-manuel