What Sports Are Asian Americans Into?

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A photo posted by Carlomus Prime (@carlomusprime) on Mar 1, 2015 at 12:42am PST

I’m a big fan of MMA, and 8Asians writer Jeff has even posted an article about successful Asian American participation in the UFC. Of course, there are some Asian Americans who are into MMA.

Bruce Lee is touted by many as the *first* mixed martial artist. Cung Le is one of the most recognized American MMA fighters out there. Michelle Waterson is one of the top stars of women’s MMA. There’s no shortage of Asian Americans taking the spotlight in the world of MMA.

Nevertheless, as I attended the recent Invicta FC event at Los Angeles, I just couldn’t help but notice I was one of the very few Asian Americans and Asians in the audience of the whole event. This was also true when we went to the open workouts held for the event.

My first live mma event is #InvictaFC11 @InvictaFights so awesome! pic.twitter.com/LnCYIjHaLK

— tinabot (@tinabotot) February 28, 2015

Now, granted, Americans of Asian descent only make up around 5% of the entire United States population. However, we are in LOS ANGELES. There are entire congressional districts that are Asian American down here, and LA has the largest population of Koreans outside of Korea, Taiwanese out of Taiwan, etc. There’s a Thai Town, a Little Saigon, (insert Asian heritage here)-town…you name it, we’ve got it. Koreatown, Little Tokyo, and Chinatown were only a 5 minute drive away from the event venue. University of Southern California (USC), a school known for it’s large number of international students, especially from Asia, was just across the street.

Probably a better measure of Asian American fans of MMA would have been UFC, the biggest MMA promotion, which I watched on broadcast from home instead of attending because the only tickets available were just way out of my price range.

I don’t attend many sports events in general, but it did make me wonder, what sports events in the United States would have a significant percentage of Asian or Asian American fans in the audience? ‘Cause there were barely any at the MMA event I attended. Thoughts anyone?