While your parent was inflammatory and insensitive, it’s hard to argue that they’re wrong about the wisdom behind getting into MMA as a career path in the first place.

In other words, you’d have to be objectively ignoring reality to consider MMA against a human opponent a good career path worth the risks.

I’d love to find out if any of these MMA fighters used to be IT professionals, web developers, doctors, or lawyers.

The reality is that as a career it’s no better than joining the Army - really something only worth doing if you’ve got absolutely nothing else going on. And even then, the Army has a lot of guaranteed benefits, while MMA is a superstar career where very few fighters make the glamorous payouts.