Meryl Streep brings wrath of mixed-martial arts, NFL fans

A throwaway line in Meryl Streep’s Golden Globes speech Sunday night has the world of mixed martial arts kicking and screaming.

During her takedown of Donald Trump for lack of empathy, the acting legend said: “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.”

That brought an invitation to Streep to attend an MMA bout in Los Angeles in two weeks from Belator promoter Scott Coker, who tweeted an open letter.

“They come from every country and every walk of life. We at Bellator support them and honor their skill,” Coker said. “Please be my guest at the LA Forum on January 21st and you will see that Mixed Martial Arts is truly artistic — which will feature fighters from all over the world competing at a world class level.”

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

Others weren’t so polite.

At Rare, Jack Hunter wrote: “Streep is right that sports are not technically art. But her statement implies that she places far more importance on what she does than what other Americans enjoy. That’s pompous as hell. …

“So all you cretinous NFL and UFC fans — can you imagine living in a world where you weren’t enriched by Meryl Streep and her friends, having to subsist on sports alone? Because Streep was not taking aim at just Trump with that line, but the majority of Americans.”

MMA fans jumped in bigly.