I didn't say basketball didn't exist, but it wasn't no thing. Name a famous Black baller before the 1940s. Everyone knows Jack Johnson, Joe Louis, Sugar Ray Robinson, Jesse Owens, Jackie Robinson, Josh Gibson, Satchel Paige. When basketball started up Black people thought it was a sissy sport. The Harlem Globetrotters were a novelty, that's why they picked a goofy name and did tricks. Basketball was not anywhere near as big as baseball, boxing, or track.
And since when were Jamaica and Haiti in Africa?
You think Black people in every damn country in the world except America love the sport, but it impossible for Black Americans to ever be into it? Don't make no sense.
Why you comparing MMA to football/basketball when the actual comparison is boxing rings? Ain't no ring on every street corner or people talking bout going to a match every weekend. If a breh wants to train MMA it's just as easy to find a gym to train in as it is a boxing gym.
If basketball can rise up from being a sissy sport at first and MMA can compete with boxing then soccer can compete with baseball/football. Might never surpass them but that doesn't make it nothing.
I'm overseas right now but when I'm on the states I live in Inglewood.