Meryl Streep's Golden Globes speech got MMA fans all riled up

The good news is that MMA got a shutout at the 2017 Golden Globe Awards.

The bad news? It wasn’t exactly a good one. Even “Baba Booey” shutouts are more endearing.

During Sunday’s broadcast of the 74th Golden Globe Awards, which honored the best in film and U.S. television of 2016, iconic actress Meryl Streep won the Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement Award.

During her acceptance speech, though, she took aim at U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, his past indiscretions and his planned policies – and football and MMA got lumped in there.

Here’s the speech (via Twitter):

“Who are we, and what is Hollywood anyway? It’s just a bunch of people from other places,” Streep said during the broadcast, which is watched annually by nearly 20 million viewers. ” … 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.”

She got an immediate round of applause from those in attendance at The Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, Calif. Obviously, though, the reaction was a bit harsher in the MMA Twittersphere.

Although many fighters and other industry insiders quickly criticized Streep’s assessment of the sport, Bellator President Scott Coker instead labeled himself a fan of the actress and invited her to Bellator 170, which takes place Jan. 21 in Inglewood, Calif., with a Tito Ortiz vs. Chanel Sonnen headliner (via Twitter):

Coker made some solid points in his open letter; MMA is far more international and diverse than most sports. However, it’s probably a good bet that the Spike cameras won’t catch Streep cageside for the upcoming event.

For more on Bellator 170, check out the MMA Rumors section of MMAjunkie.