Winning a sport or a game is not really disrespecful since outside of combat sports no-one is getting beaten to a pulp for losing - a sport or game that involves one person getting hurt or getting knocked out or long term health issues caused by another person is.
Outside of combat sports no-one is getting beaten to a pulp for losing?
How about sports like rugby and american football where you can go full impact against the other team, take them down while at full speed, etc?
Those also are sports where one person can get hurt or knocked out or get long term health issues caused by another person.
To pretend that there is nothing disrespectful about knocking someone out or causing them long term damage just because both participants are compliant is a lame excuse.
In that case you'd have no issue with two people fighting to the death if both participants are compliant? I never thought of competition that way until I saw the Diaz bros talking about it a while back and now I've come to agree with them. I think there is this false pretense with competition & respect that I don't like - people should be honest and say it how it is.
In a fight you aren't thinking about the well-being of the guy your fighting - whether it is for competitions sake or sport - that is disrespectful regardless of however you want to put it. I think trying to say competition can be respectful or there is a budo spirit involved given your not thinking about the well-being or health of the person opposite while trying to take them out (think about that) is precisely why there is no budo in it at all.
Sparring on the other hand is completely different. You aren't trying to take out the person your sparring with - the objective is to learn - if someone gets hurt you stop to see if there alright.
I don't think there is anything wrong with wanting to compete but I think people should drop the respect & other pretentious bullshit of saying so and so competition format is more or less respectful or trying to act as though there is some martial spirit/budo involved in competition. None of them have any degree of respect involved - since when is there respect involved in how you beat someone up? I mean how do you do that respectfully? The respect that people laud is how you deal with winning - it's normal human behaviour/manners not to celebrate when you knock someone out or hurt them - has nothing to do with respect.
Man I'm going off point lol.
Personally I have no problem with 2 compliant adults wanting to fight to the death. We're not far off with MMA to be honest.
There is no false pretense in wanting to compete and respecting your opponent before and after the match/fight. Let's take an example, GSP, do you believe he's pretending to respect his opponents before and after? Do you think he really wants to hurt/kill them?
How else are you supposed to test your fighting skills and spirit unless in a real fight with rules?
It's ironical to say you're not thinking of the well-being of the other guy you're fighting. First of all trying to win a sanctioned fight with rules doesn't mean you want your opponent to get badly injured or killed. Secondly, a large number of people on this planet do not think about the well-being of others, be it in a sport environment, out in the street, at work, wherever. So yeah you could say someone who's competing in a fight is probably not thinking of the well-being of his opponent, just like he probably wouldn't be thinking about the other guy's well-being if they were just strangers walking pass in the streets.
Where being compliant makes a difference is that you are aware of the risks, you know what your opponent is going to try to do to you as you're trying to do exactly the same thing, and most importantly it's your choice to be doing this and being there.
Sparring is actually a worse example as the line between light sparring and a KO happening is quite thin depending on who you're sparring with, and here it was actually not part of the deal to get KO'd.
I've only competed a couple of times in a full contact environment and I had nothing but respect for my opponent. We know the rules, we know what the objective is. I don't have to hate them and I don't particularly want them to be injured or dead. I just want to win by the rules and will show my respect before and after the fight, and also respect during the fight as I will not purposely throw any dirty shots that are against the rules to gain an advantage. For me that's respect.
You say it's normal human behavior not to celebrate after knocking someone out or injuring them, yet the majority of people celebrate after doing so. Maybe it's not so human after all?
In the end I guess it's all a matter of opinion. So I will let you listen to the Diaz brothers about fighting not being about respect (hell they definitely act like it), while imagining that if you ever competed in a full contact environment you would not be respectful to your opponent.