It’s strange to hear someone like Kayla Harrison explain why she’s inclined to say no to MMA. It’s strange because she’s so right while also being a little bit wrong, and because she’s honest enough to admit that it’s tempting anyway.

It’s also strange because, if you have any real insight on how this sport actually works, you almost can’t help but wonder what advice you’d give her, assuming she wanted it.

Should Harrison, a 26-year-old, two-time gold medalist in judo, consider following in Ronda Rousey’s footsteps?

The answer I keep coming up with is: it depends.

For starters, consider her objections to MMA.

“After a (judo) match, you shake the person’s hand and you give them a hug, and you bow to them to show respect,” Harrison said. “In MMA, it’s not like that, and I don’t know if I’m made – I don’t know if I’m cut out for a world where you get fights based on how pretty you are and how much you talk, and not necessarily what you’re worth in the ring.”

A couple things about that…

1) For a sport that revolves around two people trying to hurt each other, there is actually a lot of respect and good sportsmanship in MMA – at least after the fight. The fighter who declines to shake an opponent’s hand when it’s all over (here Rousey comes to mind) is the exception rather than the rule, and that exception usually comes with a fair bit of criticism.

Still, you can see how she might have gotten the wrong idea, can’t you? The way fighters are rewarded for drumming up bitter rivalries, both real and imagined, does not suggest an abundance of respect. You turn on a UFC broadcast at the start of a pay-per-view, you’re not likely to see interviews with fighters talking about how much they respect their opponents. For that, you need to fire up an internet stream of the post-fight press conference, and even then things can get a little salty at times.

Which is, of course, kind of how we like it. And that brings me to the next point.

2) When Harrison talks about MMA as “a world where you get fights based on how pretty you are and how much you talk,” that’s when it seems like she really has been paying attention.

We can argue about how much looks matter. We can’t deny that they still seem to matter more in women’s MMA than men’s.

As for the importance of the sound bite in MMA, just look at our recent history. Look at how many people have talked their way into big fights, leveraging star power over skill. Ask yourself why Phil “CM Punk” Brooks gets the red carpet treatment, complete with his own documentary as a 0-0 fighter, while Ben Askren is exiled across the Pacific despite his obvious ability.

You can accuse Harrison of oversimplifying the forces at work, but I don’t see how you can say that her assessment is flat-out wrong. She’s clearly seen enough of MMA to know what it is, and it’s not a sport where nothing matters but athletic ability.

At the same time, it’s worth remembering how and why it got that way. Unlike in the Olympics, where the magnitude of the event itself convinces people to briefly care about sports they totally ignore for most of their lives, MMA is involved in a constant sales pitch. Promoters have to sell tickets and pay-per-views. They have to give us what we’ll pay for, and respectful discourse apparently isn’t high on our list.

I can’t blame someone like Harrison, who came up in a sport where all you had to do was sign up for the tournament and beat everyone else in it, for thinking that MMA seems like an exploitative, manipulative world – one where being very good at the sport is somehow not always enough to be successful in the sport.

She’s right. A not insignificant amount of time, it is that way, and that should make any athlete with other options think twice. But see, that’s why “it depends” is the only real answer that makes sense here.

Should she take up MMA? It depends, can she make a living doing something else?

Should she put herself through the necessary torture to get down to one of the few weight classes available to female fighters? It depends, could she live with the decision to not even give it a try?

Is MMA worth all the pain and the sacrifice just to end up subject to the whims of fans and promoters, neither of whom are known for being especially fair at all times? It depends, does she need the fame and the money, or does she merely think they might be cool to have?

There are a lot of good reasons not to get into this sport, and Harrison seems smart enough to have identified at least one or two. If you’re going to ignore those and do it anyway, it had probably better be because, for one reason or another, you can’t not do it.