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May, 2018
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On May 30, 2018 By In Mixed Martial Arts

Casualties of the UFC’s Quest for Legitimacy

“If you missed UFC Fight Night 130 on Sunday, you didn’t miss much. There were 11 fights of little memorable action and even less divisional relevance. The only fight that did have potential to shake up things — the main event — was a glorified staring contest that was marred by a botched weight cut and even more botched scorecards.

Despite airing a day later than usual and the added regional flavor of Liverpool, England, the card fell flatly into the larger pile of generic combat into which the Ultimate Fighting Championship has morphed. Without the structure that a season and postseason provides and absent any regular major events to look forward to like tennis, the relentless march of meaningless fight cards can at times feel like Penrose steps as a stairmaster; we move forward through the calendar but are perpetually looking out toward the next platform, and damn does it get exhausting to keep up with…”

 

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On May 27, 2018 By In aging

My 20s

“If 20 year old me could see me now at 30, I’m not sure what he’d think. He’d probably be let down in a lot of ways, expecting me to have accomplished more than I have. But that may be giving 20 year old me too much credit: he had more expectations than actual plans, and he had very few expectations. He was also, objectively, kind of an idiot…”

 

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On May 22, 2018 By In Mixed Martial Arts

We Learn Nothing

“There’s a false dichotomy separating MMA fans. Supposedly, there’s a camp that watches fights for entertainment and another one that wants to know the identity of the best fighter. It’s the “Spectacle vs. Sport” debate that all too often boils down to a pair of shrugging shoulders; “MMA is both spectacle and sport,” the wise man says as he strokes his beard.

While both streams ultimately lead to the same sea of watching people punch each other, there’s a single source behind the divergent paths: curiosity. The desire to learn is a powerful human instinct, and both categories of fandom scratch that itch in different ways. Discovering who is the best or how they are the best is an obvious function of learning, and witnessing something new and spectacular — getting surprised by MMA’s athletic and violent possibilities — is itself a way of taking in new information. Such exposure to something new, even when it’s passive, certainly qualifies as a type of learning. The preferred aesthetics differ between those who want to be entertained and those who want to see elite competition determine which fighters really are the best, but those aesthetics are underpinned by a similar impulse of curiosity.

That is why watching One Championship’s “Unstoppable Dreams” was such a vastly superior viewing experience than UFC Fight Night 129 over the weekend…”

 

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On May 15, 2018 By In Mixed Martial Arts

Knowing When To Quit

“It is generally accepted that toughness and perseverance are fundamental prerequisites for success. Life is hard and adversity is inevitable; you have to be able to overcome the obstacles in front of you, whatever they may be, in order to achieve your goals. The word “grit” has gained tremendous traction in this context, especially in the world of education. One of the most prominent researchers on the subject, Angela Duckworth — who literally wrote the book on grit — defined grit as: “… passion and perseverance for very long-term goals. Grit is having stamina. Grit is sticking with your future, day in, day out, not just for the week, not just for the month, but for years, and working really hard to make that future a reality. Grit is living life like it’s a marathon, not a sprint.”

As Duckworth noted in the same speech, grit is the single most significant predictor of success, more so than talent or intelligence. Most professional fighters would probably agree. Fighters are lauded for their toughness, for “embracing the grind.” The weeks spent preparing for a fight, as well as the minutes spent actually fighting, are among the most physically and psychologically grueling contrivances in modern sport. Anything short of a quick knockout requires a type of determination that is alien to most of us in the audience.

Yet unconditional grit can be a flawed virtue. Sometimes a challenge is not worth the effort, or simply impossible to overcome. In such cases, it’s in a person’s best interest to give up. A recent study led by researchers from University of Southern California and Northeastern University put hundreds of people through various tests of grit. In light of UFC 224, the findings were discomfortingly on-the-nose…”

 

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On May 8, 2018 By In Social Media

O Kyoji, Where Art Thou?

“When Kyoji Horiguchi fought out his contract with the Ultimate Fighting Championship at the end of 2016, he left under peculiar circumstances. Zuffa had just sold the organization to Endeavor, and a subsequent bloodletting of talent took place. Horiguchi was part of a wave of top-tier fighters — it included Ryan Bader, Rory MacDonald, Lorenz Larkin and Nikita Krylov — who left the UFC, not because they were cut but because they couldn’t come to terms with the promotion. Translation: They wanted more money than the UFC thought they were worth.

In some of those instances, the UFC’s rationale was understandable. Bader, for instance, is an exceptionally skilled fighter who, if it were up to me, would still be in the UFC for the simple reason that he’s an elite talent. However, I can understand not wanting to pay more for someone that is not known for putting on exciting fights and definitively lost to the best fighters in the division.

Horiguchi was and is different, though…”

 

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