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On January 17, 2018 By In Mixed Martial Arts

What It Takes To Build A Star

“It’s safe to say that the Doo Ho Choi hype train has been derailed, at least for now. After a promising 3-0 start in the Ultimate Fighting Championship, “The Korean Superboy” has dropped two consecutive fights, and with his compulsory military service hanging on the horizon, the future is looking more uncertain than ever.

Luckily, even with the impending two-year absence, the 26 year-old still has a lot of future ahead of him. If there’s any silver lining to his losses to Cub Swanson and Jeremy Stephens, it’s that both of them are much more experienced. That experience matters. Choi was barely a teenager when Swanson made his 2004 professional debut, and Stephens debuted only six months after that. Stephens was 17-5 with seven UFC fights under his belt by the time Choi got paid to fight. That’s a huge head start. There is no substitute for the confidence and grit earned through time in the cage. Prior to his UFC Fight Night 124 appearance on Sunday in St. Louis, Choi hadn’t even been in the Octagon for more than 20 minutes…”

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On January 11, 2018 By In Korea, Olympics

How North Koreans View The Pyeongchang Olympics

“In his New Year’s address, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un had a mixed bag of messages, for the North Korean people and the world. The speech, translated into English, ran more than 5000 words. The first three quarters of the speech were standard stuff: we have nukes, get over it and let’s continue to develop our economy. Then the tone shifted.

“This year is significant both for the North and the South, as in the North the people will greet the 70th founding anniversary of their Republic as a great, auspicious event, and in the South the Winter Olympic Games will take place,” Kim Jong-un said.

This is notable, not just in the context of the rest of the speech or the recent tensions on the Korean peninsula, but because this is a tremendous departure from how North Korea responded the last time South Korea hosted the Olympics 30 years ago…”

 

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On January 8, 2018 By In Korea, Mixed Martial Arts

What’s At Stake For The Korean Superboy

“The last time Doo Ho Choi walked into the Octagon was 13 months ago against Cub Swanson. A lot of hype was behind him. He was on a 12-fight winning streak, 10 of which were knockouts. He was 3-0 in the Ultimate Fighting Championship, and all three of his wins were first-round knockouts. Even though he was ranked 11th in the official UFC rankings and Swanson was fourth, Choi was still the favorite. Choi was a promising prospect, an exciting fighter from a region ripe with potential. Swanson was a fairly known commodity who increasingly fit the bill as a featherweight gatekeeper, boasting the most wins in World Extreme Cagefighting-UFC featherweight history but having suffered losses to the division’s elite more often than the opposite. An exciting standup affair was expected, and it looked as if a memorable win against a top-five opponent was in the cards for “The Korean Superboy.” All the stars were aligned for a coming-out party. The fight was indeed spectacular, but the result was not what was expected: Choi lost a competitive decision in one of the year’s best fights.

Choi returns in the UFC Fight Night 124 main event against Jeremy Stephens on Saturday in St. Louis. The specifics have changed, but the general idea is the same. Stephens is ranked higher at No. 9, but the 13th-ranked Choi is the favorite, albeit with narrower odds. Stephens is looking more and more like a tough gatekeeper to weed out the weak from jumping in the deep-end of the division, and the style matchup of two heavy-hitting standup specialists should result in an exciting fight. Especially since the Swanson loss did little to derail his hype, the stars have once again aligned for Choi to make a jump to the next level.

Regardless of the outcome, however, Choi faces an even larger, more insurmountable foe on the horizon: compulsory military service in the South Korean army…”

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On December 27, 2017 By In Mixed Martial Arts

An MMA Christmas: 12 Fights We Want Santa To Bring Us in 2018

“Every year the same question burns in our minds: what do we want for Christmas? For us MMA fans, the answer is always pretty simple. We want more great fights.

There were a number of great ones in 2017. Justin Gaethje was involved in a couple of classics against Michael Johnson and Eddie Alvarez, Yancy Medeiros and Alex Oliveira put on a scrap for the ages, and T.J. Dillashaw and Cody Garbrandt put on a hell of a show as well. That’s to say nothing of the memorably one-sided performances as well, from Rose Namajunas’ dismantling of longtime champ Joanna Jedrzejczyk, Darren Till’s coming out party against Donald Cerrone, Francis Ngannou’s near-beheading of Alistair Overeem, Robert Whittaker’s molly-whopping of Ronaldo Souza, or either of Max Holloway’s wins over Jose Aldo. And that’s just the start; there are dozens more fights that could be mentioned here.

On this most festive time of the year, a week away from 2018, here is our Christmas list of fights we want Old Saint Nick to bring us, one for each weight class…”

 

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On December 25, 2017 By In Best of year

Some Things I Wrote in 2017

I never really know what my “best” work is, or if any of it is good to anyone other than me. (People keep letting me write things, so I suppose that’s a good sign.) I do, however, tend to like certain things I write more than others. Here’s a list of 10 pieces I wrote in 2017 that I liked the most.

 

January, Eastlit
Stranger in a Familiar Land

This is the only piece of fiction I published this year, about the delirious, exhilarating newness of living in a foreign country, and how quickly that feeling can erode. It’s, uh, totally not about my experience living in Korea or anything.

 

February, Sherdog
A Meditation on Ethics in MMA

I waxed philosophical on MMA, talking about sportsmanship, the unspoken ethics of trash talking, and how we’re supposed to process it all as fans. Plus, the opening sentence of this piece is probably the best sentence I’ve ever written.

 

March, Sherdog
The Other Side of Anything Can Happen

The UFC hit on something deep with their advertising angle that “anything can happen” in a fight; people want to be surprised. But “anything” can mean shitty things, too.

 

May, Sherdog
Nostalgia is a Hell of a Drug

There is a vocal, ever-present group of MMA fans bemoaning the state of the sport and how it has fallen from its previous peaks. That’s true in some ways, but the complete opposite is true – MMA is better than it’s ever been – in more significant ways.

 

June, Sherdog
The Cost of Combat

The death of Tim Hague brought to surface a number of important questions that we must ask ourselves as fans and patrons of violent entertainment. This was my attempt to reconcile the ethical dilemma of combat sports with their undeniable allure.

 

June, Sherdog
Something in the Water: The Past and Present of Hawaii’s Warrior Spirit

Since the first Ultimate Fighting Championship tournament, fighters from Hawaiʻi have been visible on the biggest stages of the sport. Hawaiʻi has been the most represented state in the history of the UFC, with 15 professional fighters for every one million residents. The next closest state — Iowa — registered about nine and a half per million people.

Why Hawaiʻi? What is it about the “Aloha State” — this small, unassuming archipelago nicknamed after the Hawaiian word for love, compassion and kindness — that lends itself so seamlessly to the most unabashedly violent sport in the world?

 

August, Medium
Man’s Best Reflection

A personal essay attempting to answer one of the oldest, most important questions known to man: why are dogs so good?

 

August, Summit Magazine
Seoul, From the Ground Up

It can feel helpless to be a citizen of Seoul. The shadow of international war looms menacingly overhead, yet the everyday stresses of living in a fast-paced, high-tech megacity tend to take precedent. Political tensions rise and fall, but life keeps marching on.

 

October, Sherdog
Violent Meditations

Almost yearly the conflicted nature of the word “violence” becomes a discussion in MMA circles. This year, the sport’s most visible media member, Ariel Helwani, took umbrage with the idea that the UFC promotes itself as violent. Personally, I think they should market the sport for what it is, and it is nakedly violent. It’s honest advertising, but more importantly I think people should be more aware of the violent intersections in all facets of life, and watching MMA might be a good way to do that.

 

October, Medium
Spooky Spooky: A Definitive Timeline

If you haven’t heard of or watched the Spooky Spooky videos, there’s something wrong with you. If you have watched them and you haven’t read my exhaustive, in-depth analyses of them, you’re missing out on worlds. There’s levels to infectiously catchy, seasonally-themed kids songs.

 

 

Much appreciation to everyone who took time to read my work this year. It means everything. Special shoutout to those who contacted me through the site; I’ve enjoyed the correspondences, even the ones heavily laden with curses. Bigger and better things are in store for 2018.

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