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On June 28, 2017 By In Mixed Martial Arts

The Final Tragic Stage of a Fighter’s Career

“Remember the good ol’ days of MMA, when guys like Fedor Emelianenko, Takanori Gomi, B.J. Penn and Andrei Arlovski were tearing up the scene in their respective promotions? There was nothing like those glory years of the early 2000s, when mixed martial arts was permeated with excitement from the original guard of the sport passing the torch to the next generation. Those four were among the trailblazers that pushed the heavyweight and lightweight divisions in Pride Fighting Championships and the Ultimate Fighting Championship to the next level of the fight game.

Fast forward a decade or so, and all four of them are continuing to compete, much to the chagrin of fans who were there in those early years. Penn and Emelianenko suffered demoralizing losses at Bellator 180 and UFC Fight Night 112, and the week before that, Arlovski and Gomi put some additional losses on their losing streaks at UFC Fight Night 111. To see these legends fade so drastically this late in their careers is tough to bear. When you’re pushing 40 in the fight game, Father Time starts to push back mercilessly…”

 

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On June 20, 2017 By In book review

Book Review: “The Gustav Sonata” by Rose Tremain

“On his first day in his new kindergarten class in small-town Switzerland, Anton Zwiebel can do nothing but weep uncontrollably. The teacher tries to console him, but Anton is helpless, carried off by the inertia of his emotions. She pairs him off with a friendless boy, Gustav Perle, whose first words to Anton are: “My mother says it’s better not to cry. She says you have to master yourself.” Anton immediately stops crying. This exchange, where the ever-caring Gustav stabilizes the torrentially emotional Anton, will come to define their relationship.

The story of Gustav and Anton as children in the years immediately following World War II composes the first of three movements in Rose Tremain’s The Gustav Sonata. Part Two traces the pre- and mid-war relationship of Gustav’s parents, while Part Three moves fifty years into the future to see the final crescendo of Gustav and Anton. Despite the different times and historical contexts, Tremain, winner of numerous awards, including the Whitbread Award, the Orange Prize, and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, skillfully investigates the philosophical implications and human costs of neutrality…”

 

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On June 20, 2017 By In Mixed Martial Arts

The Cost of Combat

“Traumatic brain injury for combat sports athletes is rarely the result of a singular event. It’s an accumulation of damage, a creeping punch-at-a-time erosion that takes place in every fight and sparring session. For the duration of his professional MMA career between 2006 and 2016, Hague fought once every 14 weeks. If he had a five-week training camp for every fight — short by industry standards — that means in a given year he was taking real-time, fight-prep punishment either in the gym or in a fight for over 200 days out of the year.

We don’t know Hague’s exact training conditions, but even the safest, most precautionary camps put the human body through extreme rigors. That is to say, the sport itself puts the human body through extreme rigors. There is no way to safely be a fighter; the best way to prevent injury of any kind is to not participate in the first place.

Such tragedies put a spotlight on a number of questions that are normally ignored or contentedly left unanswered. Why did the commission let this fight happen, knowing that Hague had been knocked out regularly and recently? Why did Hague, a former kindergarten teacher, want to continue putting his health on the line in this line of work? Why did the referee let the fight go on after Hague had been dropped several times in the opening minutes of the match? Why didn’t his corner throw in the towel? Why do we watch people inflict life-altering brain damage on each other?”

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On June 13, 2017 By In Mixed Martial Arts

The Old Man and the Beast

“Getting old sucks. Your body starts to ache and creak in places you didn’t think possible. Youthful vitality slowly erodes into vague weakness and general malaise. Simple tasks become more labored and painful. The ability to get excited fades, thinking fogs and things like sleeping and standing cause lower back pain. It gets harder to keep up with the pace of a rapidly changing world, and all the while there are younger, sharper people nipping at your heels, impatiently waiting to render you obsolete.

Indeed, getting old sucks — unless you’re Mark Hunt.

The 43 year-old “Super Samoan” on Saturday penned another chapter in one of the unlikeliest careers the sport has ever seen. The longtime combat sports veteran with over 50 combined fights in MMA and kickboxing took out a younger, more athletic Derrick Lewis in the fourth round of their UFC Fight Night 110 main event in Auckland, New Zealand, snapping Lewis’ six-fight win streak — one of the longest in the history of the heavyweight division.

A number of factors make Hunt one of the most improbable characters to loiter around relevancy. Though he’s sneakily crafty and reliably exciting to watch, there’s little else about Hunt’s career that has resembled consistency. After reeling off five straight wins in Pride Fighting Championships, including wins over Wanderlei Silva and Mirko Filipovic, he then lost six straight, topped off by a 63-second submission loss to Sean McCorkle in his UFC debut. He was finished in all six of those fights…”

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On June 6, 2017 By In Mixed Martial Arts

The Benefits of a Slow Boil

“I’m probably not alone in saying that the UFC 212 main event between Jose Aldo and Max Holloway was incredible and horrible at the same time. The fight itself was incredible — there was a narrative arch to it and plenty of big-strike action, as well — but there is an unmistakable anxiety that comes with watching two great fighters go at it.

It’s impossible to remove myself emotionally from such fights. I also tend to think it’s boring to do so, since the real weight of watching sports is in the human connection that permeates the immediate entertainment. Regardless, this was a tough test, for both men in the Octagon and for me to watch.

I’m a teacher. Teachers aren’t supposed to have favorite students, but we do: Some kids are simply more enjoyable than others, in the same way that some coworkers have better personalities than others. It shouldn’t affect how students are treated or evaluated, but having classroom favorites is an unavoidable reality. The same logic applies to being a part of MMA media. Objectivity is important, especially when it comes to reporting and analysis, but when the fights are on, you’d have to be pretty cynical to not feel any sort of way about any of the action…”

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