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On July 3, 2018 By In Mixed Martial Arts

Stay Weird, MMA

Like you, I will be watching fights this weekend. Unlike you, I will be watching them live — in a nightclub in Gangnam. Clearly, I’m not talking about International Fight Week.

The night before the biggest and most anticipated fight card of the year, a random club in Seoul will host Japanese promotion Real Fight Championship. The event is called Korea vs. The World and is headlined by Kyrgyzstani fighter Nursultan Arsen Uule, as he meets one of Brazil’s many Marcos Souzas. As far as I can tell, the only reason this venue is putting on MMA fights is a coincidence of nomenclature: The club’s name is Octagon, and since the shape is now synonymous with mixed martial arts, 2+2=4.

So why am I writing about this instead of the heavyweight superfight between Stipe Miocic and Daniel Cormier or the featherweight title fight between the most talented millennials on the Ultimate Fighting Championship roster? For starters, I would have preferred to write about Korea vs. The World after it happened, but since it coincides with back-to-back UFC cards, that would be irresponsible. More to the point, as the next week of MMA coverage — and likely longer than that — will focus on the highest aspirations and virtues of the sport, it’s worth remembering MMA’s uniquely bizarre underground fringe…

 

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On June 26, 2018 By In Mixed Martial Arts

What It Means to Make a Mistake

To err is human. In no arena is this more dramatically evident than mixed martial arts.

Joe Rogan’s definition of MMA as “high-level problem solving with dire physical consequences” is appropriately grand. Every fighter is a unique maze of skill sets. More than a simple aggregate of athleticism and technique, fighters are also a combination of prior experiences from the gym and the cage. They are trained to be physical, psychological and technical puzzles, the solution to which is some form of superior violence.

Rogan’s descriptor of “dire consequences” is much more readily understood. Commit to a punch too much and you’re on your back; leave a limb exposed and it’s soon impersonating The Exorcist; circle the wrong way and you’re sniffing shinbone. Any number of seemingly small errors can result in waking up with your back on the canvas. Look at Tyson Pedro’s performance at UFC Fight Night 132 on Saturday in Singapore. After a minute of picking apart Ovince St. Preux at range, he followed a knockdown into a submission attempt. When it failed, he remained in the clinch and tried for a takedown instead of resetting back to the domain where he was initially successful. The takedown got reversed, and he ended up tapping out to an armbar. That isn’t to say Pedro would have necessarily won if he disengaged, but it’s fair to say that this single decision directly led to him losing.

Such dire consequences make the sport so genuinely surprising and righteously satisfying. The superior fighter doesn’t always win, because one mistake is that consequential, and unlike the world outside the cage, mistakes inside of it are naturally and inescapably met with fair treatment. Aside from the exceptional officiating and judging gaffes, fighters almost always get what they deserve in the purest sense. Pedro has no one but himself to blame for his tactical misstep. In this way, fighting is perhaps the most just realm of modern society…

 

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On June 12, 2018 By In Mixed Martial Arts

Four Takeaways from UFC 225

It was exactly the shot of adrenaline the Ultimate Fighting Championship needed.

Though UFC 225 on Saturday in Chicago was the organization’s 17th event in 2018, it was its first truly good card of the year. The recent run of events, from UFC 224 to UFC Fight Night 131, felt like one torturously long undercard that stretched across four consecutive weeks. Not that it was anyone’s specific fault — good matchmaking can still fall apart or manifest in dull, listless performances — but a spade is, in fact, a spade. Fans needed something to get excited about, and UFC 225 delivered.

For a card that had four split decisions that were all good fights and 11 fighters who had previously fought in UFC title bouts, a lot can be said. I’ll settle for just four things…

 

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On June 5, 2018 By In Mixed Martial Arts

When History Rhymes

History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.

So goes the quote typically attributed to Mark Twain, though in reality there’s very little evidence of the fact. Regardless who said it, it’s still a good quote, full of wit and insight into how humanity collectively operates.

It speaks to the uniqueness of situations, that the precise arrangement of variables that compose history rarely re-emerge in exact parallels, but if we squint a little, the rough shapes of historical events reappear in broad patterns. Yet the quote also speaks to our collective lack of imagination and our petty animal fate, that no matter what technological or social changes have occurred, we are still in some ways essentially the same as we’ve always been, destined to fall into the same stupid traps that people did in the past.

Lately, these ideas feel particularly relevant to the mixed martial arts world…

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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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