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On December 20, 2016 By In Mixed Martial Arts

Watching Through the Rearview

“I watched UFC on Fox 22 after it had already finished. I had to work on Sunday morning, when most fight cards are live in my time zone, and after the requisite hweshik — a Korean custom where you go out and drink with your boss — all the hands had already been raised in Sacramento, California.

While I was out, I couldn’t help myself; by the time I rolled home, I knew the who and the how of the event’s winners. I probably could have left it at that and scanned through play-by-plays and post-fight analyses, but there’s a difference between reading about fights and actually watching them. So that’s what I did.

For whatever is lost in the way of genuine intrigue, watching fights through the rearview makes up for it with added clarity. Upsets, bad decisions, surprising performances — they all make more sense when you expect them. The experience is less exciting than not knowing, of course, but it provides a different lens through which to understand what happened.

The strangest part about watching a fight for the first time when you already know the end result is how normal it can be. I assumed Urijah Faber would win, and by the time “California Love” cut through the showers of applause at the Golden 1 Center, I knew he would win. The odd part, though, is that it felt no different than the majority of Faber’s fights for the past 10 years…”

 

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On December 12, 2016 By In Mixed Martial Arts

A Fighter Forged from Conflict

“You’ve probably never been to Waianae, Hawaii. Though it is only 30 miles west of Waikiki, they are worlds apart. With a population of around 13,000, there are more tourists on the island on any given day than people who actually live in Waianae. A little more than 8,000 of its residents are of Native Hawaiian ancestry — which is not the same as simply being from Hawaii — making Waianae one of the most Hawaiian places on the island. The ethnic composition of the area is a small but important part of its reputation.

At the heart of the ahupuaʻa, or land division, since Waianae can hardly be called a city, is the high school. Waianae High School has held the dubious distinction of having the highest dropout rate in the state for over a decade. Around 30 percent of the students drop out, and nearly all of them are male; graduating classes are around 85 percent female. Of the students who stay enrolled, 70 percent of them qualify for free or reduced lunch assistance. Nearly 30 percent of the population lives under the poverty line, a reality exacerbated by rampant drug abuse, particularly crystal meth. Waianae is home to the oldest and largest encampments of homeless people in the state.

There are a lot of tough, rugged places in Hawaii, but none like Waianae. To represent the hot, dry side of Oahu is a well-understood shorthand in the islands for “don’t [expletive] with me.” To know Waianae is to understand newly crowned interim Ultimate Fighting Championship featherweight titleholder Max Holloway…”

 

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On November 29, 2016 By In Mixed Martial Arts

The Champion of Interims

“History didn’t last very long.

Two weeks after Conor McGregor became the third person to win Ultimate Fighting Championship titles in two different weight classes — and the first to do so simultaneously — the biggest star in the sport no longer holds that distinction. Instead, the man he knocked out with a single punch has now been upgraded from the interim featherweight champion to the “undisputed” featherweight champion. Meanwhile, Max Holloway and Anthony Pettis will fight for the now vacant interim featherweight championship at UFC 206.

If you’re scratching your head at all this, you’re not alone. Interim belts are strange in and of themselves, but they do serve a purpose. Being the champion denotes being the best fighter in the division. When there is ample reason to doubt that, the champion, in theory, defends his or her strap against the top contender. When champions are unable to defend their spot, an interim championship makes sense. It’s a glorified number one contender belt, but it also adds to the storyline of the division. It gives credibility to the notion that the injured champ may no longer be the best, and it rewards the fighter who is willing and able to stay active…”

 

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On November 22, 2016 By In Mixed Martial Arts

Book Review: “Champion of the World”

“Americanism is an amorphous idea. The concept varies person to person and has no doubt changed over time. Yet there is still something immovable and essential about it, so much so that it continues to exist at the center point of culture and politics despite meaning completely different things to different people. The definitive American virtues, however, in all their manifestations, boil down to similar ideas: stubborn individualism, rugged adventurism and hope to make a new, better life for oneself.

These ideas find a unique home in “Champion of the World,” the debut novel from Bleacher Report lead MMA writer Chad Dundas. Through the lives of down-and-out former wrestling champion Pepper Van Dean — back when professional wrestling was still legitimate competition — and his wife Moira, Dundas unravels the layers of the American spirit in a vivid pre-Depression setting.

We meet the Van Dean’s as part of a backwoods traveling circus, where Pepper performs dangerous stunts and wrestles audience members for spare change while Moira cheats drunken yokels on the poker table. After a particularly confrontational night, they find themselves on their own in the middle of the Oregon woods. Having no real alternatives, they accept a dubious offer to train Garfield Taft, a talented African-American wrestler fresh off a publicized bid in prison. Taft’s goal: to become the undisputed heavyweight wrestling champion.

From there, the story unfolds in a series of twists that breathe air into a panoply of well-defined characters and provides legitimate historical context, not only to the sport of wrestling itself but to the temperament of the country that saw it become a form of business entertainment. It’s a gripping narrative that never lets go once it gets its hooks in…”

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On November 21, 2016 By In Mixed Martial Arts

Bellator and the Role of Competition

“The word “monopoly” evokes a number of reactions. For some, it means the death of competition and the rise of bully businesses that can jack up prices at their sinister whims. For others, it means family squabbles and slammed game boards from landing on Boardwalk — again — after your little brother put a hotel on it. Either way, rarely does a positive reaction follow discussion of monopolies. Even monopolistic entities themselves try to avoid the term, lest they incur greater scrutiny from the angry masses who are still recovering from the previous night’s board game defeat.

Monopolies are tricky, though. In many instances, they’re better for both consumers and employees than competitive markets. A company that is constantly trying to outmaneuver competitors will likely have little ability or desire to truly take care of its workers. Rather, said workers become more replaceable and interchangeable in a state of perfect competition, since their salaries would be quick to put on the chopping block in the race to cut costs and increase profits. On the other hand, a business that has no real outside threats has the resources and ability to take care of its workers more comprehensively. It’s why Google — which dominates search engine competitors like Yahoo and Microsoft’s Bing to the extent they can hardly be considered competitors — is renowned for how well it treats its employees…”

 

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