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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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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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