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By In Mixed Martial Arts

Age Is Much More Than A Number

It has been a busy time in the world of combat sports. A week after Chuck Liddell and Tito Ortiz tried to revive their dead rivalry, Tyson Fury came back from the grave in the 12th round of his heavyweight title fight against Deontay Wilder, setting a new world record for resurrection turnaround time. While Wilder-Fury is rightly being hailed as a classic, the Liddell-Ortiz trilogy fight was much-maligned — and for good reason. It was a ridiculous premise in the first place; it was only competitive by technical definition; and it was aesthetically gross. There were also negative sides to it.

The resounding conclusion of the farcical fracas seemed to be that age is more than just a number. Combat sports cannibalize the old, offering them as blood sacrifices to the gods of promotion and nostalgia, often in order to build faux hype for up-and-coming attractions. It was no surprise then that UFC President Dana White’s stern condemnation of the Liddell-Ortiz fight left MMA fans scratching their heads when a bout between Israel Adesanya and Anderson Silva was announced. Adesanya is an undefeated, 29-year-old kickboxing phenom; Silva is an aging G.O.A.T. who has one dubious win in six years. Don’t even get me started on the booking of another B.J. Penn fight.

At a point, it starts to become irresponsible to continue allowing older fighters to compete. Perhaps the only redeeming factor of the Liddell-Ortiz fight was that both men were old. The long-term and often delayed consequences of combat are serious, and those risks only compound after 40 years of living, especially when a significant portion of that time has been spent accruing brain trauma fighting professionally.

Life is never so simple, however. As is the case in most things, exceptions abound, and even though they are indeed exceptions, it’s only right to acknowledge them. Luckily, the last few weeks have given us plenty to acknowledge…

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By In Mixed Martial Arts

The UFC’s Old Epidemic

“Even for a sport as reliably strange as ours, the past week was a particularly bizarre one. Between the bookends of two excellent fight cards in UFC 217 and UFC Fight Night 120, a month’s worth of weird went down. Yet aside from Conor McGregor’s shenanigans at Bellator 187, a common theme permeated the goings on of the last seven days: the repercussions of getting old in the fight game, or, as I like to call it, MMAging.

Bad portmanteau aside, there’s a difference between getting old in regular life and getting old as a professional fighter. It’s not so much a defined age — though it often is that, too — as it is an accumulation of fight-related erosion…”

 

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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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By In rhymes

Resignation

“Go out and live today and tell me how it felt
I’ll be bullshitting with Icarus until I’m allowed to melt
he lets me fly when it’s night time, and that’s a hand a coward’s dealt
but if it’s Now or Knelt I’ll always choose the moon from its clouded veldt

waxing crescent wax poetic, masters degree but I can’t master effort
pillory salt propensity – please pass the pepper
leagues back my granddad shook hands with lepers
now all I got are trite words – nothing lasts forever…”

 

Read more at The Finite Life

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