Describing anything as patient is usually a backhanded compliment. Patience is a good thing, of course, but it’s also a common euphemism for boring. If a date describes you to their friends as “patient,” it probably doesn’t bode well for your romantic future. Nobody wants to watch a football team that plays a “patient” brand of offense, let alone a “patient” fight. Patience is fundamentally unsexy, as virtues tend to be. This is a cage fight; shoot all the just-bleed vices directly into my veins.
Yet UFC 241 on Saturday in Anaheim, California, gave us plenty of reason to appreciate the different ways in which patience can present itself in the fight business…