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By In Social Media

“The Abundance” Book Review

“The worlds of fiction and nonfiction tend to be considered opposite sides of the same literary coin. It is a strange sort of division, one that separates bookstores and Greek philosophers alike. Yet as seamlessly understood as those categories may be, there is something crude and inexact about them; languages outside of English often need to invent words to distinguish what is simply known as “storytelling.” Indeed, telling a good story in either fiction or nonfiction requires access to both the real and the imagined.

Those creases between reality and imagination are exactly where Annie Dillard, winner of the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction, has made a home. Dillard doesn’t blur the lines between fiction and nonfiction so much as occupy them simultaneously, deploying the surreal and sacred into the cracks of her experiences like glacial rivulets until they frost-shatter into dreamlike prose. The result is a pioneering presence in the literary world that has spanned decades. With The Abundance, Dillard offers readers old and new a curated bird’s-eye view of her essays from 1974 to 2005…”

 

Read more at Harvard Review Online

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By In Mixed Martial Arts

UFC Fright Night and Other Spooky Musings

“It’s Halloween, the day for celebrating all things spooky, as well as the only day of the year when using the word “spooky” is acceptable. As such, it’s worth thinking about what makes something scary in the first place. Whether real or imagined, the stories that scare us tend to have common denominators: an element of mystery, the vulnerability of being alone, the possibility of danger.

In the ultimate tough guy sport of MMA, it’s weird to think that anything is scary, other than the freakish physical damage that can happen in any given fight. However, the elements of spooky manifest in their own unique ways in this sport, so in honor of Halloween, I’ll be your guide through the haunted house of current MMA issues. You can close your eyes if you need to; I won’t judge…”

 

Read more at Sherdog

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By In Social Media

Podcast: Fist Fight Fan Club

I hopped on the Fist Fight Fan Club with MMA Fighting’s lawyer/reporter extraordinaire Jed Meshew to talk all things fighting. Give it a listen.

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By In Mixed Martial Arts

Hendo: A Sherdog Retrospective

“It says something about a fighter when he or she is universally known by a single name. Indeed, there’s a lot to be said about “Hendo.” He is probably the most accomplished fighter ever, with wins over people who were or would eventually become UFC, Pride or Bellator MMA champions every two to three years for the entirety of his 19-year career. Let that sink in. I don’t think anyone else has as many signature wins as Henderson does, and he got them at several weight classes. It’s hard to pinpoint one moment that stands out in such a career. His 53-second demolition of former UFC middleweight champ Bustamante, for example, gets lost in the shuffle of his later wins over Silva, Bisping and Emelianenko. Each of those fights warrants its own write-up. Instead, I’ll go with his most recent win over Hector Lombard…”

 

Read more at Sherdog

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By In Mixed Martial Arts

Emerging Markets and World Domination

“It’s easy to assume that MMA always has something going on because it has no proper offseason. Most of the time, that’s basically correct; there are few weekends when the Ultimate Fighting Championship doesn’t have an event, and when those doldrums roll through, it’s a near-certainty that Bellator MMA, the World Series of Fighting or someone else will take advantage of the open space.

Maybe you watched Alexander Shlemenko wilt Kendall Grove at Bellator 162 this weekend, or maybe you watched Nieky Holzken record his 12th straight victory at Glory 34. If you were lucky, you caught some of the bizarre, awesome moat grappling at Ganryujima 5. Either way, the big news of the week was outside of cages, rings and circular moats. A major component of the headline news of the combat sports world was the ongoing layoffs of UFC executives and front office folk.

The layoffs have mostly affected the UFC’s international presence, which makes sense. Though the UFC has long clung to its description as “the fastest growing sport in the world,” it has never been the international phenomenon it has tried to be. In the history of the sport, there have been 67 different divisional champions. This includes interim champions but does not count the same people who have separate reigns — Matt Hughes, for example, only counts once, even though he had two different stints as the welterweight champion. Of those 67 champions, 48 have been American. The rest have come from Brazil (12), Canada (two), and various European countries (five). That’s hardly a picture of an internationally competitive sport…”

 

Read more at Sherdog

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