MMA

There is a UFC card this Saturday night, 9PM for the prelims on Spike TV, then 10PM to 1AM for the Pay Per View. The best place I've seen them, and where I'd like to go again (though I'm cool with wherever) is Buffalo Wings and Rings, downtown, next to Steak 'n Shake (111W. Maryland St.). There are TVs everywhere and you can hear pretty well, too. I can't go alone, but if people can meet me, I'll be there by 8:30PM.

MMA is now my 2nd favorite sport behind football (basketball is now 3rd). Much to my surprise, it's a fairly close 2nd, too. It's pretty amazing because I LOVE football. Football and MMA overlap in many areas with the physicality and brutality and violence, but also with the need for game planning and precision. While I am a fan of the (controlled) violence of MMA (and football, too), I admire more the technique and skill and strategy. I can't stand when people start to boo when fighters are on the ground or aren't engaging "enough" on the feet. 99.99999% of the people booing would have NO CHANCE at all of doing any significant damage to a trained, professional fighter who is literally risking his health and life, in part, to entertain the crowd.

A submission is just as beautiful and dangerous as a standing knockout. The intricacies of the positions and the setups to get to a hold are fascinating. Submissions are more impressive to me because they're harder to do. If anyone gets hit hard enough on the chin, he will go to sleep. But to put someone in a position where he is forced to tap out and quit rather than lose consciousness from a choke or break a limb/ligament/tendon from a joint lock--to make someone say, "I quit," or better put, "I QUIT! LET ME GO!"--is more poignant than a hitting someone in the head (or sometimes the body) for a knockout. That's not to say that I don't appreciate good striking, either. Joe Rogan, hilarious comedian and UFC color commentator, described (UFC Middleweight Champion) Anderson Silva's fighting style as a "ballet of violence" and I couldn't agree more. A good brawl is fun to watch now and then, but someone with such superior skills, on the feet or on the ground, can just be mesmerizing.

The best way I know how to describe MMA is to think of what pro wrestling would be if it were real, but with practical (mostly) rules. I'm not a big fan of Wikipedia, but their article on MMA is pretty good. Check it out for the history and evolution of the sport: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed_martial_arts. Here are the rules in North America: http://www.abcboxing.com/unified_mma_rules.html. The rules are different in Japan and in other places around the world, though. For instance, you can kick and knee a grounded opponent in the head there in some promotions. And some North American leagues limit the rules by disallowing elbows to the head on the ground.

Like a lot of people, for a long time I thought that MMA and the UFC were just glorified Tough Man contests and I had no interest in them. Then I stumbled upon the UFC reality show, The Ultimate Fighter. I used to watch WWE pro wrestling, and the first season of TUF aired right after WWE's Monday Night Raw. I just happened not to change the channel after wrestling. TUF is basically a tournament of up and coming fighters, divided into 2 teams coached by established fighters. The up-and-comers are all sequestered in a house in Las Vegas with no access to the outside world for 6 weeks. They train and go back to the house (and usually drink and get on each others' nerves). The show leads up to a pay per view headlined by the 2 coaches squaring off. Watching TUF showed me that the fighters were real athletes with real skill who trained very hard. They weren't just thugs and rednecks who liked to fight, but usually educated guys who loved competition. You still have your occasional thug fighter, but he'd better have skills or he'll be a knocked out/choked out/tapped out thug who isn't as tough as he thought.

The UFC is the biggest and best MMA promotion around. In the U.S., you also have Strikeforce and Bellator as major companies, plus hundreds of smaller, local shows. I include the WEC with the UFC since they're both owned by the same people. The WEC just has lighter weight classes as the only main difference between it and the UFC. Japan has 2 major promotions, Dream and Sengoku, but they're still behind the UFC. I enjoy fights from any promotion--a good fight is a good fight--but the UFC has most of the best fighters and I think they put on the best show. They're also the most accessible to me.

MMA is still evolving. It used to be that a wrestler or a jiu jitsu guy or a kickboxer would learn just enough of the other disciplines to defend them, but stuck with the style that made them world class athletes. Now, everyone has to train everything. You may have started out as a wrestler or a striker or a submission guy (or gal), but if you're not well-rounded, you're not going to fare well against high level competition. Now you see wrestlers and submission specialists knocking people out and strikers tapping out their opponents. You have to be able to capitalize on any weakness, any opening, no matter your background, and it's happening more and more. There are kids now growing up studying MMA and not just wrestling or jiu jitsu or taekwondo or karate. A few young fighters out there now started that way. I can't wait to see how skilled the next generation of fighters will be, especially when you see more athletes turning to MMA instead of more traditional stick and ball sports.

As the combatants' skills continue to advance, it becomes more and more important for the sport to progress with them. Fighter safety is the most important issue in MMA. There need to be more competent referees. Too often a fighter takes excessive damage. Too often a fighter loses dominant position because the ref didn't understand what was going on. Too many mistakes are being made by someone who is directly responsible for the safety of the fighters. There are problems with judging, as well. Not enough judges know exactly what they are watching and don't credit fighters for effectively using techniques that they don't recognize. Scoring a close round one way or the other is understandable, but not scoring the fight right because you didn't know how dangerous a submission hold was is unforgivable. Most fighters get paid a certain amount just for fighting, their "show money," and then a win bonus. Judges are taking money out of fighters' pockets.

I'm a huge fan despite the issues I have with MMA. You have the incompetent officiating and judging. I don't like all of the rules--I think you should be able to knee a grounded opponent in the head, and maybe kick him, too, and elbows should always be allowed, among other things. Most promotions won't work with each other and co-promote, so there are some very interesting fights that we may never see. I'd like there to be more MMA on free TV. All main event fights should be 5 rounds, even if a title isn't involved. Even with my objections, MMA is still one of the purest forms of competition. Track and field and swimming are pure, as well--running/swimming faster, jumping higher/farther, throwing something farther--but MMA has the element of direct contact and physicality, too. It can answer the question: Who's tougher?

Another part of MMA that I love is the respect that the fighters have for each other. They can talk all the trash they want leading up to a fight, but once it's over, they usually hug each other (or at least shake hands) and thank their opponent for the experience. I've not been in many fights in my life, but I've hit and been hit a few times, and there's something about the bond that comes out of that. While it's certainly different in many respects on the street than it is in competition, there's still this link with another person that you can only get by fighting him. To see 2 highly skilled, well trained athletes try to hurt each other for 15 or 25 minutes, risking their own safety in the process, embrace and smile afterward is amazing and enlightening. It's sport, it's competition, it's pure.

If/when I get to feeling better and am physically able, I'd like to fight once. I want to test myself. Of course I'd have to train first, and I have a lot to learn. I know that recognizing what pro fighters are doing and being able to do it myself are not the same thing, but I was a good athlete and I'm as tough as they come. No man could put me through worse than I've already dealt with. I'd love to see how I stack up, how well I could compete.

I get that MMA isn't for everyone, too. I can see how it would be hard for some people to watch people hurt each other, even in the context of sport. That's all fine. What I don't like is people who bash it without knowing what it is, what is involved, and without having seen it done well. If you don't like violence or physicality, don't watch football, either. I've played football, and it is indeed violent.I have the scars to prove it. The injury rate for football players is 100%, and that's not rounding up. If MMA isn't your thing, that's cool. I'm not into bungee jumping, but I have no beef with those who are. I'll just choose to stay away from bungee jumping ;).

Thanks for reading, especially if you're not an MMA fan. Hopefully this little blurb gets you closer to at least respecting the sport that I'm loving more and more. Comments and feedback are, as always, welcomed and encouraged. Acknowledgement that you read this is very much appreciated, too. Take care, and COME WATCH THE FIGHTS WITH ME THIS WEEKEND! :)

-B