My Ultimate Fighting Cherry

I have prolonged it for as long as possible but the inevitable can be delayed no longer. On November 16th, I will attend my first ever live MMA event and in truth, I am excited.

My relationship with MMA is akin to the Kubler-Ross grief hypothesis otherwise known as the 5 stages.

Denial: not just a river in Egypt. Ha. Ha. 

Stage 1: Denial. I wrote off MMA. It will never last, I declared. It’s rubbish. I won’t watch it. Waste of bloody time is what it is. Stage 2: Anger. Screw this UFC nonsense. Boxing has been around for three hundred years, what do we need this steroid ridden clinch-fest for anyway? It’s a thin strip of spandex away from being pornographic for goodness sake! Stage 3: Bargaining. Look the only reason the UFC is anything is because it is a centralized organization, well backed and well marketed. The product itself is garbage. Anyone who watches it is has been effectively conned by the Man. Stage 4: Depression. Well, I guess boxing has cannibalized itself do death and paved the way for this crap. Thanks a LOT Al Haymon. Last time I watch Friday Night Fights. Stage 5: Acceptance. You know what, there’s plenty of room for two kinds of mainstream combat sports and maybe the success of UFC is going to force boxing to up its game. Everything is going to be OK.

And what do you know? It’s true. This has indeed been the best one of boxing’s best years. The highest grossing fight of all time. Multiple candidates for fight of the year. The unending plethora of possible action fights in the most well-cultivated and well-stacked welterweight division in living memory! The HBO, Showtime, Top Rank and Goldenboy feud has even reached a sensible cease fire resulting in 2 competing brands each pushing the other to broker meaningful and entertaining fights!

Ok, I looked at the main event. Don't judge me. 

Now, here we are a fortnight before I schlep across the desert sands for my first ever MMA event in Las Vegas. I haven’t gone overboard and done something rash like check the fight card or anything. I’m not trying to win any awards here. However, I am going to drive the 4 hours, not complain, not crack wise, keep an open mind and report back in a fair and balanced manner when it is done. I think we can all indulge in a little round of applause for me for being so grown up about this whole enterprise. Now, I am not being funny but is a rear naked choke hold an actual thing or… 

From the Colosseum: Magomed Abdusalamov. Get well soon, son.

I tuned in to watch the GGG fight on Saturday expecting to see something special. It came to pass that I saw somethings specials.

Mike Perez aka "Irish" Mike Perez (charmingly discordant nickname) was to take on KO fetishist Magomed Abdusalamov. This fight was always going to be a terrifying prospect...for Roy Jones Jr who was hoping for an early knock out to avoid pronouncing the Russian's name on too many occasions. Jones actually acquitted himself very well, stumbling over his words only when the action was so ridiculous, it was ludicrous to say anything. This fight was....well stupefying. 

Heavyweight boxing really is no joke. I know it seems that way when you watch people like Seth Mitchell, Deontay Wilder or any of the recent Klitchkos fights (all different kind of jokes of varying degree of funniness). But when you get two well-matched, talented, granite chinned hard-cases it is pretty unbelievable to witness. I simply don't know the anatomical explanation for either fighter being able to walk through some of those shots. I stubbed my toe the other day and was close to giving up on life yet both of these gentlemen spent the best part of an hour getting BEANED in the face by another very large man who was well trained in the art of BEANING people in the face. 

And then, horribly, we learned that there is no possible anatomical explanation. The body cannot sustain that kind of brutality. Poor Magomed Abdusalamov is in a medically induced coma after an operation to remove a blood clot in his brain. The man has three daughters, the youngest of which is under a year old. He probably didn't make 6 figures for the fight and let’s face it – blood clots in the brain are not the sort of thing that fighters are known to easily come back from.

Humans: A History of Violence. 

I often wonder why I like boxing. I’m not alone in liking it. I’m not a weirdo for goodness sake. For centuries, humanity has had an enduring penchant for watching members of its own species fuck one another up. The Romans had the Colosseum,  the Aztecs played soccer with human heads and in the north of England, people play Rugby League. Savages. Someone even thought that boxing was too tame so they removed the gloves, introduced kicking and replaced the kindly elasticity of the ring ropes with a metal cage. What is wrong with us?

Are we all intrinsically violent entities hamstrung by unnatural social mores that irritatingly prevent us from concussing the nearest warm body? Does watching this violence alleviate the intensity of our own violent urges? Is watching combat sports a constructive nay necessary outlet? What would become of society if we didn’t have these outlets? Would every trip to the grocery store be like Gatti/Ward?  Damn, I think I just set myself a lot of unnecessary homework by asking the question: why are we violent? And since, shock horror, I don’t get paid to write this – I don’t fancy writing that thesis.

Irish Mikey Perez eats a White Russian

What I will say is this. For someone who isn’t paid to watch this sport (did I mention that already?), I am fairly well informed but I think I can be forgiven for not knowing too much if anything about either Perez or Abdusalamov. The division simply isn’t covered that well blah blah blah, Klitchkos blah blah no American heavyweight blah, David Haye’s toe...blah…Deontay Wilder’s opposition… blah…Tyson Fury is a cock end blah blah blah. Phew! Sorry about that! What I mean is, at the first bell of Perez vs Abdusalamov, I was not invested at all in either of the fighters but after the first minute of the first round, I was routing for both. I was wincing on every connection, beating the cushions of my couch in astonishment each time Perez walked through MONSTER  Abdusalamov shots, stamping with glee at Perez’s James Toney-like hand speed and wringing my hands as Perez connected with his own beastly shots. Jim Lampley was in tears in record time and Roy Jones was calling everyone around him “son” which typically means he’s having a fantastic time.  Madison Square Garden filled up quickly as word spread throughout the halls that the undercard was a barnburner.

Degastan: Better than getting punched in the face. 

Abdusalamov thought he broke his nose in the first round, if anyone knows when they have broken their nose, it’s probably a heavyweight boxer. So he fought at least 9 rounds with impaired breathing and probable agony. Then something miserable happened to his cheek where it swelled up to the point of looking like someone had stapled a tenderloin to his temple. Yet he still came forward. Was it bravery? Desire? Instinct? He comes from Dagestan in Russia which sounds like a pretty dreadful place. It was a favored holiday destination of Tamerlan Tsernaev of Boston bombing fame. Commentators talk of Dagestan as if that explains why Abdusalamov could take that level of a beating and still be “in the fight”. Given the choice, I think he would rather have been in the hills of the Northern Caucasus with his daughters instead of seriously jeopardizing his chances of seeing them grow up. 

Chin up, mate and get well soon. #warrior

The sound of a heavyweight landing a punch is sonically unmistakable. I would take a blind hearing test on the sound from say…Pacquiao cleaning Hatton’s clock to Lewis cleaning Rahman’s. The pitch, the base, the reverb – it’s DIFFERENT and this fight was DIFFERENT; actually it was extraordinary, it was entertaining, it was special. But the result is a man fighting for his life. How do we get this kind of entertainment without the man fighting for his life part? Stop the fight. Just stop the damn fight. We didn’t need 10 rounds of that. Who cares if Abdusalamov was still in the fight?  He was losing after 8 rounds. Someone step in and stop the fight then, schedule a rematch. Give these men another deserved pay day and us another chapter of great competition. This is a sport, not an actual fight for life and death. It only becomes that when we get greedy and let a fight like that continue. I say “we” because, we are responsible. In our capitalist society the consumer is the enabler. Our reprieve comes from our ring-rust of great heavyweight fights. We were taken by surprise; the novelty of a fight like this in this fabled division transfixed and overtook us. We’ll be better next time. We promise. I hope there is a next time for Magomed Abdusalamov.