Midnight Mania! A New Era Dawns

Bringing you the weird and wild from the world of MMA one last weeknight

Welcome to Midnight Mania!

This will go down as a unique installment of Midnight Mania, featuring the final lead story write up of Andrew Pearson before he heads off towards greener pastures and higher education. Otherwise, all the random content and goodness is being provided by your new captain of Midnight Mania, Andrew Richardson!

---

So, this is goodbye

Hey y’all, I didn’t see anything earth shattering breaking tonight (with my luck, McGregor will tweet his comeback fight while I type this), so I figured I would selfishly take the chance to thank you all and reflect a bit. It has been my incredible pleasure to bring you Midnight Mania since December of 2016. I hope the column has made your life a little more enjoyable. It was born as a concept in Tommy’s mind, and somehow I got lucky enough to be the guy to enact his vision. He gave me a lot of flexibility to more or less do what I wanted with it, and when I look back on those early stories, I can see the promise they held. I feel Richardson will be able to fulfill the early promise that, except for a few moments, it never really reached.

I do want to share what the column meant for me. It is still surreal to me that I got paid- and paid well, by MMA standards- to write about the sport I love. Only a handful of people on earth can say that. Midnight Mania got me through college as an undergraduate, working two other jobs and researching for my honors thesis. It provided me the income to work a low-pay research assistant job so I could pad my resume to apply for graduate school. It was my plan all along for this gig to provide me the income to get through grad school with a living wage.

Now that I have been accepted into a PhD program, however, it’s hard to imagine doing this for six years at night while studying during the day. I already went through that once, and it wasn’t a fun time overall. More immediately, I just can’t keep up the schedule this summer. I’m working a sales job to save money, and I if the choice is to miss publishing Midnight Mania for a night to make more than my monthly pay here, I have to prioritize that.

It’s the right time for a handoff, too, because I have the right person to hand it off to. Andrew Richardson is awesome, and I count him a friend. He can give this column the attention it deserves, attention I have not been able to give it for the past several months.

I want to thank you for reading, for commenting, for the people who did take the time to reach out to me on some form of social media. It is strange to have had millions of people read words that I typed, as mundane as they might have been. One of my goals was to amplify the really talented people that produce the content that I aggregated. Most of them, I only know by their social media handles. Accounts like Grabaka Hitman, Jolassanda, Strangle Squad, As Shopped As It Gets, or Based Dongeezus (SUMO!) are run by incredibly gifted, dedicated, and creative people. I want to thank Tommy for being one of the best bosses and editors one could have, putting up with my incessant typos and spelling mistakes. I want to thank Ryan and Dan and Jesse for coordinating with me, covering for me at times, and Cory for doing the moderator work in the comments section that I really hate. Speaking of hate, I might even miss my detractors in the comments section when I’m gone. Time will tell.

I’ll still be here reading and commenting here from time to time, but I hope to be able to finally get a cleanse from social media and online culture for a while. I’m proud of what I built, and what I can pass on to the better Andrew. As always, follow me on Twitter @Vorpality, and remember, a better tomorrow is always possible.

---

Insomnia

Conor McGregor has quite a bit to say about Irish combat sports.

I’ll be fully honest and say that I’m disappointed in the main event bout, but UFC Sacramento on July 13th features SEVEN Team Alpha Male (TAM) fighters. Supposedly, the last time UFC visited “The City of Trees,” there was a limit of three on how many fighters from a single team were allowed to compete on one card, but things have changed!

Credit to Reddit user u/claybeau_, who has been making these charts to help demonstrate the pecking order of different divisions. In this case, it really shows just how shallow Women’s Bantamweight is right now.

Top-ranked Light Heavyweight Dominick Reyes crushing foes on the gridiron.

Badr Hari is not exactly looking smaller following his 19-month suspension for a failed drug test.

“Platinum” Mike Perry posts an absurd and unmatched amount of sparring footage, but this is some rare insight into his grappling. All goofiness aside, Perry has shown some promise inside the Octagon for a brawler.

Slips, Rips, and KO clips

Muay Thai-style sweeps from the clinch are the coolest.

For my money, the kimura grip is the strongest hold in the grappling arts, perfect for forcing an athletic opponent to slow down.

Another brutal example from jiu-jitsu black belt and longtime TAM grappling coach, Dustin Akbari, at the Abu Dhabi Combat Club (ADCC) trials.

“The Gentleman” Josh Hill proved himself Canada’s best Bantamweight in brutal fashion last weekend — head off the center line folks!

Random Land

A top-notch Twitter account.

Front kicks to face are rough enough without the added scratch of sneakers.

Music from the making of Midnight Mania! A random single from one of my Spotify playlists, I dig the changes in tempo and the sort of Doo-Wop nature to it all.