Stuff I learned: UFC 225 – MMA’s got talent!

Phil Brooks’ attempt to transform himself into a UFC fighter was a trial that many people can relate to. It was also funny and bad.

Last Saturday on the main card of UFC 225, Phil “CM Punk” Brooks’ second MMA fight did not go terribly well. He had been booked against another winless MMA fighter in Mike “The Truth” Jackson, but the bout quickly showed the difference between the two. Jackson has fought in kickboxing and boxing, and Brooks hasn’t. Jackson showed that he could punch and Brooks showed that he couldn’t. Nor could he really hit a takedown, or throw a kick. The whole awkward spectacle made you think that perhaps Brooks was not merely an injury-riddled 39-year-old who got into the sport late, but perhaps someone who was just not cut out for this.

Afterwards, UFC President Dana White would both mock Jackson for not trying harder, and also somehow chide everyone for not respecting Punk’s effort, while characteristically ignoring his own culpability in booking the show in the first place.

Oddly enough, it made me think of talent shows, and specifically an episode of Britain’s Got Talent from a few years ago, when a young man called Paul Potts sang Nessun Dorma.

He ended up winning the season, and this was interesting because people (even British people!) are not generally interested in opera singers… but in one moment they were suddenly interested in a man trying to become one. He opened his mouth, and a fascinating story immediately built itself, rich with intimations of breaking class and wealth barriers, of a deep personal attachment to something which most would see as old-fashioned and fusty. It helped that this song in particular is beloved, due to its association with Pavarotti and the 1990 World Cup.

All of this sort of occluded the fact that Potts didn’t appear to be all that good at singing by the standards of, you know, actual opera singers. Which is fair enough. I would guess that becoming one is tremendously difficult. It’s physically immensely challenging, requiring thousands of hours of training, innate talent, and probably a heavy dose of luck and personal connections in a crowded marketplace. It’s not surprising that Potts was not great in comparison.

In talent shows, though, the song, or the dance, or [whatever], is not the end product. It isn’t even the individual. It’s the alchemical process. Producers try to make the performer as dowdy and as unassuming as possible, so that the transformative moment when they do [whatever] is as impressive as it can be. The uglier the caterpillar, the better the butterfly.

This felt like the metamorphosis moment which Brooks was chasing, via being steadily beaten up by a slightly blasé journalist.

Some people were upset by mockery of his attempts, and it’s not hard to see why. Who doesn’t like to believe that they could drop their day job and become a film director, or a singer, or an NFL running back, or a UFC fighter. In these fantasies, it’s nice to think that even if you tried and failed, the world would give a respectful nod, a tip of the hat for your gumption. It’s hurtful to be shown that the response would more likely be: lmao u suck.

That the transformation could even be attempted is down to how fighting is seen: as less transactional, more personal than most other sports. This belief historically shows up in a few ways, not least in the way that perceptions of personal value and machismo bleeds into the financial negotiations that underpin the sport. It always made for a landscape exploited by canny promoters (“you don’t want to fight this guy? Unless you get more money? Are you even a real fighter?”), but has also always made for a welcome berth for the enthusiastic amateur. The idea of an independently wealthy celebrity trying their hand at football or basketball and being given a spot on its biggest platform because they’d sell more tickets is absurd. Fighting is different, and rightly or wrongly seen as something internal; about grit and will and heart.

In the closing seconds of the third round, Brooks forced himself to one single takedown on the exhausted media member, and it was pretty much the most Pyrrhic victory imaginable. That being said, you had to admit that he had shown grit, and will, and heart. The question was whether that really mattered at all, balanced against, well, almost anything else on the card.

Romero-Whittaker II

Yoel Romero is one of those people who, like Daniel Cormier, seems cursed to be an “almost great.” A stellar wrestling career was marred by losses to all-timers like Cael Sanderson and Adam Satiev, and to bizarrely bad performances.

Here, the jinx that follows him did double duty, as he got agonizingly close to making weight; agonizingly close to winning. The fight would be maybe the strangest, cleverest performance of a strange and clever MMA career. The Cuban has always been rhythmically deceptive, with a trademark sleepy indolence which ruptures into shocking violence, but even by his standards those early rounds were anomalous and peculiar. He stood almost stock still with a high guard, doing little but taking hits. His southpaw stance and the trademark left cross and body kick that come along with it were shelved. As Whittaker peppered him, you worried about whether age and weight cuts had finally caught up. At 41 years old the muscles looked as improbably cabled as ever, but it seemed plausible that they might have rusted from the inside. A shot in the second looked to be on its way to ending the fight, as his eye swelled like a ripe plum.

His team seemed got it under control, somehow, and then third round seemingly revealed what he had been looking for. The high guard was there to catch strikes and provide physical and visual information to get down a very specific timing. Whittaker is largely a straight-line fighter, at least on the first strike- the high kick and hook typically come behind combinations. Romero needed time to be able to know exactly when and what was coming. Then he could push it out of the way, just so.

Parries are the fat tail risk associated with pushing strikes. They are something which is very difficult to do but which often ends the fight. Get a push kick parried and you are standing on one leg, side-on and probably about to get knocked out.

Whittaker got parried, and he got hurt very very badly. He did not get knocked out.

The New Zealander is someone who is young, skilled, smart and tough enough that he seems guaranteed a long career at the top. Watch, then, the damage taken from perhaps the best athlete to ever step in the cage. Think on how later on it would be revealed that the first bone of his hand had neatly snapped in half in round one (“It’s f—king brutal” Whittaker laughed afterwards in the post-fight interview, a bit abashed). Watch him get punched dizzy at multiple points, by shots which have wiped out bigger men, and keep struggling his way back to his feet.

Hard not to think: however long it was going to be beforehand, that future career is shorter now.

In the end, he pulled his way to the end and salvaged a close and contentious win. The fight looked like it was going to be easier than the last one. Instead it ended up being harder. It seems the way that contests between them have to go, as Whittaker is compelled to break bits off himself by clattering fists and feet against a terrible man made of something tougher than flesh. It was one of the best main events in memory, my current front-runner for fight of the year. Check out my favourite analysis of it by Ryan Wagner here.

Other fights

Among overstuffed cards and an endlessly busy schedule, there are always bouts which slide from view. In an intensely sloppy brawl, Chris de la Rocha wore Rashad Coulter down to notch his first UFC win. De la Rocha is a likable guy whose Twitter account is largely dedicated to the kids he trains in BJJ. Coulter is a blood’n’guts brawler who badly broke his hand in the first round. This fight was probably one of the hardest things either man has ever endured, but you’ve probably forgotten it already.

Carla Esparza, the once (likely never-again) UFC strawweight champ fought her stylistic nightmare in Claudia Gadelha. For an undersized wrestler with historically mediocre striking, she showcased a well-coached game, primed to cut in and away from Gadelha. The Brazilian’s punches tend to be hard and fast, but they also drag her out over her feet and drain her cardio. Esparza hurt her in the first, mauled her in the third, and lost a decision. Despite the loss it was undeniably the fight of her career, both gutsy and developmentally impressive. That she subsequently came out with weird accusations that Gadelha had been greasing, ignoring the fact that the Brazilian initiated most of the grappling, doesn’t take away from the performance itself. Even if it makes you roll your eyes a bit.

How about Joseph Benavidez? In a world without Demetrious Johnson, Joe B would be champ. He once took the current P4P king to a razor close decision, and was quickly and maybe a bit unfortunately wiped out in the rematch. Since then he took on every challenger, and turned them away.

At the bigger, more heavily marketed weight classes being a de facto #2 gets you some love. Think Gustafsson, or Wonderboy Thompson. Down at flyweight, the reward for years of brute consistency against ranked contenders was to be put on Fight Pass.

Benavidez took the no-win fight against Sergio Pettis, as he does. He’s been slowing, relying on craft rather than power, and was coming back after blowing out his knee and a crushing rehabilitation process:

“I would cry all the time, and Megan would go down and sleep with me on the couch because I couldn’t go up the stairs. And I’d have to wake her up because I was just crying. Just breaking down and just kind of – I don’t know. It was just a long road. And then the pain and everything as well. There were times when I was crying naked with my dog on my lap.”

Pettis is a clean, slightly unathletic kickboxer, and was able to hurt Benavidez early by dropping backstep right hands onto the first step of his entries. Benavidez increased the pressure, threw more, and built a punishing pace which slowed and confused the younger man. On a lot of cards he salvaged a win, apart from the ones that mattered. A six-fight streak and years of dreams of a third title shot died quietly, on a digital-only channel which his boss literally uses as an insult.

These kind of things happen all the time, as intensely personal breeds of ambition are euthanized by luck, deterioration or inadequacy. In the face of this it feels very easy to discard the Punk alchemical moment as artificial and dumb. There are always bigger losses than a millionaire able to spend his own money on high-end training being publicly compelled to realize that he isn’t very good. It still feels guiltless to chuckle at him leaping up to try and pull guard on Jackson and instead jumping into his arms like an enthusiastic toddler.

lmao.