The art of striking is one of many different offensive disciplines and offensive weapons. With countless maneuvers, the need for perfected timing, and limited room for mistakes, it takes a special kind of fighter to master the standup game. That’s why fans are enamored with quick knockouts, bloody brawls, and anything that involves flying leather. But
The art of striking is one of many different offensive disciplines and offensive weapons.
With countless maneuvers, the need for perfected timing, and limited room for mistakes, it takes a special kind of fighter to master the standup game. That’s why fans are enamored with quick knockouts, bloody brawls, and anything that involves flying leather.
But even among the best strikers in mixed martial arts (MMA) today, few fighters possess the skill, athleticism, and cage wherewithal to execute perplexing offensive onslaughts that often leave an opponent swinging at the air or staring up at the rafters.
In appreciation of these tricky tacticians, here are the five most confusing strikers in the UFC today.
UFC flyweight champion Demetrious Johnson is planning for his future. He recently appeared on the Three Amigos podcast and revealed he wants to become a full-time gamer on Twitch.tv after he hangs up his gloves.
“I heard you could watch people play videogames, and that’s how I discovered Twitch,” Johnson said. “This is when I had Tyren, who is now two and a half years old. I would rock him to sleep at night, and he would take a while, so I downloaded the Twitch app to watch. I saw guys playing games I grew up with like Mega Man X and Zelda: Ocarina of Time. So after some time I started streaming some games on my PS4. I’d have like two viewers in there as I played Final Fantasy 14: A Realm Reborn.
“Next thing you know, my wife was like, ‘You should get into it baby, what do you want to do after you’re done fighting? Why don’t you try streaming?’ Then Twitch reached out to me and told me everything I needed to get to be a serious streamer. All of the credit goes to my wife, she’s the one who suggested I do it. I decided if I was going to do it, I had to be 100% in. I didn’t want to do it half-assed and try to stream from my PS4 or Xbox One, so I bought a computer and she was all in, so I was like, ‘Let’s do it.’
“Since I’ve started streaming I spend at least 15 hours a week playing games, maybe more,” he continued. “My brain needs to be stimulated. I look at streaming like a side project, and I take my side projects and my jobs very seriously. Streaming on Twitch isn’t just about playing videogames, it’s about building a community amongst your fans. Right now most of my community is MMA fans, but I’m hoping to break down that barrier and attract the gaming community. I don’t just play first person shooters, I don’t just play the UFC game, I play Bloodborne, Dark Souls, Overwatch, Diablo, StarCraft.
“You have to think about what you’re going to do after your career. I’ve always thought about going back to work at a warehouse or whatever I need to do to make ends meet, but now streaming and video gaming is just kicking off. All I care about is the next game coming out next month. I’m still fighting, I’m in the prime of my career and train my ass off every single day, but I’m starting my second career now. Why not? I’m building my viewership and community now, so when I’m 38 years old and I’m done fighting I can have streaming as my main source of income, hopefully.”
Johnson will next fight Henry Cejudo at UFC 197 on April 23rd. UFC 197 takes place at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dw1hIxgzero
UFC flyweight champion Demetrious Johnson is planning for his future. He recently appeared on the Three Amigos podcast and revealed he wants to become a full-time gamer on Twitch.tv after he hangs up his gloves.
“I heard you could watch people play videogames, and that’s how I discovered Twitch,” Johnson said. “This is when I had Tyren, who is now two and a half years old. I would rock him to sleep at night, and he would take a while, so I downloaded the Twitch app to watch. I saw guys playing games I grew up with like Mega Man X and Zelda: Ocarina of Time. So after some time I started streaming some games on my PS4. I’d have like two viewers in there as I played Final Fantasy 14: A Realm Reborn.
“Next thing you know, my wife was like, ‘You should get into it baby, what do you want to do after you’re done fighting? Why don’t you try streaming?’ Then Twitch reached out to me and told me everything I needed to get to be a serious streamer. All of the credit goes to my wife, she’s the one who suggested I do it. I decided if I was going to do it, I had to be 100% in. I didn’t want to do it half-assed and try to stream from my PS4 or Xbox One, so I bought a computer and she was all in, so I was like, ‘Let’s do it.’
“Since I’ve started streaming I spend at least 15 hours a week playing games, maybe more,” he continued. “My brain needs to be stimulated. I look at streaming like a side project, and I take my side projects and my jobs very seriously. Streaming on Twitch isn’t just about playing videogames, it’s about building a community amongst your fans. Right now most of my community is MMA fans, but I’m hoping to break down that barrier and attract the gaming community. I don’t just play first person shooters, I don’t just play the UFC game, I play Bloodborne, Dark Souls, Overwatch, Diablo, StarCraft.
“You have to think about what you’re going to do after your career. I’ve always thought about going back to work at a warehouse or whatever I need to do to make ends meet, but now streaming and video gaming is just kicking off. All I care about is the next game coming out next month. I’m still fighting, I’m in the prime of my career and train my ass off every single day, but I’m starting my second career now. Why not? I’m building my viewership and community now, so when I’m 38 years old and I’m done fighting I can have streaming as my main source of income, hopefully.”
Johnson will next fight Henry Cejudo at UFC 197 on April 23rd. UFC 197 takes place at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.
There are no rules anymore.
If the last year of topsy-turvy UFC matchmaking has taught us anything, perhaps that’s it. Three full years after the fight company promised us “the year of the superfight” in 2013 and then delivered bupkis…
There are no rules anymore.
If the last year of topsy-turvy UFC matchmaking has taught us anything, perhaps that’s it. Three full years after the fight company promised us “the year of the superfight” in 2013 and then delivered bupkis, it’s finally starting to seem like a couple of division-bending dream matchups might actually happen in 2016.
These days, the featherweight champion is the top lightweight contender, the flyweight champion talks openly about fighting the bantamweight champion, and the light heavyweight champion promises it won’t be long before he moves up to heavyweight.
It’s a whole new world, where anything is possible. As a happy accident, it’s also actually starting to feel like fun and, yeah, money rule the day.
In the spirit of these crazy good times, here are my picks for the best off-the-wall, multi-divisional dream fights the UFC could make right now. The only rule is this: Two people from two different UFC weight classes have to fight each other for fun and profit (within reason).
Remember, these are for entertainment purposes only (unless UFC matchmakers Joe Silva and Sean Shelby are reading this, in which case, book these fights, dudes).
Mixed martial arts (MMA) is the most unpredictable sport in the world. Not only when it comes to the elite combat stars that participate inside the Octagon, but also the three knuckleheads that score the action. That’s why UFC President Dana White has repeatedly hammered home the notion that a fighter should never leave it
Mixed martial arts (MMA) is the most unpredictable sport in the world.
Not only when it comes to the elite combat stars that participate inside the Octagon, but also the three knuckleheads that score the action. That’s why UFC President Dana White has repeatedly hammered home the notion that a fighter should never leave it in the hands of the judges.
Yet despite the aforementioned warning, many fights do not end before the clock does. Even in some of the more notable title clashes in promotional history, judges play a more important role than the championship caliber athletes themselves.
It’s a harsh reality when the scoring goes awry, but the sport has not evolved to the point of actually fixing the system across the board.
In accordance with the decisions that just didn’t go the way they were supposed to, here are the four most egregious split-decision calls in UFC championship history.
First things first. Demetrious Johnson is a titan of fighting.
A five-foot-four giant. Versatility, fight IQ, adaptability, speed, technique. It’s all there in a package so finely crafted that few can even appreciate the blur they’re seeing. Thi…
A five-foot-four giant. Versatility, fight IQ, adaptability, speed, technique. It’s all there in a package so finely crafted that few can even appreciate the blur they’re seeing. This isn’t about that. This is about everything else. The stuff that causes debates and hand-wringing and usually ends with the UFC flyweight champion flailing at questions regarding his marketability or lashing out at fans for their criticism.
It all feels like a torturous cycle, doesn’t it? Last week was especially trying. The questions, the boos, the fans leaving mid-performance. And that was just fight night.
Last Friday, the UFC hosted a Las Vegas press conference to trumpet future events. It was entitled “Go Big,” a curious suggestion/declaration coming 24 hours before asking fans to shell out 60 bucks to watch the tiniest champion on the roster attempt to defend his belt. In reality, they were taking advantage of a captive audience, even though it kind of felt as if they were apologizing for UFC 191 with a preemptive starpower strike.
You could almost imagine a dispirited Johnson reading the tagline. “Go big? Really, guys? I’m standing right here.”
Because really, who can concentrate on anything else in the room – maybe even the area code – in the presence of Conor McGregor? The man demands spotlight as if it”s replaced oxygen in his chemical composition. (In this analogy, conflict is carbon, and controversy would be hydrogen.)
The irony is that McGregor goes big, even if he actually isn’t. At five-foot-nine and 165 pounds between fights, he is exactly average in height and lighter than your everyday Joe. Still, the man manages to exude a presence that portrays him as a giant. In the shadow of McGregor, it seems unfair, almost dishonorable to compare Johnson. Yet compare them we must.
Over three years into the flyweight experiment, the division continues to sputter at the box office. While preliminary UFC 191 pay-per-view buyrate estimates won’t be available for at least a few days, the event drew a gate of $1,362,700, which according to MMA Junkie stathead Mike Bohn, is the lowest drawing Las Vegas-based pay-per-view card the promotion has produced since UFC 49 just missed the $1.3 million mark back in 2004.
When it comes to the greatness of a professional prizefighter – and Johnson is indisputably great – these kinds of numbers shouldn’t matter. Yet they do. Absent the swarm of stats that other sports can point to in quantifying success, MMA mostly boils down to to wins, losses and drawing power.
Johnson is only left wanting in one of those categories, even if he doesn’t seem to care.
To the rest of the world, it’s a way of keeping score (just notice McGregor’s continual proclamations of escalating salary claims). To Johnson, it’s extraneous information that clouds focus.
“I don’t think about it,” he said during a pre-UFC 191 interview with the media. “People keep asking me that. I’m over the legacy talk. Either I leave one or I don’t, you know? For me, I’m just thinking about having a successful career, that way when I’m done fighting, I’m not broke.”
Johnson is a smart man, but it seems that the connection between audience engagement and post-career finances is frayed. Somewhere along the way, he dissociated himself from actively cultivating the very thing that pumps cash into his pocket.
“Why does it always come down to blaming the athlete for not selling the product?” he once asked. And the answer is, because you are the product.
MMA is no longer new, or a novelty. Shows are televised regularly, and often on free TV. Scarcity used to make it special. Now, the notability of an event is almost directly proportional to its star, as McGregor proved last time out by drawing over 800,000 buys despite facing a late replacement (Chad Mendes) who has never been a star gate attraction.
At this point, we can no longer blame the unfamiliarity of the audience for Johnson’s box office struggles. He has fought 12 times under the UFC banner, including three times on Fox broadcast television as a main event. He’s fought under Jon Jones. He’s fought twice near his home market in Washington. He’s fought rematches with rivals. Nothing has seemed to click.
Johnson hears this kind of talk all the time. It often supersedes conversation about his success or future challengers or his place in the pantheon. By now, it’s probably white noise, so much so that despite all of the times he’s had to address it, he still struggles.
“I don’t see myself as a prizefighter,” he told the media last week. “Yes, I fight for money, but I don’t see it as my prize. I see it as my income. It’s a hard question to answer.”
It’s apparently an even harder question to face, because in the end, if we’re going to be blunt, it’s going to cost him a lot of money.
Particularly when you’re a champion, your pay is directly tied to your notoriety. That’s something McGregor is routinely reinforcing, even if his fellow fighters are not always paying attention. At that level, being able to perform is fantastic, but it’s also kind of a given. People hear the word “champion” and automatically assume them to be the best.
It’s the intangibles that make a fighter magnetic and a show transcendent. Talking trash. Dressing to the nines. Engaging your opponent. Cage showmanship. All of it matters because the show never stops. All of it matters because it makes you feel something. It heightens your emotions. It changes your investment in the outcome.
When McGregor was up on stage praising himself and torching the rest of the roster, he was putting money in the bank, because while some part of the audience thought it was hilarious, the remainder were storing their anger in a mental file cabinet to be redirected toward him at the proper time of comeuppance.
This kind of approach isn’t for everyone, but it’s also not the only kind of approach. Be funny, be aggressive, be confrontational, be something past our expectations. Because while there might be a price to pay for increasing your own price, there is definitely a price to pay for refusing to address it. For Demetrious Johnson, it’s a cost that will never be recovered.
First things first. Demetrious Johnson is a titan of fighting.
A five-foot-four giant. Versatility, fight IQ, adaptability, speed, technique. It’s all there in a package so finely crafted that few can even appreciate the blur they’re seeing. Thi…
A five-foot-four giant. Versatility, fight IQ, adaptability, speed, technique. It’s all there in a package so finely crafted that few can even appreciate the blur they’re seeing. This isn’t about that. This is about everything else. The stuff that causes debates and hand-wringing and usually ends with the UFC flyweight champion flailing at questions regarding his marketability or lashing out at fans for their criticism.
It all feels like a torturous cycle, doesn’t it? Last week was especially trying. The questions, the boos, the fans leaving mid-performance. And that was just fight night.
Last Friday, the UFC hosted a Las Vegas press conference to trumpet future events. It was entitled “Go Big,” a curious suggestion/declaration coming 24 hours before asking fans to shell out 60 bucks to watch the tiniest champion on the roster attempt to defend his belt. In reality, they were taking advantage of a captive audience, even though it kind of felt as if they were apologizing for UFC 191 with a preemptive starpower strike.
You could almost imagine a dispirited Johnson reading the tagline. “Go big? Really, guys? I’m standing right here.”
Because really, who can concentrate on anything else in the room – maybe even the area code – in the presence of Conor McGregor? The man demands spotlight as if it”s replaced oxygen in his chemical composition. (In this analogy, conflict is carbon, and controversy would be hydrogen.)
The irony is that McGregor goes big, even if he actually isn’t. At five-foot-nine and 165 pounds between fights, he is exactly average in height and lighter than your everyday Joe. Still, the man manages to exude a presence that portrays him as a giant. In the shadow of McGregor, it seems unfair, almost dishonorable to compare Johnson. Yet compare them we must.
Over three years into the flyweight experiment, the division continues to sputter at the box office. While preliminary UFC 191 pay-per-view buyrate estimates won’t be available for at least a few days, the event drew a gate of $1,362,700, which according to MMA Junkie stathead Mike Bohn, is the lowest drawing Las Vegas-based pay-per-view card the promotion has produced since UFC 49 just missed the $1.3 million mark back in 2004.
When it comes to the greatness of a professional prizefighter – and Johnson is indisputably great – these kinds of numbers shouldn’t matter. Yet they do. Absent the swarm of stats that other sports can point to in quantifying success, MMA mostly boils down to to wins, losses and drawing power.
Johnson is only left wanting in one of those categories, even if he doesn’t seem to care.
To the rest of the world, it’s a way of keeping score (just notice McGregor’s continual proclamations of escalating salary claims). To Johnson, it’s extraneous information that clouds focus.
“I don’t think about it,” he said during a pre-UFC 191 interview with the media. “People keep asking me that. I’m over the legacy talk. Either I leave one or I don’t, you know? For me, I’m just thinking about having a successful career, that way when I’m done fighting, I’m not broke.”
Johnson is a smart man, but it seems that the connection between audience engagement and post-career finances is frayed. Somewhere along the way, he dissociated himself from actively cultivating the very thing that pumps cash into his pocket.
“Why does it always come down to blaming the athlete for not selling the product?” he once asked. And the answer is, because you are the product.
MMA is no longer new, or a novelty. Shows are televised regularly, and often on free TV. Scarcity used to make it special. Now, the notability of an event is almost directly proportional to its star, as McGregor proved last time out by drawing over 800,000 buys despite facing a late replacement (Chad Mendes) who has never been a star gate attraction.
At this point, we can no longer blame the unfamiliarity of the audience for Johnson’s box office struggles. He has fought 12 times under the UFC banner, including three times on Fox broadcast television as a main event. He’s fought under Jon Jones. He’s fought twice near his home market in Washington. He’s fought rematches with rivals. Nothing has seemed to click.
Johnson hears this kind of talk all the time. It often supersedes conversation about his success or future challengers or his place in the pantheon. By now, it’s probably white noise, so much so that despite all of the times he’s had to address it, he still struggles.
“I don’t see myself as a prizefighter,” he told the media last week. “Yes, I fight for money, but I don’t see it as my prize. I see it as my income. It’s a hard question to answer.”
It’s apparently an even harder question to face, because in the end, if we’re going to be blunt, it’s going to cost him a lot of money.
Particularly when you’re a champion, your pay is directly tied to your notoriety. That’s something McGregor is routinely reinforcing, even if his fellow fighters are not always paying attention. At that level, being able to perform is fantastic, but it’s also kind of a given. People hear the word “champion” and automatically assume them to be the best.
It’s the intangibles that make a fighter magnetic and a show transcendent. Talking trash. Dressing to the nines. Engaging your opponent. Cage showmanship. All of it matters because the show never stops. All of it matters because it makes you feel something. It heightens your emotions. It changes your investment in the outcome.
When McGregor was up on stage praising himself and torching the rest of the roster, he was putting money in the bank, because while some part of the audience thought it was hilarious, the remainder were storing their anger in a mental file cabinet to be redirected toward him at the proper time of comeuppance.
This kind of approach isn’t for everyone, but it’s also not the only kind of approach. Be funny, be aggressive, be confrontational, be something past our expectations. Because while there might be a price to pay for increasing your own price, there is definitely a price to pay for refusing to address it. For Demetrious Johnson, it’s a cost that will never be recovered.
