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Make It, Take It: Heart is Awesome

So”heart of a champion” is just a meaningless phrase? PicProps: Esther Lin

Heart is awesome. Guts are more important to cage fighting than Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. Balls sell more tickets than Olympic medals. Heart is an intangible, an ethereal quality that fighters seem to either have in abundance, or sorely lack. And while intangibles may offend the sensibilities of those who would analyze fights like they’re backward engineering a damn nuclear centrifuge, it’s that very quality that motivates fans to buy tickets, buy shirts, buy pay per views, buy hotel rooms. It isn’t simply some writer’s trope that we use to fill space; this is an attribute that, however hard to pin down, has a demonstrable effect.

There is something about competition in sports that speaks directly to primal emotions in all of us. Ok, apparently not all of us, but still. Fans tend to be emotional people, and not always rational. So a non-tangible quality like “heart” is important, if for nothing but a fighter’s popularity.

Guys like Ox Wheeler or Leonard Garcia or Scott Smith that seem to just go out there and wing it, wind up getting in a war with some guy and they beat the piss out of one another and everybody in the crowd goes bonkers and throws their hotdogs in the air and the collective cry is a noise like the damn building is yelling–that’s why that happens. And everyone goes home horny and it’s generally a good time had by all. It’s a purely emotional response, and base, and uneducated…and it’s totally valid.

So”heart of a champion” is just a meaningless phrase? PicProps: Esther Lin

Keep in mind, without those newbs and meatheads who come in droves and fall in love with “sloppy” fights and “gutsy” fighters, there is no growth to the sport. Yes, new fans can be can be annoying, so you’d do well to help them learn, rather than piss on their parade about what a shitty fight that was that they just enjoyed so much.

Note to MMA hipsters: yes, your knowledge of obscure brazilian fight leagues and Russian grappling tourneys is impressive. But it’s not wise to demand that a fan have a certain level of knowledge before they’re allowed to enjoy the sport alongside you. Just sayin’.

***

If you’ve seen Jared Hess fight, you’ve probably gotten a pretty good look at what heart looks like. Like Shane Carwin, Hess took a pretty nasty beat down, a seventeen-minute session from Hector Lombard in the first Bellator middleweight finals, almost exactly two years ago. Doctors stopped the fight, but Hess never quit. Did he, like Carwin, have very little chance of winning that fight? Yes, very small chance indeed. And heart is what carries a fighter through, holding on to that very small chance.

Heart is what made Hess sign on for another tournament, and another potential shot at the man who had beaten him so thoroughly. Foolhardy? Perhaps, but his resolve is admirable. Hess won his way back to the finals the next season, and faced the Russian hurricane, Alexander Shlemenko. Hess dominated the fight for two rounds. In the third, he continued to dominate, until he landed awkwardly and a everloving cataclysm happened inside his knee. He dislocated pretty much everything from the knee down — and he continued to dominate the fight. It was two minutes later, with Hess close to taking an easy decision win, that the ref noticed that Hess couldn’t stand on his leg because it was no longer functional and called the fight. And Hess had the balls to argue with him. He showed heart.

Heart makes you do awesome things, it just doesn‘t always go the fighter‘s way. Diego Sanchez’s Traveling Slam of Positivity? That came from heart. Anyone can pick a guy up and slam him on his back with enough training. It takes guts to hoist a grown man on your shoulders and jog him back to your corner while you roar like a silverback gorilla. I guess ‘roids could do it, too.

But it didn’t feel like steroids. It felt like Sanchez charged up, communed with some spirits or something, and then carried Paulo Thiago an unnecessary distance before planting him. (See? More of that emotion crap.) Then Sanchez looked like this after BJ Penn got done with him, but he never quit. He never caught too much to just roll over and tap. He took his beating like a man, if you don’t mind that possibly-chauvinistic piece of color. He showed heart.

No, heart is something that you can’t quantify, or test for, or even train for. Statisticians and odds-makers be damned, but fighters will continue to show heart, and hoards of fans will continue to love them for it. Everyone loves an underdog, and fans will still love him when he loses, because he went down swinging. No one is denying the loss, or masking some truth: sometimes fighters are outgunned and overmatched, but he gutted it out anyway. He showed heart.

Heart is awesome. And hating on heart? That’s just some cynical bullshit. Screw that. I’m going to go watch Huerta-Garcia.

[RX]

PS: Sam Sheridan would like a word with you.

Make It/Take It: Does the UFC Need to Lose Dana White?

(Round 5’s new Talking Dana White action figure says eight phrases. All of them are “Fuck you.” / Photo courtesy of liverkick.)

The rules of Make It/Take It are simple. Two MMA writers face off on opposite sides of a hot-button topic, and make their case to the Potato Nation. The “winning” writer — based on number of votes cast in the poll on page 3 — returns next time to battle a different MMA pundit.

This week, “Writer X” from Parts Unknown (aka, a friend of ours from a different site who has chosen to remain anonymous*) goes up against CagePotato’s own Ben Goldstein. Read on, and let us know your thoughts…

* No, it’s not Maggie Hendricks. Or Chad Dundas.

“The UFC Needs a Businessman at the Helm, Not a Character”

By Writer X

Dana White and the Fertitta brothers have taken a sport that was once referred to as “human cockfighting” and built it into a business worth billions of dollars and for that they should be commended.

On its website, the UFC claims that it is the fastest growing sports organization in the world and while that very well be 100 percent true, is there really that much competition out there for them? NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB, FIFA, these are all established organizations that have put in their time and gone through their growing pains. They all have been where the UFC is now.

The dilemma the UFC now faces is how does it grow beyond a niche sport into a major league sport like those mentioned above? To start, the promotion needs to move Dana White out of the spotlight and replace him with a new president that is more acceptable to the masses.

(Round 5′s new Talking Dana White action figure says eight phrases. All of them are “Fuck you.” / Photo courtesy of liverkick.)

* No, it’s not Maggie Hendricks. Or Chad Dundas.

“The UFC Needs a Businessman at the Helm, Not a Character”

By Writer X

I know that the idea of getting rid of the guy that has become the face of the UFC may seem blasphemous to some of you. I get it, you love him, he’s just like you, he curses, he says what’s on his mind, he’s a t-shirt and jeans kind of guy.

White’s also the president of a billion dollar business. He’s a millionaire flying around the world in a private jet. Don’t let the image fool you, because it’s just that, a carefully crafted image. White knows what his key demographic of 18-34 year-old males wants and he delivers, tied up in a nice “Dickhouse” tee and jeans.

The problem is that key demographic is really all the UFC has to hang their hats on. Outside of the 18-34 year old males, you’ll be hard pressed to find a huge number of people that are MMA fans. Make no mistake, the UFC wants to make inroads into those other demographics; they have to, or they will continue to stagnate.

That’s right, the UFC is stagnating. The promotion can talk about the growth of the sport all they want, but the numbers in pay-per-views tell another story. According to the folks over at MMAPayout.com Blue Book, UFC 57 back in February 2006 brought in 400,000 PPV buys, fast forward to UFC 128 in March 2011 and the number is 445,000. So, where’s the growth?

Sure, there have been a couple 1 million-plus PPV events, but the average for PPV buys between UFC 57 and UFC 128 is actually 498,704. So, I ask you, where is the growth that White and the UFC speak about?

Most of the UFC’s income comes from these PPV buys. If they have remained stagnant over the past five years, can they really claim true growth?

If the UFC wants to truly grow and average more than a million PPV buys per event, they are going to need to keep the key demographic of the 18-34 year old male and make some serious inroads into other age brackets and to do that, they will need to shed Dana White, or move him to less of a frontline role.

Two recent incidents made me come to the conclusion that while White is not hurting the growth of the UFC, he surely is not helping it. The first was the Quinton ‘Rampage’ Jackson interview with Karyn Bryant following Jackson’s win over Matt Hamill at UFC 130.

Jackson made some joking comments that the part Jamaican Bryant was, “Jamaican me horny,” and he then went on to make another joke about “motorboating” her. After the interview, Bryant said she was not offended by Jackson’s antics and while that’s nice, it doesn’t make the actions excusable or appropriate for any athlete, yes, even an athlete that makes his living inside a cage.

I’ve heard that excuse bandied about; the “boys will be boys” talk, the “when did the world become so PC” lines and you know what, they all ring hollow. White and the UFC brass are trying to grow the sport and actions like Jackson’s don’t allow that. Sure the demographic likes it and thinks it’s funny, but what about the people outside that group? Please don’t tell me in one breath that they don’t matter and then tell me you want to grow the sport, it’s one or the other folks, you can’t grow if you stay in the same fish tank.

The second incident occurred when UFC commentator Joe Rogan called Yahoo.com writer Maggie Hendricks take on the Jackson incident “cunty.” Rogan later apologized saying he meant the word as another word for “bitchy.”

In all of this, one voice was absent and that was the voice of Dana White. [Ed. note: This column was written before the release of White’s brief statement on the matter.]

Had one of the NFL’s start players done what Jackson did in a post game interview would Roger Goodell have been silent? If Terry Bradshaw had called a print reporter, “cunty” would there have been no outcry? The answer is no and no, so why the silence from the UFC? Is White afraid to be seen as politically correct by his minions in the 18-34 age group?

A stronger president would have dealt with both men; hell, with a stronger president neither incident would have taken place for fear of what the repercussions would be. White will never be the guy to deal with behaviour like this and until someone comes in that will, the UFC will be a niche sport and the late night shows will repeat incidents such as Jackson’s performance in their gag reels and the rest of the world, the ones that could help the UFC grow, will laugh and shake their heads and never purchase a PPV event.

Another way to tell that the sport is a niche sport under White is to take a look at where MMA ranks on websites such as ESPN. MMA sits in the “more sports” tab three notches below “Soccer (US)” and three notches above “High Schools.” Growing sport? Nice try.

The UFC needs a businessman at the helm, not a character. White can get on the microphone and stand in front of his fans and sing the praises of his organization and how it is growing quickly, but until he pursues active growth outside of the 18-34 male demographic his words of being the biggest sport in the world are nothing more than hyperbole.

With Dana White at the helm the UFC will never grow to its full potential.

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