Recently, HBO boxing analyst Larry Merchant retired from his position as color commentator for the network, leaving behind some very big shoes to fill. Many have negative opinions about Merchant, but he was one of the most erudite voices to call the fi…
Recently, HBO boxing analyst Larry Merchant retired from his position as color commentator for the network, leaving behind some very big shoes to fill.
Many have negative opinions about Merchant, but he was one of the most erudite voices to call the fights for our generation.
He was bold, mainly because his knowledge of the sport was sound and he came from an era that understood that more often than not, it is the hard questions that need to be asked, not the popular ones.
Taking his place will be a host of other commentators, all of them special in their own way, which got me to thinking about the UFC and their team of two: Joe Rogan and Mike Goldberg.
In the past, the UFC has seen fit to add a third to the team, lending the voices of Frank Mir, Randy Couture, BJ Penn, Jens Pulver and others to the mix and the results were good.
Given how the company is growing, there will be more chances to introduce additional talent to the booth and it is in the spirit of wonder that we give you a list of five men we would love to see as color commentators.
For a very long time now, I have been surprised at just how quickly fans of the combative sports attach certain labels to shocking upsets, and perhaps no label is as grossly misused as the term “Fluke.” Sure, this is nothing new; it’s…
For a very long time now, I have been surprised at just how quickly fans of the combative sports attach certain labels to shocking upsets, and perhaps no label is as grossly misused as the term “Fluke.”
Sure, this is nothing new; it’s been going on since people began to follow the sport of boxing, so many years ago, and in truth it isn’t going to go away, either.
But that doesn’t give it any real credibility, nor does it make it correct, because it is simply wrong.
Recently, fans have attached the term to fights such as GSP vs. Serra I, Andrei Arlovski vs. Roy Nelson, and so on and so forth.
Those fights were upsets, yes, but they were still fights, not flukes.
Neither GSP nor Roy Nelson had any illusions as to what they were walking into; they knew that their opponents were going to try to win any way they could, and that said opponents only had so many avenues to win: by decision, submission, TKO or KO.
Sure, it has been noted by many that GSP had distractions in his life leading into his first bout with Matt Serra, but that doesn’t change the fact that GSP knew that he could lose by any of the means fights are decided in the sport.
When he suffered that TKO loss, it was because Serra, based on his height and reach, was a bit more problematic that GSP anticipated; when Serra caught GSP with that shot, it was then that Serra really stepped up his game and finished the champ with poise and accurate power punching, and that is something that we don’t usually see when one man has the other hurt badly and is going in for the kill.
The same goes for Roy Nelson, who has made a living getting slugged in the face, often. His easy smile, beard and mullet may distract some, but his style of fighting is based on four pillars, and one of them is his chin.
When he got knocked out by Arlovski, it was because he was willing to test his chin against the fists of his opponent, and he lost in a big way.
That is not a fluke, that is just part of the game; anyone can get knocked out, and if you put your chin in the line of fire often enough, against heavy punchers, it is going to happen.
Then, there is the simple fact that both GSP and Nelson are students of the game—and truth be told I don’t know of any fighter who isn’t—and the notion of being defeated by KO is something that both men have faced not only in training but every previous time they had stepped into the cage.
Of course, I have been on board the “fluke” bandwagon before. I used to scream the term into the faces of anyone who saw validation in claiming that one fighter was no good simply because he was upset by another fighter.
But then I was called on it, and called hard.
It happened around the time Mike Tyson was upset and knocked out by Buster Douglas.
It was a fluke, I said. Couldn’t happen again in a million years, I said. Will never happen again, I said.
“Do you think Tyson studies tape?”
I think so, I replied. But maybe he didn’t this time.
“If he did, then he should have trained harder, and being lazy isn’t a fluke, it’s being lazy,” my tormentor said. “If he didn’t study tape, then he damn well should have. That isn’t a fluke, it’s being overconfident.”
You’re oversimplifying things, I tried to counter. No one thought Tyson was going to lose this fight. Douglas was hardly ranked.
“So, because the masses thought one way and were proved to be wrong, that makes it a fluke?”
I didn’t know what to say about that, because it sounded like I was walking into a trap.
“The masses like to be amazed, and if they are amazed enough and in a continuous fashion, it’s what they come to expect, and that lulls them into nothing more than making assumptions beforehand, and then proceeding from those assumptions before learning if they are correct or false. Pavlov’s dog was the same way, you know, but Pavlov not giving the mutt the scraps wasn’t a fluke, it was by design, just like it was by design when Douglas climbed up off the canvas and kept on fighting, and just like he kept on throwing punches. Fights happen by design and are based on a known design. The winner just happens to be the better designer.”
Each and every single fight is really its own story, and that is where the folly of the fluke comes into focus. What GSP or Nelson did before their fights with Serra and Arlovski are of no importance; it’s what they decided to do—how they fought these men—at the time that matters, and that is where they were defeated.
Everyone can fall into error and proceed from false assumptions, especially fighters who are as gifted as GSP or as tough as Nelson, but when those notions and assumptions are confounded, it is not a fluke but a simple byproduct of hubris if the loss comes because of a reliance on the past.
Flukes happen in other aspects of life, to be sure. I am not saying I don’t understand why people rush to use the word to explain why the upset happened (because we all crave explanations) or to label it (because we all love to label things); I understand this all too well.
I am saying that in a contest with weight classes, unified rules, referees in good standing and of high personal and professional accountability, known methods to achieve victory, training camps and trainers chosen by the fighter via free will, desire and dedication and the lessons of the past…well, someone is either going to win by decision, KO, TKO or submission, and there is no mystery to be found in that.
According to legendary heavyweight champion Mike Tyson, he could have easily made his mark in mixed martial arts instead of boxing.Apparently, it all depended on what combat sport his trainer was doing.During an interview with ESPN, the former undisput…
According to legendary heavyweight champion Mike Tyson, he could have easily made his mark in mixed martial arts instead of boxing.
Apparently, it all depended on what combat sport his trainer was doing.
During an interview with ESPN, the former undisputed world champion spoke about a variety of his current projects, including the first “Mike Tyson Cares Foundation” event, his one-man show tour and recent film appearances. Eventually, the conversation turned to the UFC, where Tyson gave some interesting speculation about an alternate career path:
ESPN: These days, with UFC being so popular, boxing isn’t necessarily getting the best fighters. If you were an 18-year-old kid now, would you still be a boxer?
Tyson: That’d all depend on my trainer. When I came up, my trainer was a boxing guy. If my guy was in UFC, I’d probably go that way.
Over the years, Tyson has become a notable guest at UFC events and personal friend to Dana White. Despite being retired for over seven years, he’s remained a very public figure in the combat sports world and is widely recognized as one of the UFC’s biggest supporters.
Tyson further added that he would’ve loved to get into the Octagon, and now that the UFC has become so widespread and successful, you’re “not cool” if you’re not a fan:
Tyson: Oh yeah, I love UFC, big time. How could you not be? They play UFC so much, you see it year round, and you just have to want to be a fan. If you’re not a fan, you’re not cool.
ESPN: You sound like someone who wants to get in the [Octagon].
Tyson: Yeah. I would love to do that stuff.
Although most athletic commissions likely wouldn’t license Tyson for a professional (or exhibition) MMA match, the 46-year-old boxing icon would certainly be one of the sport’s oldest prospects in history if he indeed decided to give it a try.
Tyson’s own career also predates the inaugural UFC event by quite a bit—Tyson’s first professional boxing match took place in March 1985.
By the time “UFC 1: The Beginning” was held at Denver’s McNichols Sports Arena in November 1993, Tyson was in the middle of serving a three-year prison sentence following his infamous rape conviction on February 10, 1992.
Hypothetically, the earliest that Tyson could have competed in a UFC event (with time to train) would have been “UFC 6: Clash of the Titans” in July 1995—little more than three short months after the end of his incarceration.
Given the amount of painfulmemories that are packed into his times as a boxer, Mike Tyson doesn’t always seem to have the same glee in discussing his days as a heavyweight terror as we do as fans. That’s why a recent interview he did with This is 50, stands out.
In the third part of the interview “Iron Mike” discusses mixed martial arts and who would have won if he and Muhammad Ali had fought one another in their primes. As he talks about both topics Tyson is full of emotion and obvious glee. The interview is a great glimpse at Tyson. Highlights below and video after the jump.
Would he have fought MMA if it was around when he was in his prime?
“If they had big pay days, yes. No doubt about it.”
“I want to slam, I want to hold ’em, I want to choke. That’s what you want to do anyway if you’re in a street fight, right? You want to hit him but you want to get him too. You want to get him real good, get him down, get on top of him. So, you’ve got more aspects, you know? If it’s not working this way you can kick him in the fucking head, you know? (laughs)”
(Tyson in MMA? Two words: Sprawl training.)
Given the amount of painfulmemories that are packed into his times as a boxer, Mike Tyson doesn’t always seem to have the same glee in discussing his days as a heavyweight terror as we do as fans. That’s why a recent interview he did with This is 50, stands out.
In the third part of the interview “Iron Mike” discusses mixed martial arts and who would have won if he and Muhammad Ali had fought one another in their primes. As he talks about both topics Tyson is full of emotion and obvious glee. The interview is a great glimpse at Tyson. Highlights below and video after the jump.
Would he have fought MMA if it was around when he was in his prime?
“If they had big pay days, yes. No doubt about it.”
“I want to slam, I want to hold ‘em, I want to choke. That’s what you want to do anyway if you’re in a street fight, right? You want to hit him but you want to get him too. You want to get him real good, get him down, get on top of him. So, you’ve got more aspects, you know? If it’s not working this way you can kick him in the fucking head, you know? (laughs)”
If he and Muhammad Ali could have fought one another at 20, who would have won?
“There’s no man like him. There just isn’t. Everything that we have, he supersedes us in it, even our arrogance and our ego. He’s fast but he really doesn’t have any great qualities that you could see besides his agility and not [being] afraid to let punches fly. But other than that, he never threw a body punch in his life, he doesn’t have a good defense — his speed was his defense, he moved.”
“Ali is a fucking animal. He looks more like a fucking model than a fighter but what he is is, he’s like a Tyrannosaurus Rex with a pretty face. He’s just mean and evil and he’ll take you in deep waters and drown you. He’s very special. The best in the world…nobody beats Ali.”
For more of this interview with Tyson, check out This is 50.
Jesse Katz has been a fan of martial arts for a long time. These days, when someone says they’re a fan of martial arts, you can probably assume that they’re talking about the Ultimate Fighting Championship, and you’d be right in most cases. The UF…
Jesse Katz has been a fan of martial arts for a long time.
These days, when someone says they’re a fan of martial arts, you can probably assume that they’re talking about the Ultimate Fighting Championship, and you’d be right in most cases. The UFC is the largest martial arts brand in the world, and they’re the ones doing the most to spread the good word of jiu-jitsu, kickboxing, karate and wrestling to the masses.
But Katz was a fan long before there was much of a UFC, and certainly long before Forrest Griffin and Stephan Bonnar waged a classic fight that would help launch the UFC into the mainstream and, as luck would have it, eventually lead to a signature line for Roots of Fight, the clothing company Katz founded earlier this year.
But we’ll get into that part of the story a little bit later.
Katz created Roots of Fight because he wanted to tell interesting stories about the history of martial arts. There were dozens—perhaps even hundreds—of prominent T-shirt companies flooding the market with all manner of skulls, angels wings, swords and crosses.
The formula for creating an MMA-themed shirt was fairly predictable: Take a fighter’s name, splash it across the top and then fill the rest of the shirt with tribal designs or armor or whatever else you think might represent cool dudes who fight for living. They weren’t pretty, but they were a license to print cash.
Katz wanted no part of that racket.
“I saw that there was a hole in this industry, where there just wasn’t anybody talking about the history of the sport,” Katz said. “I felt that I could do this mix of storytelling and apparel in an environment where there was nobody digging into it.”
Katz worked on the concept for Roots of Fight for over two years before finally launching the company early in 2012. “These are the early days,” Katz offers when I ask him what the formative days of his company were like. “We just launched this on January 17, so it’s only six months old.”
Katz’s products are unlike anything else on the market. For starters, they’re built on a foundation of clean and great design. They’re something you can wear in public without the fear of being pigeonholed as a violence-loving, beer-swilling bro.
But they’re also a great conversation starter, because they’re not just a collection of random images, clip art and known memes associated with mixed martial arts. They’re a jumping-off point into the history of fighting, not a celebration of the culture surrounding the UFC. That’s an important distinction.
“I think what separates us—and what we strive for in order to separate ourselves—is that we lead with story. We lead with having a point of interest. Every shirt that we make is part of a bigger story. Every component of what we do as a business is related to something that is rooted in an authentic moment or time or achievement of one of these icons, or the story of an icon,” Katz said. “This new sport of MMA moves very fast, and we didn’t see anybody else telling the history of it.
“So for us, we lead with this story explaining the rich history of all of these arts from around the world and how they’ve morphed into each other and evolved to culminate in what is today’s MMA. It just happens to lend itself really well to telling stories on T-shirts and carrying forward those stories.”
Katz’s first task for Roots of Fight was the creation of bloodlines. He matched up regions with disciplines: Israel with Krav Maga, France with savate, judo with Japan and so forth. He then anchored each of those bloodlines with an icon of the sport, to give each art its own gravity and to make a point: that these martial arts have a much bigger history than what you see on Saturday night inside the Octagon.
“Bruce Lee, Muhammad Ali, Mike Tyson. These guys are global icons. They’re not just combat sports figures. They’ve been able to transcend their sport, to reach people in every corner of the globe,” Katz said.
Tyson’s role in the Roots of Fight story is quite interesting. In his early years—and perhaps even the middle ones—Tyson wasn’t the easiest man in the world to work with. But that’s all changed in recent years, as Tyson has blossomed into a media and film darling, a Broadway attraction and a man far removed from the angry young warrior he was during his heyday.
Katz said that working with Tyson on his Roots of Fight line could not have been an easier experience. They were introduced to Tyson and his wife Kiki through a mutual friend, and Katz said the entire process could not have been simpler.
“We were introduced to them through a mutual friend. We had one conversation with Kiki,” Katz said. “And literally from talking to her on a Tuesday, we flew down the next day and ended up spending the day at their house with them and their children and family, and we had a phenomenal experience. They were extremely welcoming and supportive and warm. And they really liked the project.
There’s a heavy weight that comes with this. We’ve had the good fortune of having all of these icons entrust us with their legacies, with telling their stories in a way that is respectful and authentic. It’s quite a responsibility.”
Tyson said that he’s ultimately pleased with how Katz and his company handled his image.
“We wanted to do some kind of university style and varsity style of outfits. Basically something to represent the year I unified the titles,” Tyson recently told Complex. “It’s a real cool company and when they presented the idea I just thought it was awesome.
“They did shirts for Ali, Bruce Lee and a number of other fighters. There’s just a conglomerate of connections that they’ve been associated with. I’m just proud to be involved with him.”
All of the early Roots T-shirt lines focused on the legendary figures Tyson mentioned above, but the next story they’re telling is one that might be a bit more familiar to UFC fans: the legendary battle between Griffin and Bonnar from the first Ultimate Fighter finale on April 9, 2005.
Katz was introduced to the UFC by mutual friends Alex and Shannon Lee. Katz met with the company, showed them what he was working on and said the UFC was excited by what they’d seen. Katz was approached by the promotion about creating some exclusive content for the digital version of UFC Magazine.
“They wanted us to tell some stories about their past. So we collaborated and came up with this idea of something that fits with Roots of Fight, which is all about telling the history, and something that fit into their contemporary marketing plans. We arrived at this series telling stories of UFC legends. We went down and shot Randy Couture, Forrest and Urijah Faber, and just had some great pieces with them and some great storytelling.
“This was the pivotal fight for the company. It’s largely regarded—not just by people inside the company but also by people outside of it—as the fight that made the UFC and propelled them into the successful business they are today.”
Partnering with the UFC is a huge business opportunity for anyone operating in the mixed martial arts world, and Roots of Fight is no different.
“We’re very excited by it. I’m proud to be associated with the UFC. We’re telling the story of all of the individual arts and their history and their icons,” Katz said. “But really, this is not just the largest stage for this sport, but it also has practitioners that have become the best at all of these individual arts. It’s getting unbelievable practitioners in each style that are now competing in the UFC.
“And so it’s a perfect fit for us, both marketing-wise and story-wise. We like to talk about the icons of the sport and of the individual arts, but these are the stars of today and the icons of tomorrow. It’s an unreal partnership.”
“I really do believe that madness and excellence are just next door neighbors.”
So says Joe Rogan in this fascinating highlight reel focusing on a trio of “extreme winners” — Muhammad Ali, Mike Tyson, and Michael Jordan — narrated by clips from Rogan’s podcast. Rogan proposes that “a lot of success in athletics comes down to almost like a psychosis. At a real high level of anything, there’s a certain amount of almost crazy behavior to get to this incredible position…there’s a madness.”
Over the clips covering each athlete’s monumental career, Rogan shares his thoughts about the behavior and performances of each athlete, and what made them such outliers in professional sports. Maybe this is only tangentially related to MMA, but if you’re interested in Ali and Tyson, and the mental edges (or disorders?) that make athletic legends so different from the rest of humanity, you’ll want to watch this.
“I really do believe that madness and excellence are just next door neighbors.”
So says Joe Rogan in this fascinating highlight reel focusing on a trio of “extreme winners” — Muhammad Ali, Mike Tyson, and Michael Jordan — narrated by clips from Rogan’s podcast. Rogan proposes that “a lot of success in athletics comes down to almost like a psychosis. At a real high level of anything, there’s a certain amount of almost crazy behavior to get to this incredible position…there’s a madness.”
Over the clips covering each athlete’s monumental career, Rogan shares his thoughts about the behavior and performances of each athlete, and what made them such outliers in professional sports. Maybe this is only tangentially related to MMA, but if you’re interested in Ali and Tyson, and the mental edges (or disorders?) that make athletic legends so different from the rest of humanity, you’ll want to watch this.
For a very long time now, I have been surprised at just how quickly fans of the combative sports attach certain labels to shocking upsets, and perhaps no label is as grossly misused as the term “Fluke.”