Tuesday, February 16, 2010

About Rankings

Mixed martial arts rankings are often, paradoxically over and under valued. Some will maintain that rankings are counter-productive and that arguing about them is pointless since they serve merely to stigmatize lower-ranked fighters and give only the most cursory picture of the state of a weight class; they put a cold and callous emphasis on raw statistics. At the same time, a huge portion of fans will not be satisfied with a title defense unless it comes against a consensus Top 10 fighter, and they frequently gauge the potency of a promotion's roster based solely on how many Top 10 fighters it possesses.

In perhaps typical fashion, my view on the matter falls somewhere in between. First and most practically, I think rankings are useful as an educational tool. They provide new audiences with an idea of a fight's significance, generalized as that idea may be. To maximize their purpose, however, I feel that rankings require context. A narrative, even:

"Restless in his middleweight home, Anderson Silva tries his hand at a heavier weight class, and breaks into the Top 10 at light-heavyweight in brilliant fashion."

"Forrest Griffin is foiled once again by his fragile jaw and an over-willingness to brawl."

"Mamed Khalidov has been quietly climbing the ranks, and is poised for a breakout year."

"Keith Jardine's unique striking habits have stagnated. His opponents have capitalized and he's hit a rough patch."

Narratives like this soften the otherwise harsh nature of numbered rankings, and foster better understanding on the part of all fans, new or old. And this is basically the second potential function of rankings: they build compassion for the fighters. Provided they are accompanied by some sort of narrative, rankings clarify the struggle of a fighter at a given moment, and the trajectory of his or her career become all the more triumphant or tragic.

Such sympathy and understanding on the part of the fans is just as integral to the evolution of the sport as an advanced wrestling regimen or a new striking style. If we offer greater care and respect to fighters, then fighters will offer the same in kind to their martial discipline, and become ever more the artists we know them to be.

Plus, I love lists.

Monday, February 15, 2010

Some Aging Bruiser


Last Saturday night I sat among family and friends, most of them only casually acquainted with the UFC, let alone the larger world of mixed martial arts, and we watched Randy Couture and Mark Coleman. At 46 and 45 years old respectively, both are former champions of mixed martial arts, both should be key figures in any history of the sport, and both are, decidedly, past their prime. My guests wondered aloud: what are those old men doing in the cage? Who is Mark Coleman? Why is this worn-out heavy in the main event? Is this a title fight? And when that answer was “no,” then finally: so what’s the point, what’s at stake? Without being obsessed with the history of the sport, without being enraptured by the drama of the fighting man, they couldn’t know. That Mark Coleman had defeated Couture in collegiate wrestling years before. That he is the UFC’s first heavyweight champion, or that he gave us the game-changing martial style of ground and pound. They didn’t know that Saturday night might have been the last time Mark Coleman fought in the UFC. Maybe the last time Mark Coleman fights, period. I should have told them but, caught up in the popular current of apathy that was running through jaded “hardcore” fans in the weeks leading up to this event, I failed to recognize what was so important about last Saturday night. Were my head not so far up my ass, had I not been so eagerly cynical, I could have told them what was at stake. Damn near everything.

***
Randy Couture and Mark Coleman take to the cage on February 6, 2010 for a serious discussion. A debate made of straining muscle, lactic acid and burning lungs, okay, crackerjack timing, or as near as you can get, and some 20 bulging knuckles. Between Mark Coleman and Randy Couture are the questions of age and will, legacy and future. A climate of pathos and desperation. In all things human, rarely does it get more meaningful then that. And while all fights (all human endeavor, one might argue) are tinged with such consequence, no other fight on the card so palpably embodies the anxiety of tomorrow—what it brings, and how, then, we will be seen. Strange, then, that this fight has been so readily dismissed by the public as a waste. Cruel, I think, that Coleman, the man for whom the most is at stake, should be derided by so many as the most inconsequential part of the whole thing, since between the two men surely Coleman’s struggle to solve these riddles is the more pressing.

With no movie roles, no clothing line, and no training center bearing his name, Coleman, in some considerable contrast to Couture, still makes his living purely by the long minutes in the cage. And while Couture has established himself as an enduring asset to the UFC, Coleman has yet to recapture the imagination of the fans such as he possessed it during his first championship run in the organization over ten years ago. On February 6 there are no impassioned cheers for Mark Coleman. None readily apparent on the broadcast, anyway, and certainly none to rival those that follow Couture into the Octagon. And yet there are no boos or hisses for Coleman, either. Just relatively subdued, obligatory applause. Bad news for someone looking for a foothold in the UFC. If you’re a Coleman fan, the bad news doesn’t stop there.

Randy Couture emerges from his corner looking especially fleet of foot. Mark Coleman, by contrast, appears a little flat, stiff and uncertain in his movement. Rather than gamble that his wrestling has surpassed Coleman’s in the years since their first, collegiate meeting, Couture looks to put his relatively impressive footwork to use, and box. Though Couture’s own chin is suspect, weakened from years of fighting, Coleman never finds a chance to test it. He is beaten to the punch every time, unable to employ any of the feints or combinations that, surely, he drilled with his new coach, kick boxer Shawn Tompkins. Persistently out of sorts, especially compared to his last, rather impressive appearance, he seems over-trained; his body sluggish from excessive drilling and his mind encumbered by one maneuver too many. Like a deer in headlights, which refuses to bound away though it is built and bred for it, Coleman doesn’t tap his instincts, and so he freezes up and suffers a beating. He endures the first round and goes down in the second, submitting to a rear-naked choke.

This may have been the last time Mark Coleman fights in the Octagon, wherein his career was born, but his post-fight interview with Joe Rogan is woefully unceremonious. The evening ends and, though I am assuredly a Couture fan, I’m stuck with a nagging sense, a little anxiety, a little guilt and sorrow.

***
Mark Coleman was cut from the UFC following that defeat. It seems unfair—with a victory over Stephan Bonnar splitting his losses to Mauricio Rua and Couture, he deserved another chance. Yet, having appeared so helpless against a man of his own generation, one shudders to think of the savagery that Rashad Evans or Rogerio Nogueira, men plenty younger than him, would inflict upon Coleman’s venerable head. And though there are a few in the light-heavyweight division against whom I would give Coleman a fair shot, there are none against whom he could be marked as an overwhelming favorite—better to go out losing to Randy Couture than Brian Stann, I’d think.

Ultimately, though, it’s not Coleman’s exit from the promotion that hounds me so much as it is the way he was ushered out. The UFC’s fighters, once they reach a certain age (ring age, if not biological) tend to be treated by most with a sort of sobriety and honor acknowledging their ever more imminent withdrawal from the ring. Matt Hughes, Chuck Liddell, and Couture himself have all gotten the treatment, addressed in tones bespeaking reverence and farewell. I suspect a fighter in the moment might bristle at the implications, though I imagine such decorum might in retrospect prove a compliment.

That Coleman was not offered such custom is (those words again) strange and cruel. Tragic, even, given his contributions to the UFC and to MMA generally. And this is unfortunately appropriate, as Coleman’s career seems to constitute, in nearly the most classical meaning of the term, a tragedy—a man of great potential and bright future brought low. By a little bad luck, maybe, and by the shifting favors of the world and, yes, a bit by his own hand, as well. August as any man he’s ever had the pain or privilege to fight, Coleman is nevertheless dismissed and made sport of by some of those who owe him most: the fans. Maybe it’s that hang-dog expression of his, or the brutish way he has about him. Maybe his frank desperation discomfits people. Maybe this is why some of us like him better.

For those of us turning over the image of the defeated Mark Coleman in our minds, surely the idea of his retirement preoccupies us. As a fan I’m not sure what I want. For him to be healthy, I guess, and strong and sharp and able. Yet, if that should indeed have been Mark Coleman's last fight, then he certainly deserves a champion’s send-off. Slight an offering as this is, I’ll hope instead that he cracks a skull or two more.


Thursday, February 11, 2010

Vitor Belfort suffers severe shoulder injury, out of Silva fight.

So who steps in to fight Anderson Silva?

To be honest, I was never much sold on the idea of Belfort as the number one middleweight contender. His middleweight record outside of the UFC--victories over an aged Matt Lindland and the spectacularly inconsistent Terry Martin--was a little slight, and his only win since his return to the UFC came at a catchweight over Rich Franklin. But, regardless of rankings, a fight between Belfort and Silva would have turned out to be a pretty exciting affair, and so Belfort's absence from the card is disappointing, and keenly felt. But then there's the excitement surrounding Belfort's replacement...

There is no opponent at middleweight that makes sense for Silva. Chael Sonnen would be the best choice, but he suffered a severe cut that would keep him out of the gym, shortening an already abbreviated training camp. Former middleweight front-runners Nate Marquardt and Yushin Okami have both suffered recent, embarrassing losses (to Sonnen, ironically enough) and a fight with Silva would be hard to justify to critics and sell to the public. Demain Maia is in a similar position, having rebounded from his KO loss to Marquardt with a lackluster decision victory. Anderson Silva's best potential opponents are at light-heavyweight.

Brandon Vera and Keith Jardine are fair options, though both of their careers are in something of a fragile state, and a highly-possible knockout loss to Silva must not look too appealing. More likely, I think, are match-ups with either Randy Couture or Thiago Silva. And though it is, in my opinion, a more dangerous fight for Anderson and his fans, I would, ultimately, prefer to see a fight between the two Silvas.

If Couture is going to fight, he should do so against similarly well-traveled mixed martial artists (the rumored bout with Rich Franklin is, for this reason, quite appealing), not against one of the three greatest pound-for-pound fighters in the world. And though the UFC risks losing Thiago Silva as a top light-heavyweight contender, it's worth noting that he's already pretty far at the back of the queue anyway, with recent losses to current champ Lyoto Machida and former champ Rashad Evans still fresh in our minds. As such, Thiago Silva remains both a convenient opponent, yet a serious one as well, as per his appreciable and threatening talents.

In a perfect world, we would get to see Thiago Silva scowl his heart out at UFC 112.