Twitter Mailbag: The scourge of weight-cutting, MMA's forgotten heroes, and more
Also, did this mfer just ask me about my second-favorite bread and least favorite rice? Because yeah, I've been dying to talk about it.
It’s mailbag time again. But first, did anyone else happen to see some clips from UFC President Dana White’s sitdown with Tucker Carlson? Nice of Carlson to take time out from promoting white supremacist theories that themselves also promote very real white supremacist violence, but I’ve got to say my favorite part is probably White doing his usual complaining about “the media.”
“The media does nothing,” White told the guy in the loafers who’s an heir to a frozen food fortune and has spent his whole adult life talking into various media company cameras for money. “They never built anything. Nobody depends on them for a paycheck. But all they do is sit back and criticize.”
Here we cut, with perfect comedic timing, to Carlson making his confused golden retriever face that’s supposed to indicate when he’s listening intently. You know the one.
Again, this blistering criticism of the media came in a conversation with the host of one of the most-watched cable news shows, which appears on the most-watched cable news network in America. And so you’ve got to wonder. If the media does nothing, if it builds nothing and is good only for useless criticism, why is White there, talking to the dude in the loafers who has never done any kind of work other than media? Guess we’ll just have to file that as one of life’s many mysteries.
Now, on to the mailbag…
Sorry to be the jerk who answers a question with a question, but what’s the alternative? I agree that weight-cutting is an insane practice that’s become so totally normalized in MMA that we rarely even notice how absurd it is for two people around the same size to starve and dehydrate themselves down to a different size the day before the fight, only to turn right around and load back up to be, once again, more or less the same size on fight night. But how do we stop them? Introducing hydration tests, like they do in ONE Championship, seems to just add one more system for fighters to game. Holding weigh-ins right before the fights would probably only result in fighters who are still dehydrated trading brain trauma, which is even more dangerous than how we do it now. So what’s the alternative?
It’s fine to say we should ban weight-cutting, but actually figuring out how to do that and enforce it is a whole lot tougher. It’d be great if the fighters could just agree, as has happened on a few rare occasions, that they won’t cut weight for a fight. But fighting in a cage for money is pretty serious business. Fighters have been known to go to great lengths for even small advantages. If they can find a way to be five pounds heavier than the person they’re going to fight, chances are they’ll go for it. So how do you stop them?
One part of the problem is that there is no single regulatory body for this sport. We have this hodgepodge of state athletic commissions in the U.S., some national federations in other countries, but no one entity than can set and enforce rules. If we had one commission overseeing MMA everywhere, maybe we could eventually get to a place where we trust that commission to determine each fighter’s healthy fighting weight, below which they could not get licensed to fight. But we don’t have that. And it doesn’t seem like anyone in power really wants that sort of serious oversight, anyway.
I don’t know if he can ice skate even a little bit, but I’ve got to go with Tai Tuivasa. Big guy, hits hard, and most importantly seems like he’d genuinely enjoy it. And really, that’s the only thing stopping me from choosing Francis Ngannou. I think he’d feel bad about crushing Brad Marchand’s head like a little grape. But “Bam Bam”? He’d get a real kick out of it. Plus you know he’d be fun to have in the locker room.
That’s one of the good and the bad things about this rivalry between Deiveson Figueiredo and Brandon Moreno. These guys could probably fight five more times and we still might not get any closer to determining who’s the best. That’s what happens when two dudes are so evenly matched. You know what else usually happens? They put on awesome fights. So while it’s a little weird to have to keep doing it again (again) (again), brother, I’m not really going to complain as long as the fights keep being so fun to watch.
It’s got to be a boxing match with Jake Paul, right? That seems to be where we’re headed, and it also seems like the thing that would put a bunch of money in everybody’s pockets. It also has the advantage of allowing Diaz to make a lot of money in one fight without committing himself to any one organization.
That’s something boxing offers – or at least this version of quasi-celebrity boxing – that MMA really doesn’t right now. Everything about Nate Diaz’s current disposition toward the fight game suggests that he doesn’t want to tie himself long-term to any promoter, but that’s the model MMA is pretty much built on. It’s why I think his next fight is likely to be in big gloves. And if it’s not Paul, I wouldn’t rule out a boxing match against Conor McGregor.
I guess it depends whether I’d be asking these questions for my own knowledge or to get him to say things out loud that we already mostly know but so far haven’t heard him publicly admit. Assuming it’s some mix of the two, my list would go something like this:
1. What’s the current exact revenue split between UFC ownership and UFC fighters?
2. What’s the smallest possible revenue share that you think would still be fair for the fighters? Would 10 percent be fair? How about one percent?
3. When you claimed to have people watching the houses and listening to the calls of illegal streamers, did you know that was total bullshit or did you actually believe it might be true?
4. Why was the UFC paying Spencer Fisher all those years, and why did it stop?
5. Who’s your favorite MMA manager to work with and – total honesty now – what qualities make him your favorite?
Tomato. Focaccia. Wild.
Perhaps you’ve noticed, but a lot of the people who have chosen careers that involve punching each other in the face on TV tend to have extreme personalities. It’s possible that this lends itself to extreme political views. Plus, for a lot of fighters the gym is both their workplace and their whole social life. You get a bunch of extreme dudes who get all their information from Joe Rogan and Alex Jones talking to other dudes who went to the University of YouTube, maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that this is sometimes the result.
First of all, I love the idea of the NFL doing away with the actual Pro Bowl as a game and instead doing an all-star weekend with various “skills challenges.” All I’d ask is that in addition to football stuff they also display totally unrelated skills. Which NFL player can hit a kickflip on a skateboard? How about a table tennis tournament? Maybe a few rounds of Guess Who?
Same should go for MMA. Every time the UFC does “international fight week,” or whatever, we should get all the fighters who are in town but not fighting that weekend to go head-to-head in stuff like Mario Kart and racquetball and pop-a-shot basketball. Naturally I assume the winner every year would be “Beast Boy” Chris Barnett. Especially if there’s a dance-off involved.
Hold up. You’re telling me you look at the MMA world as it is – the refs, the judges, the commissions, the fans and fighters and promoters and coaches, all of it – and what you think is: The thing these people need is more math to keep track of? My man, we barely manage to keep it all straight just adding up tens and nines. You’re asking for a complete meltdown here.
Maybe the better question is, if you could choose between being a UFC title contender or an Instagram influencer and model who occasionally fights, which would be the better gig? Because I think a lot of recent evidence would suggest it’s the second one. All that stuff about Dana White said the UFC being an “opportunity” rather than a career? Kind of seems like that might be true, just not exactly in the way he meant it.
I think there are a whole bunch of fighters from the PRIDE days who contemporary MMA fans don’t know enough about, mostly because they didn’t have big runs in the UFC after PRIDE was shuttered. I’m thinking specifically of guys like Igor Vovchanchyn, who was hard as a coffin nail in his time and yet has kind of been forgotten by a sport that’s not great at respecting its own history. I’d even argue that someone like Kazushi Sakuraba still doesn’t get his due for basically turning the MMA-focused grappling world upside down.
I also think there are people on the regulatory and promotions side of things who get too easily forgotten, people like Jeff Blatnick and HOOKnSHOOT’s Jeff Osborne.
High. Extremely high. There’s a part of me that feels like it should maybe be illegal to put a guy of Ben Rothwell’s size and strength and striking experience up against what passes for the heavyweight crop in BKFC. Then there’s another very sick part of me that absolutely wants to see what happens when Rothwell lands a giant bare fist upside the head of someone nicknamed “The Bible Belt Brawler.” This inner conflict is a little something I like to call ‘being a fight fan.’ And the sick part pretty much always wins.