Notes on UFC 200

I’m not going to make any predictions for this UFC 200 week. I have slowly, too slowly, come to realize that just being an expert on fighting and on training in no ways qualifies me to predict the outcome of a major fight. The only actual way you can claim to accurately predict a fight that doesn’t involve Dominick Cruz or Demetrius Johnson is to have inside information as to what is taking place in the fighters’ camps, in their change rooms and in their minds just before the fight takes place. Short of that you are only a small step above a National Enquirer psychic when you claim to know what’s going to happen on any given night.

It’s fun to guess.

It’s even more fun to pretend that you know things that others don’t.

But we’re talking about one of the few types of sport where one small mistake can change everything in the a single instant. This is even more true in Mixed Martial Arts than it is for boxing and kickboxing because of the smaller gloves and the so many different variables that can go into the outcome of the fight. There truly is a Heisenberg factor to MMA, and those of us who pretend that we can predict the outcome are somewhat akin to monkeys flinging feces through the air and seeing what it might hit. I might have better aim than some monkeys but in the end poop is still just poop.

So I’m going to take a little break from being one of those monkeys and see if I can’t just present some more salient points about what we might be looking at in the coming week.

I say week because, while UFC 200 is definitely the big event, there are many other things to watch out for, including Eddie Alvarez going up against Rafael Dos Anjos, a fight that all on its own would be an event more than worth watching.

Probably.

These are two great fighters, and Eddie Alvarez has been the common factor in a number of the most exciting fights in recent years. He’s also training out of the same gym as Frankie Edgar and Amanda Nunes. Having that many fighters getting ready to fight at the same time can make all the difference in the world. But Alvarez is warning that he plans a much more careful approach to fighting in order not to end up brain damaged before his time. What that means exactly could also make all the difference. If he means fighting more like his training partner, Frankie Edgar, using movement and strategy to throw Dos Anjos off his game and take him down, then we might see a smarter but still exciting Eddie Alvarez. But a too cautious approach to a pressure fighter like Dos Anjos may not be the best choice for Alvarez or for the viewing audience. Dos Anjos looks to overwhelm opponents and giving him space to come forward might be the last thing you should want to do. There’s still a very decent chance that Alvarez is one of those fighters who is just not capable of playing it safe for very long. There’s also the possibility that he’s just trying to misdirect Dos Anjos and his trainers, and the Eddie Alvarez who is the human equivalent of fireworks will be the guy who shows up once again. And this one’s on free TV. It’ll be worth tuning in, just in case it does turn out to be the fight of the decade, which is entirely possible. (Not a prediction. Just showing you some monkey poop that may or may not exist.) That card is also pretty damned impressive, including the Ultimate Fighter finale championship fight between two women who absolutely hate each other for real.

It really is going to be great week for UFC fans. And UFC 200 is an absolutely insanely stacked card, maybe the most stacked card there ever was. Joe Rogan’s face must already be turning redder than a baboon’s ass (second monkey reference, for anyone keeping count, not counting how many time I repeat the word monkey… Monkey) and his eyes bugging out, while Mike Goldberg is already screaming “Are you kidding me? ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!!” over and over again just in anticipation. (By the way, who the hell is drug testing those two guys?)

You have Jon Jones trying to take back a title that he never lost from Daniel Cormier, Meisha Tate defending her title for the first time against the aforementioned Amanda Nunes and Frankie Edgar facing Jose Aldo for what is ultimately the vacated 145 lb. title. Oh, and some guy named Brock Lesnar taking on Mark Hunt, who is no easy fight for anybody, let alone for a guy who hasn’t fought for over four years. And those are just the main fights. This is such a crazy beautiful card that Joe Lauzon vs. Diego Sanchez is actually on the Fight Pass prelims. I drool like Pavlov’s dog just thinking about those two maniacs being locked in the cage together at last, and that fight, a fight that has the potential to rival Griffin/Bonner as a sheer display of guts and willpower, doesn’t even rate the actual prelims.

It only gets better for me that Conor McGregor isn’t on this card to steal focus once again from fighters who have actually earned to right to be in the spotlight. (That’s right all you drunken Irish fans who think that this Loud Mouthed Shnook is anything more than a moderately talented asshole who crumbled under the first sign of pressure like Boris Johnson after a referendum, I’m saying that Brock Lesnar, a professional wrestling sideshow who came apart too under the pressure of real fights but at least had the excuse of a life threatening stomach condition, deserves the spotlight more than your tattooed bearded barking clam because at least Lesnar is an actual decorated amateur wrestler and he didn’t just get lucky in winning the fights that really mattered. So, suck on your piss warm Guinness and frosted Lucky Charms and go back to pretending that darts is a real sport. Unless you’re Mickey Ward. Cuz he was awesome fighter. Or James Joyce. Cuz he was an awesome writer. Or any of those other Irish people who contributed so richly to western culture… Or the guy who made Irish Stew. Cuz that stuff’s awesome too… Ahem. Never mind. Conor McGregor still sucks though.)

Anyway.

Where was I?

Oh, yeah. 200 is a pretty good card.

I’m going to start talking about that main card with Edgar vs. Aldo. Because that’s where I want to start and there’s just too many fights to talk about here, so I’m going to start with my favourite one, because it involves my single favourite fighter. Frankie Edgar. As a trainer, as a former fighter and as a fan of the sport I happen to believe that Frankie Edgar is everything that you would or should ever want a fighter to be. He’s fast. He’s smart. He’s brilliantly technical. He’s a true martial artist who can dominate anyone through boxing, striking wrestling or even Jitsu. And his footwork, which, as Dominick Cruz and Demetrius Johnson would tell you is the highest and most difficult level of the modern fight game, rates with the best out there. Most of all, Frankie Edgar has the heart, toughness and courage of a lion (even if it is hidden behind the childlike face of a Keebler Elf). If you need to see a definition of what real heart and courage looks like, just look up Edgar’s second and third fights against Gray Maynard. In that second fight Edgar got hit so hard that he literally flipped over and still came up on his feet, albeit on very shaky legs, ready and willing to fight on. Rocky might have been just a movie, but Frankie Edgar is as close as you can get to a real life Rocky Balboa. He’s Jersey tough. And that is as tough as anyone or anything can be. (Even the Irish people in Jersey are tough.) Everything that is good about fighting, and there are good things about competitive fighting if you’re willing to take the time to turn off your PC gag reflex and pay real attention, is embodied in Frankie Edgar.

Not according to Dana White, of course.

Edgar, like Carlos Condit, has never been enough of a Loud Mouthed Shnook for Dana White, and so, as is the case with Condit and too many other great fighters, he gets bypassed for title shots by obnoxious loud mouths in loud suits. (By the way, Dana, I don’t think “Literally” means what you think it means. It sure as hell doesn’t belong in every single sentence you speak. Literally.)

Yeah, all that Frankie Edgar does is fight. Apparently that’s not good enough in the UFC.

Sadly, Frankie has tried recently to adjust to White and company’s tastes, but Edgar’s heart really isn’t in yapping about fighting and its just not in his nature to be disrespectful even to the most disrespectful of opponents.

Frankie Edgar is just a great fighter. One of the greatest on the planet. But, like I said, that’s not enough for the UFC brass. Edgar and Condit are just a few of those fighters not loud enough or obnoxious enough for their Vegas bosses and for far too many casual fans. But if you are a real fan, if you ever want to be a real fan or would even consider ever being a serious fan, you owe it to yourself to watch Frankie Edgar fight at least once.

And, if you’re not a fan at all, if you’re one of those people who are determined to think that competitive fighting is just a bunch of goons bloodying each other up, you have never seen Frankie Edgar.

And Edgar could definitely beat Jose Aldo. He has more than enough talent and skill, and more heart than any other fighter there. Hell, Frankie has more heart than any ten tigers out there. (Lions and tigers and monkeys, oh my…)

He could take Aldo in this second fight.

But, don’t get me wrong, Jose Aldo is not exactly a slouch.

Nobody but Aldo himself knows why he came apart the way he did against Conor McGregor. (Yes, that Conor McGregor, as much as it pains me to say…) Maybe he let McGregor get inside his head. Maybe he’d gotten bored with fighting. Maybe he didn’t train hard enough and knew that he didn’t train enough. Or maybe the new drug testing rules made it difficult for him to train the way he always had trained before and make weight. But, before that one brief but stupid mistake Jose Aldo was undefeated for ten years, and was one of the best, if not the best pound for pound fighters on the planet. He has insane explosive power, superb timing and among the nastiest leg kicks in the history of the sport. The closest any fighter came to defeating Aldo before his meltdown vs. McGregor was Frankie Edgar, who, as I said, fought Aldo to a very close and arguable decision.

And Frankie Edgar has evolved since then. He was always among the best pound for pound fighters, but in the last few years, since that razor close and controversial decision loss to Aldo, he has shown up better and better with each fight. He moves better. He institutes strategy better. And he transitions better than ever in those spaces between striking, grappling and getting back out again. Frankie Edgar is now unquestionably one of the best, if not the best fighter out there.

The question now is whether or not Aldo has evolved. Has he learned from that terrible mistake or has he just convinced himself that it was just an aberration. If he has not evolved, if he goes right back to being hyper aggressive just to prove a point then Edgar should be more than ready to take advantage. He’s already felt the worst of Aldo’s power and speed and he has that Dominick Cruz like ability to use forward momentum against his opponents. Even if Aldo has evolved, so has Frankie, and their last fight was a doozie.

If these two show up at their best, we could well be in for a very special and very spectacular fight.

If either of these two show up at seventy percent of their best, we would still be in for a spectacular fight.

And that’s not even the main event.

The main event is Jon Jones vs. Daniel Cormier, and it too has the makings of a fight for the ages. Inside the cage, whatever we might think of his actions outside the cage, Jones is considered by many to be the best fighter on the planet, maybe even the greatest fighter who ever lived. When you look down the list of the men that Jones has beat, and how easily he bested most of them, he might well be the best Mixed Martial Artist who ever lived. (I’m not giving up Sugar Ray Robinson just yet as the greatest fighter of any kind who ever lived, but it says a lot that Jones’ name would even be considered to rival Robinson’s.) Aside from his freakish 84 inch reach, Jones’ ability to improvise and beat some of the best fighters who have ever lived at their own game, his freakish athletic abilities, and ability to execute some of the best strategy we’ve ever seen inside the cage, raises him above any who have come before him, including Anderson Silva, who simply never faced the long list of legends that Jones has. And now we know that Jon Jones was able to do all that while skimping on training and partying every chance that he got. Jon Jones may not be a great human being, but as a fighter he has few, if any rivals.

With the possible exception of Daniel Cormier. Many people, myself included, think that Daniel Cormier could well be the Frazier to Jones’ Ali, the LaMotta to Jones’ Robinson.

To begin with, these two guys really do despise each other. Its not an act. Everything about each man is antithetical to who the other man wants to be. Jones is poetry in motion while Cormier is a grinder, an extremely high level wrestler who wants to put his head on your chest, outwork you and break your will. Jones is a talented and privileged superstar. Cormier is just as talented, but his appearance belies his athleticism and he believes with his entire soul that hard work will always win out.

In their first fight that didn’t happen.

Jones dominated Cornier in every aspect, including wrestling, which shouldn’t have been possible given Cormier’s spectacularly decorated wrestling past.

But Cormier is a very smart guy. As smart as any fighter out there, with the possible exception of his fellow fight commentator, Dominick Cruz. Like Cruz, Cormier has been able to refine his game while acting as a commentator. They’ve used their jobs breaking down fights and analyzing them for a living to refine their game and come to a far deeper understanding of how to win fights. Like Cruz, Cormier has shown an ability to adapt and change, to learn from his past and grow from his mistakes. Dominick Cruz’ greatest innovation came out of his only loss to Uriah Faber, who he beat twice after that.

Its possible that Cormier too will apply his keen intelligence to figure out Jon Jones and adapt accordingly.

Its possible.

Not very likely, but possible.

Jones just really is that good. He improvises inside the cage better than almost anyone out there and he has one of the best training teams in all of MMA in his corner.

But Cormier had ripped through a long list of great fighters too. He is by far the most likely candidate right now to actually solve the puzzle that is Jon Jones, if anyone can. We can only hope that Cormier is not subject to the same terrible lapses of judgement as his training partners Luke Rockhold and Cain Velasquez showed in recent fights. He showed a bit of that when he just tried to walk through Alexander Gustafson’s punches rather than using footwork to solve the problem of an opponent with superior height and reach. If he tries that against Jones, he’s just going to eat a lot of elbows. I think Cormier is too smart and self aware to make the same mistakes again, and I do think he will find a way to give Jon Jones his toughest fight yet. (Okay, that’s definitely a prediction. Throwing poop is kind of an addiction. Great. Now I’m rhyming like Dr. Seuss…)

And those are just two of the fights. There’s Meisha Tate, the Frankie Edgar of female fighters, against Amanda Nunes, who, ironically, trains at the same gym as Frankie. Meisha never fights a dull fight and, win or lose, she is guaranteed to go down fighting. There’s Juliana Pena’s fight. And if you haven’t seen that maniac fight her way through the ultimate fighter, you absolutely need to see her go. That woman’s like the Tasmanian Devil of female fighters.

And of course there’s the return of Brock Lesnar. I am actually shocked that Lesnar would agree to take on a guy like Mark Hunt for his first fight back after four years. The game has evolved a lot since Lesnar last fought and Mark Hunt is one of those fighters who has evolved right alone with it. He’s a much cannier fighter than he can often appear to be. He moves deceptively well and executes strategy extremely well for such a big man. And this is the guy who knocked out Roy Nelson. Roy Nelson, who eats punches and kicks like pancakes. At the weigh ins and as they step up to each other in the cage, this one’s going to seem like a terrible mismatch. It will be hard to imagine this much shorter pudgier fighter being able to give Brock Lesnar any trouble.

But Mark Hunt is a very long way from being a joke. He’s as dangerous as they come in the heavyweight division.

I give Lesnar big props for guts. And he is a world class wrestler with a King Kong like body and the power and strength to go with it.(Not a monkey reference. King Kong was an ape, not a monkey. Just saying…)

And we get to hear Lesnar say things like “I’m a white boy and I’m jacked. Deal with it.”

He’s like the Donald Trump of fighters.

And who doesn’t like Donald Trump?

Who doesn’t like red faced racists who never let an actual thought get in the way of what they have to say?

(I’ll tell you who. Monkeys. That’s who. They like red asses, not red faces.)

(And maybe sane and rational people too…)

(And, is Brock Lesnar living in Canada now? We really have to keep those kind of people out. Hey, we should build a wall. Because expensive walls always work. They kept the Mongolians out of China, right? What about Hadrian’s Wall. That worked out for the Romans. Right?)

Besides, I’m pretty sure Brock would just climb over the wall with his King Kong arms. (An ape. Not a monkey.)

Still.

Where was I?

Oh. Yeah.

This Lesnar fight is a real fight. More than just a spectacle or a sideshow. It is a very serious fight. And Brock Lesnar, despite appearances, is a real fighter. (Which is way more than I can say about Donald Trump and his teeenie weenie little hands…)

And so is every single fight this week.

The UFC does have a tendency to serves us monkey poop (Monkeys) on a plate and tell us that it’s steak. But this really is an entire week of prime rib.

So many fantastic fights and so little time…

You really, honestly, should not miss this card. There really isn’t one bad match up from beginning to end.

You really, honestly, shouldn’t miss one fight this week.

If the rumors are true and the UFC has been sold, this might well be their last and greatest hoorah before it all starts to come apart piece by piece. Not to mention certain ‘jacked’ white boys perhaps failing their drug tests when its all said and done…

It is MMA, of course. Anything can happen.

Hell, it’s possible that Conor McGregor might actually gather up his little Irish balls and show up to fight Nate Diaz again, as promised.

Its not likely though.

And its not likely that there won’t be any spectacular fights this week, let alone on Saturday night.

(Damn. Is that another prediction? Flinging poo is pretty hard not to do. Maybe that’s why monkeys do it all the time. Monkeys and Donald Trump…)

Its going to be a fun week.

More fun than a barrel of….

Huh…

What’s the word…

The word that I’m looking for…