Ramon Dekkers was the both the best, and the most important, non-Thai Muay Thai fighter, ever. If you spent any time in Thailand in the nineties, you couldn’t help but notice that he was the only Western fighter whose name people actually knew. That was because he was going out to Thailand, and fighting against the best they had, in a weight division that the locals actually cared about. He was doing this at a time when there were legendary Thais fighting at his weight, and he was winning. Not every fight, by any means. but that’s actually an accolade in itself – Dekkers didn’t have a carefully managed career of big money fights, with a promoter carefully watching out to make sure that his boy’s record didn’t get tarnished. Instead, he took on every other bad-ass out there, at a time when the Muay Thai world was full of them.
I don’t ask other fighters for autographs. I’ve made two exceptions to that rule. One was Anderson Silva. The other one was Ramon Dekkers. Dekkers is the only one I kept.
Ben Six despairs at the state of women’s pro-wrestling:
It’s as insulting to the viewers as to the performers. We’re supposed to think that dames who make tour cyclists look like bodybuilders, and who smile broader and blander than presidential candidates, are formidable wrestlers. This wouldn’t be farcical if they could actually work but – especially as they’ve begun to recruit performers from the world of modelling rather than sports – many wouldn’t know a boston crab from seafood. Meanwhile, talented performers who – shock horror! – carry muscle mass or an ounce of fat are humiliated. This may change – I’d go into the details but they’d bore you silly – but, ’til then, the whole darn thing is just degrading people.
As an MMA fan I might be inclined to get all smug and superior about how this is what happens when you watch worked fights. On the other hand, as an MMA fan, I’ve watched Strikeforce trying to match Gina Carano with people who are either half her size or who’ve never had a pro fight before, so it’s not like I can get too smug. That said, I think that this is just plain strange:
I don’t find women’s rugby or cricket as much fun as their male equivalents for the same reason I’d prefer to watch England than Romania or Zimbabwe. The enjoyability of the sports – for me, at least – is enhanced by a level of pace and strength the male physique is better suited for.
Now obviously I have no idea about what it is in particular about the England men’s rugby team that Ben prefers to the Romanian one, but I think we can rule out the idea that the English physique is just better suited for rugby. I’d guess that the reason no-one wants to watch the Romanians is that they’re drawing their rugby players from a small talent pool, not coaching them as well, and paying them peanuts. Seems to me that a lot of the problems with women’s sports can probably be explained the same way.
This might seem like pointless righter-on-than-thou-ism, but there is a substantive point here. If the problem with women’s sports is that there’s not enough money, and not enough women doing them, then part of the solution has to be more money and more women getting involved in the sport.
This is why I’m actually sort of ambivalent about the inevitable tendency to sex up women’s fights. On the one hand it’s ridiculous (we do have channels that show actual porn, people!), and patronising. On the other it does get more exposure and money for female fighters. I’d guess that, on balance, it encourages women to get involved in the sport. For every potentially talented fighter who finds it all too tawdry, I’m guessing there are a fair few who think “I’m pretty sure I could make easy money beating the shit out of that girl!”
Obviously it’s a little harder to achieve the same result in pro-wrestling (and here I may be forced to get just a little smug and superior). The fact that MMA involves real fighting does enforce a minimal level of honesty amongst promoters. Talented pro-wrestlers will always have a harder time proving that they’re talented, rather than just hyped. But that’s hardly a problem that’s confined to the women’s game, is it?
[Guest post from the soon-to-be-Mrs Creation]
I don’t like watching them fight, it doesn’t look right and shouldn’t be allowed.
I’m not entertained by it and don’t find it interesting to watch. Moreover, there’s something about it that makes me feel downright uncomfortable.
Basically, it’s lower-level fighting. There are various techniques that they cannot do properly and so you don’t see the full MMA skill-set. It’s not their fault, they’re just not built that way.
I find it annoying when valuable PPV time is taken up by putting these fights on the card. I mean, most of these fighters aren’t even that attractive!
Over at the rather spiffing new BJJHacks, they’re promoting the virtues of the gi.They make three points. The first, that more matt-time is better than less, is obviously true. I wonder about the second and the third though:
2: If you can escape when wearing a gi, you can escape damn near anything when no-gi
Boxers hold weights in their hands when they shadowbox. When they drop the weights, their hands are a whole lot quicker as a result. It’s the same reasoning behind running while wearing a weighted vest, or dragging a sled. Once you take away the weight, your body moves a helluva lot faster.
Wearing a gi has much the same effect. The added weight and friction of the cloth makes it harder to move when you’re on your back, and you’ll learn how to escape tight submissions without relying on low-percentage explosive movements.
I think this is right so long as its taken as advice for beginner and perhaps intermediate level grapplers (which I hasten to add is all I am). But aren’t gi and no-gi grappling are fundamentally different animals these days? And doesn’t that mean that athletes are going to have to specialise more?
3: If it’s good enough for the best, it should be good enough for you
Do you know how many UFC champions, past and present, are black belts in BJJ? Fifteen. Yup, fifteen! If you don’t believe me, go take a look.
Is this not just a legacy effect of the fact that both MMA and submission grappling largely developed out of BJJ? Again, the fact that those sports all seem to be going their different ways to some extent suggests to me that the gi is going to start looking less relevant to MMA.
… because I have been here. Just not actually blogging, obviously. Anyway, I’ve finished my exams, so hopefully I’ll be managing updates on something approaching a regular basis.
