Actor Ethan Suplee rockin a Legends MMA t-shirt. Suplee is a hefty 300 lbs according to his bio. He doesn’t look like an MMA 300 lbs though. More like a sit on the couch and watch MMA 300 lbs. Just out of curiosity, anybody know if Ethan actually trains MMA at Legends? That would suck to have to roll with 300 lbs of hairy man-child.
CINCINNATI — A Cincinnati-area family got a smelly surprise when they opened a punching bag they purchased earlier this year.
Joe Heckel said he and his son were moving a TKO brand heavy punching bag from their garage to the basement when they decided to see what was inside in case the bag later leaked. But Heckel said that instead of sand or plastic pellets, he found the bag full of men’s and women’s underwear, some of it used.
If you love massive amounts of dirty undies, make tracks (ahem) to your sporting goods store and pick up a TKO heavybag before they get pulled off the shelves! I love it when my heavybag smells like bag.
Time for another think-out-loud fest by yours truly. Let’s get down to some MMA nerdery, shall we?
Rami Genauer (MMAWeekly.com) has written the first of a series of articles about the often controversial issue of safety in MMA.
Genauer’s first article tackles the question of whether the cage is safer than a ring. In it, he argues that the cage, with it’s superior containing ability, is safer when it comes to a sport where the action can occur standing or on the ground. With a ring, there is a higher probability that fighters can fall out and be seriously injured. So logically, the cage is the safer choice. The dillemma lies in the fact that to the general public, the use of a cage crosses the line between sport and brutality. They’d rather see a ring.
Genauer says that it’s more of a semantic and ideological issue more than anything else. The idea of putting two men in a “cage” is something that is generally not acceptible. Cages are for rabid animals. If it’s an Octagon™ or a ring, that’s a different story. The argument Genauer lays down is that these are all containment methods, it’s just a matter of choosing the safest one, right? Or is it choosing the one that appeals most to general society?
Here’s my deal. There has to be a line we draw on how “civilized” we want to make something that is inherently uncivilized. Fighting is brutal. Of course it shouldn’t be life-threatening, but to package and distill it into something that a suburban housewife finds digestible is something that’s equally unacceptable. I like that MMA is brutal. I like that we have an avenue to exhibit such an honest, raw form of human interaction. In our 9-5 commerce-driven lives, it’s an escape that many of us can appreciate.
Yes, we do need the support of the general public, but we simply can’t completely rationalize out the danger in MMA. It’s just not possible. We can improve it to a point, but beyond that we compromise the combat aspect of combat sports. Based on its recent history, I think MMA is on a non-stop ride to (almost)mainstream and society will simply have to come to terms with it. Hopefully it’s society that does the bending and not MMA.
If you hadn’t already noticed, my header image now credits photographer Dave Niddrie for the image. Special thanks to Dave for agreeing to let me use the photo. The image is part of a great photoset on Flickr of an MMA event up in Vancouver. The rest of his Flickr collections are equally stunning, but less bloody.
A few other MMA-related Flickr links after the jump.
It’s already been up for a few months now, but I thought it would be worth mentioning. BJ Penn is posting daily video of his classes on his website in what essentially amounts to free instruction from one of the best fighters in the world. Granted it’s difficult to learn without doing, but for those of you who have a rudimentary knowledge of MMA this is a great place to pick up additional grappling knowledge and bring it to wherever you train.
This is pretty much unprecendented in the world of martial arts. BJ is a dude who just really loves the science and art of fighting, so much so that he’s willing to basically give away his knowledge to everyone whose got internet access just so the collective fighting community can be better as a whole. Of course he’s probably making some good money off ad impressions but heck, the guy’s got bills to pay.
It seems like BJ isn’t the type who is afraid of finding the truth about his techniques. If it doesn’t work, forget it, if it works, use it. Straight up Bruce Lee JKD style. Seriously, this transcends MMA, BJJ, UFC, all of it. I know it sounds super cheesy, but this is BJ Penn opening the floodgates of best-of-breed fighting knowledge onto the world.
