Is it time to pump the brakes on the hype for the Fighting Nerds? And why must Ilia Topuria insert himself into a rivalry with Terence Crawford that seems one-sided and ultimately hopeless? Plus, who else is watching this month’s big sumo basho?
All that and more in this week’s mailbag. To ask a question of your own, hit up @benfowlkesmma.
@EyeofMihawk: Are you buying the dip on the Fighting Nerds? If so, which ones?
Not yet, I’m not. I get why people are ready to jump off the bandwagon. They got excited about the team all at once, then saw them lose one after another, but it’s not like those losses were all indicative of some fundamental flaw they share. In other words, if Caio Borralho loses a decision against a top middleweight contender he just couldn’t figure out, and then Jean Silva goes out the next week and gets knocked out due to his own reckless aggression, I am not inclined to say those defeats really had anything to do with one another.
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When you get attention as a team, you have to be prepared for fans to judge you as a team. But just because they don’t win absolutely every time doesn’t mean there’s something going wrong within the Fighting Nerds. It could be that we’re just seeing them climb high enough to face really tough opponents. How they react to these losses will tell us more than the losses themselves.
@Screenplaya: Can Ilia Topuria dunk? Can he hit a rising fastball? Who cares?!? Why do MMA athletes ALWAYS want to do some other sport?
When it comes to MMA fighters and boxers, I think we know a big part of the reason. Top boxers make much, much more money than top UFC champs do. They also get more mainstream respect and visibility in a lot of places. More than 41 million people watched Terence Crawford beat Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, according to Netflix. MMA has never, ever drawn that kind of a crowd.
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So yeah, it makes sense that Ilia Topuria might want to pick a fight with Crawford. Even if nothing comes of it (and it won’t), he gets his name in the same headlines. But also? Let’s not act like MMA fighters are the only athletes who think they could do other sports. The same way musicians always want to be actors and actors want to be musicians, lots of pro athletes think they could also be a pro at some other sport. Just ask the big homie Michael Jordan.
@Beastin364: Watched the Noche UFC card and Canelo-Crawford. Why did one of them take five hours to deliver 12 rds of careful point fighting? I thought Dana said he was gonna fix boxing pacing
He has his work cut out for him, then. That was a long slog to get to the good stuff this past Saturday on Netflix. I know because I kept interrupting my kids’ movie night to see if it was main event time yet, which drew many frustrated groans over the course of the evening. Eventually it became a non-issue because it was so late they had to go to bed.
I was thinking, though, that if your interest was tilted more toward blood and mayhem, Noche UFC really delivered so much more bang for the buck. Diego Lopes and Silva packed a lot of violence into just under 10 minutes of action, while Crawford and “Canelo” ended up being a high-level chess match. It made me wonder how many of those 41 million tuned in thinking they might see something closer to Lopes-Silva and went away disappointed by the intricacies of elite boxing. I also just wonder how many fell asleep along the way during that marathon broadcast.
@sentientlife4o1: How many pugs could Kelvin Gastelum beat in a fight? Like, if there was a dog door on the octagon and a steady stream of angry pugs were streaming out of it, how many pugs would it take before Kelvin was overwhelmed and defeated?
For the sake of this hypothetical we’ll assume that the pugs are focused only on Gastelum and cannot be distracted from the goal of devouring him. They come through that Octagon Doggy Door™ and go right after him like demented little monsters until they are incapacitated in one way or another.
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In that situation, I think about 50 pugs is where it starts to become a real problem for Kelvin. Cardio might become an issue for the first ones through the door (I mean, we’ve all heard them struggle to breathe) but after 40 or so they’ll be crawling all over him, biting little chunks out of his skin from all angles, and he’ll be too overwhelmed to mount an intelligent defense. Also he will miss weight for that contest, and the pugs will spend their 30% chunk of his purse on treats and chew toys.
@jmprobus: Favorite Robert Redford film and why is it Jeremiah Johnson?
I think my dad would pick “Jeremiah Johnson,” for sure. We had that on VHS when I was growing up and rarely made it through the holiday season without popping it on one night.
For me, there are two very different standouts that I come back to for very different reasons. The first is “All The President’s Men,” which is just a great overall movie with perfect performances from both Redford and Dustin Hoffman. Plus, you go back and watch it now and what really stands out is just how much paper newsrooms were going through in the pre-internet age.
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My other favorite (and I am prepared for some blowback on this one) is “Spy Game.” Late-era Redford is at his craggy best opposite a young Brad Pitt in a pre-9/11 CIA thriller. It’s a tightly crafted movie held together by Redford being a sneaky little sneak while looking effortlessly dapper in a houndstooth sports coat. It’s one of those movies I could pick up and watch from any point at any time of day.
@BlaowPlaow: We see the sentiment that fans are no longer the UFC’s priority. They bring in massive revenue from site fees among other things and are doing better than ever financially. How do you see this playing out longterm though? Will the rubber meet the road in a few years?
I was thinking about this when I saw Dana White in a recent interview shrugging off the criticism that the UFC lacks superstars. His reasoning seemed to be that, since the money machine is chugging along at a more profitable pace than ever, things couldn’t be better.
Which, from his perspective, makes sense. To the executives and shareholders of TKO, White’s job is to maximize value. They do not give a single damn if that comes with any superstars for the fans to get excited about. They might even prefer that it doesn’t, since superstars tend to make superstar demands that threaten to eat into the profit margin.
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Still, combat sports have always been driven by interest in specific fighters. The UFC brand has transcended that to a point. And even now, almost against the UFC’s will, we see fighters who break through all the homogenization to become known figures. Maybe the UFC figures that will continue to happen organically often enough to keep things moving in the right direction. And maybe, with no more pay-per-views to sell once the ESPN deal ends and the Paramount deal begins, the need for individual stars will continue to diminish.
@von_hung: Who’s your favourite to win this months sumo basho? And who’s cooler than Midorifuji?
I woke up this morning and the first thing I saw on my phone was video of Onosato somehow losing a match he seemed to be dominating against Hakuoho. So that was a surprise. Personally, I’m a big Ura fan. I just love a plucky underdog who’s forced to get creative with technique since he can’t rely on size and power. Plus he looks sharp in pink.
