Planet Utah

UFC, and a related man-date question

Few people read this blog for its sports coverage, and even fewer read it for the occasional posts on the UFC. But I have to mention something remarkable that happened last night.

For the uninitiated, "UFC" stands for Ultimate Fighting Championship, which is the main mixed martial arts association. Just as the best hoopsters in the world play in the NBA, the best mixed martial artists in the world fight in the UFC.

People who don't follow mixed martial arts usually say it's "brutal" or "barbaric." I think "barbaric" is an overstatement; the sport is regulated and officiated just as boxing is, and is designed to keep fighters safe. In a UFC fight, you will never see a fighter take punches to the head for 45 minutes, which you can see in boxing. In the UFC, the longest fights are 15 minutes (three rounds of five minutes each). Because fighters can strike to most any part of an opponent's body (with the exception of the eyes, throat, and groin), the face and head aren't the only targets. Finally, as with boxing, each fight has an in-the-ring referee who is instructed to stop the fight immediately if one of the fighters is no longer able to defend himself. And believe me, there is far more controversy in the UFC over fights being stopped too soon rather than being allowed to go on for too long.

As for "brutal," yes, sometimes. A knee or an elbow without any padding on it can, if well-placed, do a lot more damage than a fist covered with a glove. But a knee or elbow to an unprotected chin or nose is pretty rare. These are professional fighters, after all, and if they see a knee or elbow coming their way, they're going to move or cover up. Also, though, it's much harder to hit someone in the face with a knee or elbow than with a fist. If you don't believe me, play around for a bit with someone you love. Tell them you're going to try to touch their face with your hands, your knees, and your elbows. Not hard...just a touch. Tell them they should try to stop you. My bet is that you'll be able to touch their face at least a few times with your hands, but your knees and elbows won't even get close.

So, there's your background--now let's get to the remarkable thing that happened last night.

Last night, the current middleweight champion, Anderson Silva, moved up 20 pounds to fight the former lightweight champion, and still a top lightweight contender, Forrest Griffin. Silva demolished Griffin in about 90 seconds. Toyed with him. Made it look easy. When the fight was over, Silva had barely broken a sweat and didn't have a mark on him. Griffin looked like he had been hit by a truck.

It's hard to come up with a meaningful non-sports analogy here, but imagine that in the first McCain/Obama debate, McCain had been funny, incisive, articulate, natural, knowledgeable, fluid, and highly persuasive, while Obama stammered and stumbled, botched his applause lines, got confused over facts and dates, referred to McCain as "Senator Clinton" twice, and repeatedly lost his train of thought or forgot the question he was answering.

THAT'S how shocking Silva's win was last night.

As for the man-date question, last night I got to talking with a fellow UFC fan. He went up to the bar during a break in the action, ordered a beer, and asked me if I wanted one. I said, "Sure," even though I hadn't planned to drink any more.

Saying "no" would have been borderline rude. Men are cautious about making gestures of friendship or generosity toward men they don't know, mainly because they don't want anyone thinking they're gay. So when a guy throws caution to the wind and offers to buy you a beer, you don't embarrass him by refusing.

In my mind, it also would have been borderline rude to hand him a five-spot to cover the cost of my beer. This would be a bit like accepting an invitation to someone's house for dinner and then saying at the end of the evening, "So, how much do I owe you?"

At the same time, though, I can imagine this guy telling a friend later last night, "I'm up getting a beer, I ask this guy if he wants me to get him anything while I'm up there, he says 'yeah,' I get his beer for him, and he makes me pay for it! Try to do the guy a favor and I end up getting stuck with the tab. Nice..."

I know the normal way of addressing this issue is for me to get the next round. But in the fluid environment of a crowded bar and amidst the unpredictable currents of a conversation with strangers, you may never get that chance. (Think about it: How many times have you gone to a bar, somehow gotten into a conversation with a same-sex stranger, and ended up having a conversation with him or her that lasted long enough for the purchase of a couple rounds?)

Last night, I didn't get the chance. Now I'm wondering about the etiquette of accepting a beer when you know the shadow of the future is short, i.e., when you know that you'll be unlikely to reciprocate.

Footnote: Girls, there is no analogy here to guys buying you drinks. Whole different ballgame.

Anklenote: Commenters are on notice--use of the phrase "pay it forward" will get you banned.

Watching the Spurs' ouster (and eating a hot dog) with relish

Last night the Spurs were bounced from the playoffs by the Dallas Mavericks in a lopsided series. Though the Mavs were the sixth seed and the Spurs the third, Dallas dominated, allowing San Antonio only one win.

Given the Spurs' history of methodically destroying the Suns' playoff dreams, I've decided that this is no time for sportsmanship. And so I say to you, denizens of the Evil Empire:

Nanny, Nanny, Nanny-Goats!

Footnote: This sort of juvenile taunting will have to suffice until the Suns can actually beat the Spurs in a playoff series.

The Suns are a laughing stock

Or at least a head-shaking stock. You can read about it here.

I've generally supported Steve Kerr's moves, beginning with the Shaq trade, and including the firing of Mike D'Antoni and the trade of Boris Diaw and Raja Bell. When it came to hiring Terry Porter, though, I felt kind of like I did when the GOP nominated Bob Dole.  Sure, he was certainly an adequate choice, and he was as deserving as anyone, I suppose, but there was not a lot there to get excited about. Well, Bob Dole lost the election in uninspiring style, and Terry Porter lost the Suns in the same fashion. Now he's out, and is holding an IOU for about five million bucks.

That's bad, but it's particularly bad if you're Robert Sarver. He doesn't buy into sports franchise economics: lose money on a team while you own it, make it all back (and then some) when you sell it. He doesn't want to lose money while he owns it, and he hates--HATES--paying people for doing nothing. But that's exactly what he'll be doing with Porter: paying him for doing nothing.

Whose fault is that? Steve Kerr's. No doubt about it. If your coach is so bad that you fire him mid-way through his first season, you have to begin entertaining serious doubts about the guy who hired him. That guy is Kerr.

Beyond the lousy hire, Kerr also tried to change the general direction of this team from 7SOL (that's "seven seconds or less," a reference to Mike D'Antoni's up-tempo, run-and-gun style) to more of a defense-oriented, half-court offensive style. I don't have any problem with that change in the abstract. But when you do that, what happens to Amare Stoudemire, who is at his most devastating when he gets into the lane, a lane that is now clogged by Shaquille O'Neal? And what happens to Steve Nash, who is a liability on defense, and whose offensive game is made for run-and-gun, not for walking it up the court? If you've watched the Suns this season, you've seen what happens. So, again, you have to look at Steve Kerr and say, "Okay, so tell me how you thought this was going to work...?"

Anyway, what's done is done, and we're faced with the only question that matters: what do the Suns do now? Start rebuilding. First and foremost, that means getting rid of players around whom you cannot rebuild, and keeping players around whom you can. And that, in turn, means getting rid of Shaq and Nash. Actually, in the case of both, it's less about getting rid of them than about giving them a chance to win elsewhere. Both of these guys could still contribute to a championship team. So, let them go where they've got a shot at it. Get as much value for them as you can. If you can't get decent value, then hang on to them. Their contracts will be up soon enough anyway.

As far as coaching goes, if I were Robert Sarver, I would do what they did with Isiah Thomas in New York: "Okay, pal, you bought the groceries, you cook the meal." In other words, let Steve Kerr take over as coach next year. That will either be the first full year of a rebuilding process, or the last full year of the old regime. There won't be much at stake, so it will be a good time to let him get some coaching experience. If he's terrible, you can get rid of him. If he's good, you can keep him. And in the meantime, you bring Flip Saunders in as GM, just to keep the pressure on Kerr...

Footnote: There's one thing that I've always liked about the Suns--they don't stand pat. We haven't had to tolerate years of mediocrity in the way that some other franchises have. (See: Clippers, Los Angeles.) The Suns will swap out players, swap out coaches, make blockbuster trades, do what they have to do to try to improve. This hasn't gotten us a championship yet, but it's created a situation in which we've never been too bad for too long, and it's always been possible to remain optimistic. So, while we are at a very low point now, I don't expect we'll stay there for long.

While you were watching football...

Business brings me to Arizona for a couple of days. Today, while driving around the Valley, I listened to a lot of sports talk radio. Here were two big themes I heard: a) can you believe that the Cardinals were championship contenders and the Suns are also-rans?; and b) Amare Stoudemire is going to be traded, and Terry Porter might not last past this season.

Here's my take: Trade Amare, trade Shaq, trade Nash, trade Leandro...whatever, whoever. I don't really care, because we are no longer contenders. Rebuilding is in our future. The sooner we get started, the sooner we'll be contenders again. So let's get started.

Let us NOT, however, fire Terry Porter. Robert Sarver, while willing to spend, does not have an endless supply of cash. I don't want Terry Porter getting fired, then getting paid for doing nothing. That's the sort of thing that will give Sarver an ulcer and force him to scrimp and save elsewhere, where it really matters (you know, player personnel).

As for Steve Kerr, I don't think he should be fired, either. He's done everything in his power to keep the Suns' championship window open. He has failed. His failure, though, is not necessarily the product of bad choices. In fact, I think that trading Shawn Marion was the right call (though bringing in Shaq may not have been); firing Mike D'Antoni was the right call (though hiring Terry Porter may not have been); and getting rid of Raja Bell and Doris Meow was the right call (though not getting the point guard of the future for them was pretty dumb...on the other hand, you can only acquire what people are willing to give up).

Bottom line: start rebuilding now, and give Kerr and Porter resonsibility for making that process work. If they fail, THEN you terminate them. With extreme prejudice.

Not a role model, indeed

I'm sure the Charles Barkley DUI story got more coverage in Phoenix than it did in Austin, but I managed to find most of the relevant details in various places on the Internet. What an incredibly juvenile dirtbag Barkley is. Time to grow up, Chuck.

Footnote: You wouldn't know it from any of the media coverage of Barkley, or from the way he lives his life, but he has a wife and daughter. It's been an open joke for years in Phoenix--the sort of thing that people would joke about at a Barkley roast--that the bonds of his marriage are about as sacred as those of a fifth-grade agreement to "go steady."

Anklenote: I know that people don't go steady any more, but I don't know what the kids call it these days. When I was in grade school, if you liked someone you asked them to "go." If they agreed, then you were going steady, i.e., you were boyfriend and girlfriend.

Kneenote: I also think that Barkley is a lousy hoops commentator on TNT...a chubby clown, without any meaningful insight. When he gives an extended interview, though, and drops the good-time Charlie persona, he can be a very interesting, insightful, intelligent guy--and not just about basketball, either. In my mind, that makes the DUI-while-chasing-you-know-what story all the more tragic. Barkley can be so much better than that.

If you had Washington State and 58 points, you lost!

After blanking the Cougars 58 to nothin', the Cardinal can go to a bowl game by winning one of their next three. The bad news is that the next three are against Oregon, USC, and Cal. The good news is that Stanford has already won five games. Even if we don't win another one, what we've accomplished to this point is equivalent to Florida State going nine and two and heading for a BCS bowl game.

One MMA mystery solved

In Krav Maga, we throw a lot of knees. There's an obvious reason for this: a single, well-placed knee to the solar plexis, the chin, or the nose can end a fight like that (snap!). We practice knees to the gut at full speed, though usually with six inches of padding between our bellies and the onrushing knee. Even with that pad in place, however, taking repeated knees in the tummy can be VERY uncomfortable--they'll lift you off the ground, knock the wind out of you, and make you want to throw up. At least that's how it goes with people who have good technique. (I don't. I throw weak knees and take a lot of strong ones.)

Now to the mystery. If you ever watch UFC or other mixed martial arts programming, you see these guys taking knees to the stomach, the chin, and the face all the time. Sometimes this results in an instant knockout. Sometimes it results in them getting a little woozy and then shaking it off. Sometimes there's no result...they just carry on fighting.

It's that last one that had me stumped. I know how a knee feels through six inches of padding. Not good. So how can these guys take one straight to the body, or the face, or the head with NO padding and just shake it off?

The other night I got what I think is part of the answer. In the midst of a standard knee drill, my partner missed the pad and hit me full-speed with a knee right below my right collarbone. There's a little bit of muscle there, but it was mostly kneebone against upper ribcage. At the time I felt the force of the contact, but it didn't hurt, so we continued with the drill.

A half hour later, though, as we were finishing our session, I began having a hard time breathing. Later, things got worse. Just clearing my throat sent stabs of pain through the right side of my body. A cough or a sneeze was truly agonizing. Bending over to pick something up made me yelp in pain. And lying down to go to sleep and rolling over in the middle of the night were extremely uncomfortable.

I'm definitely on the mend, but it's been a pretty painful week. Even so, I shrugged off the injury at the time. So what's the answer? Adrenaline, pure and simple, I guess.

This was confirmed for me last night at a Halloween party. One of my Krav Maga classmates came limping in. I asked him what happened, and he told me that he broke his toe during a training session. I asked him how. He said he kicked his partner square on the knee (accidentally). I asked him if it hurt. He said, "No, not at the time. But the next morning my toe was purple, and my entire foot hurt. Today, I lost the nail. Somebody accidentally stepped on that toe yesterday and it hurt like a sunofabitch. It was kind of surprising, cuz at the time it was no big deal."

God bless adrenaline. I think we should get the full dose all the time.

Footnote: I had to skip the regular training sessions this week because of my injury. I was, however, able to do one of the heavy bag classes. It was a class of about 25 people. We started out by working on regular straight punches into the bag. The bags are suspended from the ceiling by chains, which are attached to additional steel supporters. As I waled away on my bag, something broke--a chain link or one of the supports--and my bag lurched forward, hit the ground, and fell to the floor, as if I had knocked it free of its mooring due to the sheer force of my punches. It was an AWESOME moment, one that still has everyone joking about what a tough SOB I am.

What Sconnies think of Favre and the Packers

Here's some actual polling data--not an internet "poll," but a real random sample phone survey--on the response of Wisconsinites to the Brett Favre soap opera.

Footnote: the poll was conducted before Favre was traded to the Jets.

Brett Favre--unmanly?

I have some set ideas about the way men should behave. These are not things my dad sat me down and taught me, nor are they things I read in a book somewhere. They're ideas that have grown out of my experience as a man, my observation of other men, and my knowledge of women's reaction to men's behavior.

When the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke, I thought that Bill Clinton's behavior was as unmanly as male behavior gets. Rather than immediately admitting wrongdoing, taking responsibility for it, doing some serious introspection, and striving to make amends, Clinton did the opposite--lied, stonewalled, blamed others, etc. More than anything else--more, even, than the underlying behavior itself--THAT is what bothered me about the whole Lewinsky episode. It was one of those times when, through your actions, you answer the question: "What kind of man am I?" We saw what kind of man Bill Clinton was.

Let us turn now to Brett Favre. What does all of this un-retirement talk say about the kind of man Favre is?

I was prepared to give him a pass on un-retiring until I heard an added detail this morning: within a few weeks of his retirement press conference, Favre called the Packers and said that he wanted back in. When the team was about to announce his return, Favre changed his mind and said that he was going to stay retired. And now he has changed it back again.

One of the manly virtues I believe in is decisiveness. (This is what lawyers call an "admission against interest," as I have been known to agonize over decisions.) A man should be comfortable enough in his own skin to consider his options and make a decision without torturing himself. Once the decision is made, a man should give it a chance to work. If it doesn't work, he should be man enough to admit it and consider other options.

What Favre has done, though--not just this off-season, but in previous ones as well--is to hem and haw, go back and forth, keep everyone waiting on him, decide and then undecide.

It's downright unmanly, which is something you hate to say about one of the most successful and durable quarterbacks in NFL history.

WTF, NBA?

Game 2 of the NBA finals isn't on today until 9:00 p.m. eastern. Why? It's Sunday. These are the lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer. Days of soda, and pretzels, and beer. You've got an entire day to play with, and you don't put the game on until what is bedtime for a lot of people. I don't get it.