Writer’s Note: Welcome to a new
feature for “Top Of The Third”: a monthly post entitled “Inside the Cage” that
gives a view on the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) from a fan’s
perspective. While we still remain a baseball-oriented blog and have only been
posting football and hockey articles to fill the void of the off-season, the
hope is that “Inside the Cage” will continue even when the 2016 baseball season
begins. As someone who knows very little about Mixed Martial Arts, I though it
would be interesting to share my thoughts as a relative newcomer when it comes
to viewing UFC. Enjoy.
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| Connor McGregor vs Chad Mendes, UFC 189, July 2015 |
I’m not going to lie. I know
very little about the UFC and only started watching last June. But I’ve been
looking, for ten years, to fill the void left when my interest in professional
wrestling started to wain after the Attitude Era ended and those I had enjoyed
watching started to leave the sport and were replaced by wrestlers whose
personalities did nothing for me. (I mean, c’mon, John Cena was expected to
replace the Rock? Seriously?)
As a wrestling fan, I liked the
wrestlers who were maniacs (Randy Savage), great technical wrestlers (Bret
Hart), high flyers (Shawn Michaels) those who portrayed villains brilliantly
(HHH), those who lacked the wrestling skills but dazzled the crowd with their
mic skills (The Rock) and those who managed to do all of those things (Edge).
But as I mentioned earlier,
around 2005, some of those wrestlers were gone and others were getting
diminished roles causing me to lose interest. For a while, I attempted to fill
my need for combat-viewing with boxing. Since my wife is from the Philippines
and that country just happens to have one of the best pound-for-pound fighters
in history (Manny Pacquiao), I figured it was only fitting that boxing and I would mesh. Didn’t happen. I was only interested in watching Pacquiao
fight and he only had two fights a year. It was too long of a gap in between.
And then, last May I had an unfortunate brain lapse and paid 60 dollars to watch his fight with Floyd
Mayweather on Pay-Per-View. What a waste of money. An exceptionally boring fight where the
winner (Mayweather) spent the majority of the fight backing away from Pacquiao.
So you had a fight where Manny, who was injured, couldn’t slug it out, and
Mayweather, who was too gutless to slug it out. and it didn't make for entertaining viewing. And I’m sorry for all those who
say it was Mayweather's strategy, in my opinion, that’s not manning up and, if I may
say, cowardly.
So that brings us to UFC. Now
for years, I had no interest in the sport. I thought it too barbaric,
strategy-free and better suited to school yard fights. But it was because of my
Samsung tablet that my interest in UFC sparked. I was looking for a game to
download and didn’t see anything under the WWE banner that (a) looked
entertaining and (b) was free. But EA Sports offered a free UFC game and I decided
to download it and give a try. Uh, yeah, I was hooked after about five minutes
of playing.
I made sure I watched the next
UFC Fight Night on TSN and the main event featured 44-year old veteran Dan
Henderson versus Tim Boetsch. After Henderson won by knock out after 28
seconds, he instantly became one of my favourites. Anyone who is that old, and
has fought that many times and can still beat up guys ten years younger
deserves respect and he instantly had mine.
 |
| Dan Henderson, career UFC record: 31 wins, 14 losses |
The second fighter that became
my favourite was Holly Holm, the current bantamweight champion. At the time, she had had fought in only one UFC fight but
had gone undefeated in other MMA organizations. Her title fight against Ronda
Rousey was still five months away, but the reason she became a favourite was
she was the first fighter I unlocked in the UFC game on my tablet.
The third fighter that has made
it onto my list is Ireland’s Connor McGregor, the recently crowned undisputed
featherweight champion. While there’s some Irish in my blood (goes back many
generations on my mother’s side) the reason I like him is his brashness, his
cockiness, the trash he talks and his ability to back it up in the octagon. He
reminds me of The Rock with his big mouth, and well, I consider myself one of
the millions (and millions) of The Rock’s fans.
So, that’s a little bit of my
brief history following UFC. I find myself getting more hooked every day. As I
continue to gain knowledge of the sport, I feel I have a lot of catching up to
do. Thank you to UFC Fight Pass for their free one-month trial and the fact
that they have all 194 UFC events (and the dozens of Fight Nights, UFC on Fox,
TUF finals and all Pre-lims as well) and I should be caught up in no time.
Tonight is UFC 195: it features a welterweight (156-170 pounds) title fight
between champion, Robbie Lawlor, and challenger (and number four-ranked),
Carlos Condit. While I don’t know enough about either fighter to put forth a
prediction, I’ll go with Condit to pull off the upset and become the new
champion.
UFC 196 will take place on February 6th. “Inside the Cage”
will return on that date.
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