Creative Title About Me Liking MMA

At this point, my blog is turning into me ranting about my hobbies, likes, and dislikes, but when I’m running out of ideas on only the 5th blog, this is the result. 

 

So anyway, MMA. I love it. I never practiced it, and even though I kinda want to,  I know I would get absolutely rolled, so I’m not going to talk about me practicing it, I’m gonna talk about how I found myself deep into the rabbithole of MMA, watching fights every single Saturday that they’re on.

 

Back in 2018, the most exposure I ever had to MMA were some glimpses on a TV while eating a restaurant, watching two people “clinch” each other and not doing much, so I had never really thought much about it, until my YouTube feed all of a sudden filled to the brim with UFC promotions of Conor McGregor v Khabib Nurmagomedov(not a promotion, but basically all I would see). All I knew before going down the rabbithole of promotion videos was that Conor McGregor was some famous Irish dude who boxed Floyd Mayweather and got absolutely destroyed, and so with not so baited breath, I clicked on the video, and I was instantly hooked. 

An example of a clinch.

 

Conor McGregor, the UFC’s biggest star and the first simultaneous champion of two divisions, was coming back from a lay off and was looking to reclaim his championship in the lightweight division against the current undefeated champion, Khabib Nurmagomedov. Conor, the notoriously accurate and destructive striker, would have to find a way around Khabib’s equally notorious wrestling and ground game in order to reclaim his championship. Now while this is pretty standard in terms of MMA match ups, there was an additional element of personal beef. A few months prior, Khabib had an altercation with one of Conor’s training partners, and Conor flew all the way from Dublin, Ireland to New York to get back at Khabib, and did so by throwing a dolly at a bus that Khabib was in, leading him to get arrested. The entire fight week was filled with trash talk, questions of how Conor’s time away from the Octagon would affect his ability to compete in MMA, and whether Conor, who had made history time and time again, could steal away Khabib’s unbeaten record. 

 

The entire week, all I could think about were the answers to these questions. With my very limited knowledge of MMA, I debated to myself how would a strong boxer like Conor stave off the pressure of a wrestler like Khabib. Would Khabib be able to take a shot if he got hit clear? Would Khabib be able to handle the pressure of the spotlight? The night of the fight, I tried so hard to find a way to watch the fight (I didn’t have the money nor the will to try and convince my parents to pay to watch the fight) and eventually, at around 11pm, I gave up and went to sleep, tossing and turning, debating the fight even in my dreams. So when I woke up in the morning and saw the news that Khabib had defeated Conor, I was satisfied to have learned the answers to my questions, but I was heavily disappointed because I didn’t get to see the answer play out in front of me live on a TV screen. 

The end of Conor v Khabib, I wish I could have seen this.

 

After the fight, I never thought about MMA very much at all. A few fight promotions made their way to my YouTube recommendation feed, but none got me as excited as Khabib v Conor. That was until one fateful day during the pandemic, bored as could be, when a highlights video popped up in my feed. As expected with the YouTube recommendation cycle, I went down the rabbit hole again, but this time I would not claw my way out. Because something about the beauty in brutality and the freedom of tactics that were expressed through all the promotion videos that I watched stuck in my head. Also it just looked so cool.

 

As I ventured a bit further than whatever highlights videos popped up, I really started to get pulled in by the narratives surrounding major fights. Fighters looking to make history by dominating in another performance, fighters looking to rematch each other to truly prove who was the best, fighters looking to just scap like they were in their backyards. All the narratives being built would eventually come together and clash on a single night the octagon in ways that no one can predict. The solving of questions, the conclusion of the narratives, the potential of future narratives, that pushed me to go out of my way to stay up until midnight to watch fights after waking up at 5 am to go to speech tournaments.

End of Leon Edwards v Kamaru Usman II, I almost woke up my whole family when this happened

Now that isn’t to say MMA isn’t without its faults. Fights can be pretty boring, they can end anticlimactically, or just never materialize due to injuries and such. However, when MMA peaks, it is the best sport in the world. Nothing matches the feeling of my heart pumping a thousand times per second as a fight starts, screaming when watching an explosive KO, or the sense of wonder after an absolute dog fight. because while it may look barbaric on the outside, what MMA truly is is a contest of heart, courage, and skill. It is the culmination of what makes people great and what makes people horrible at the same time. There is no other sport in the world that can give like MMA can give, and for that, I will always be a fan.

2 thoughts on “Creative Title About Me Liking MMA

  1. Hey Alec! I’m also running out of ideas for blog posts so thanks for the idea about writing about hobbies or interests because I will definitely be stealing that. I never heard of a clinch but also I never have really been into MMA so knowing at least one terminology is interesting. My brother always tried to get me into watching with him but I never could really get past the knockouts. My sensitivity for violence is too low but I empathize with the excitement of never being certain about which way a match will go. I also get how sucky it can be to miss a tournament that you really wanted to see because my brother bought tickets for a WWE event (I know they are two different things) in Florida but our travel plans got changed last minute so he couldn’t go. Anyways it’s nice to see how involved you are with the things you love and it was nice reading your blog post!

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