Archive for August, 2017
Different Measure
This was going to be me having a go at Jon Jones for failing another drug test. Then at training last night there was a few of us talking about Jon Jones and annoyingly I have had to change my stance on the situation.
Firstly I was amazed that Jon Jones could have 2 year layoff and come back to beat to Daniel Cormier for the light heavy weight title just a few weeks ago. I even wrote on the Lockdown Facebook page how “Jon Jones is the best light heavy weight in UFC history”. Jon Jones only loss was a questionable disqualification in a fight he was dominating against Matt Hamill. Jones was dropping elbows and they ref deemed he was throwing vertical elbows, as in straight up and down or 12 to 6 elbows, and was disqualified. As a side note those elbows have always been illegal in the UFC as a judge in the very early days went to a karate demonstration and saw someone break a block of ice with a 12-6 / vertical elbow and thought they must be too dangerous to use in a fight and the rule has never been changed.
So I have never been a fan of Jon Jones and I was very keen to jump on my high horse and have a go at him for using steroids. However I am a fan of Mike Tyson and Lance Armstrong. With Mike Tyson he was a hero of mine when I was a kid and watched his fights on TV and even had a tear or two when he lost to Buster Douglas. As I have got older and learnt more about boxing Tyson is still my favourite boxer. Tyson’s head movement, rotational speed and explosiveness and presence just set him apart for me. There has not been a boxer prior or post that had the aura like Tyson at his peak. He is a convicted rapist and bit a chunk of Evander Holyfield’s ear off both of which are both terrible acts and can’t bee dismissed. When people brought these incidents up in conversation I would say, I like him for what he did in the ring to me there has been no one better, and that is how I judged him. Mike Tyson is not a saint but he is still one of my favourite fighters and I can’t think of another fighter that I would rather meet.
Lance Armstrong, I used to cycle to get fit for fighting then ended up racing, I watched the Tour De France and loved when Armstrong would destroy his opponents up the climbs in the Tour. Then a family member got cancer and the Lance Armstrong book (It’s not about the Bike) was an inspiration on how he fought cancer and came back to win the Tour De France. Then he kept on winning and won the Tour De France a record 7 times, the previous record was 5, keeping in mind the Tour is 3 weeks long with two rest days and in excess of 3000km. Armstrong retired after his 7th win, then made a comeback a few years later. In his comeback all his drug taking came out after years of vicious denials and personal attacks of anyone who accused him. I always thought it was harsh for the UCI to strip Armstrong of his 7 tour titles as 17 of the 19 people he stood on the podium with, over those 7 years, failed drug tests. One of the big names to come out against Armstrong won the Tour and failed a drugs test and was offered a reduced punishment if he gave evidence against Armstrong. Armstrong should’ve been banned from cycling and fined, however everyone else that won the Tour De France and subsequently failed drugs tests has kept their victory so why did Armstrong lose his titles when no one else did.
After thinking how I still like Armstrong and Tyson it was very hard to look at Jon Jones through a different lens. They guy is a waste of talent he could’ve been one of the best fighters in history. With his amazing skill level it seems strange that he would think he needs steroids to aid in his performance when he dominated for so long. I have never been a fan of Jon Jones and that has not changed. However I can’t say that he is bad for the UFC and MMA in general when I like Tyson and Armstrong who have both left black marks on their sport and arguably one the most infamous moments in the respective sports.
Gareth Lewis
Head MMA Instructor
Stars In Their Eyes
The movie ‘Concussion’ that looks at head injuries in the NFL had quite a big effect on me. When us fighters take a good shot we need to look after our brains as it is the only one we have and once damaged there is no coming back.
Dr Bennet Omalu found a degenerative brain condition called chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). Dr Omalu first found it on Mike Webster who was a Pittsburgh Steelers (NFL) legend. Think how high regard New Zealand hold Richie McCaw, a tough as nails sports star, and that is how ‘Iron’ Mike Webster was viewed. Fast Forward to when Mike was 50 and was living in his ute where he had deteriorated to the point where he super glued his teeth back in to his head. He was found dead in his ute and Dr Omalu did the autopsy, he even had paid for the brain tests himself as the city did not want a legend ‘treated like that’. Dr Omalu wanted to find out what caused a healthy man in his 50’s with no history of mental illness go completely mad. This was the rediscovery of CTE, in terms that you and I can understand what it does is choke the brain from the inside and stops the signals going out to the body. This make a person get very confused and angry as the thoughts are in their head and they can’t get them out, even simple things like counting back from 5 seem impossible. When Dr Omalu released his results to the NFL they tried to dismiss it and get rid of the information. However over the years more and more players came out with the symptoms of CTE, and here is where it gets really bad, you can’t be sure of CTE until after death. When the players could not handle it more they killed themselves with a bullet to the chest so their brain was left to test. At an extreme level Chris Benoit (WWE) killed his children, wife and himself from in his autopsy his brain showed CTE. This became such a serious problem that the NF changed rules to protect players, such as no helmet to helmet contact in the open field, with these and other rules flowing down to younger players to protect them as well.
NFL players in the offensive and defensive lines are the players most at risk as they bash in to each other numerous times in a game and in practice as well. When you add these impacts up of a career they are 70,000 impacts or sub concussive blows. So as fighters what has that go to do with us? Take boxers for example, someone that has been training for 20 years with 3 sessions a week and 5 fights a year which is not extreme. Let’s say they are sparring twice a week, with 15 head shots each sparring you are looking at 30,000 shots to the head over the career. The human head is not designed to take this type of impact, unlike a woodpecker or those rams that smash their head in to each other to fight. Those animals have evolved to protect the brain we haven’t got there yet.
Helmets and head gear do not help as our brains are suspended in fluid, think an onion in a jar with water around it (example used in the movie). You shake the jar and you can hear the onion smash against the side of the jar with every shake. Think if you wrap that jar in a pillow and shake it, you will still hear the onion smash in to the side of the jar. Keeping that in mind it is a great demonstration that head gear and helmets do not protect the brain from smashing in to the skull and causing damage to the brain.
I was sparring with one of Lockdown’s fighters and sometimes we go a little hard against each other, I tried something clever and he landed heavy right hand. It was heavy enough for me to see stars but not buckle my legs. I fought through it and did consider stopping after that round but I and kept sparring. The next day my head was a little sore and when I shook my head it just did not feel right which got me thinking. Since then I have avoided head contact, in my job where I train people to box (as well as other things) and I did not spar with anyone at work to avoid the head contact. Then we had the usual Thursday night training at Lockdown and I was telling myself that I would not do striking to the head. We had a session that was 5 rounds BJJ, 5 rounds wrestling, 5 rounds kickboxing and 5 rounds MMA – we call it the 20 rounder. I did the BJJ, wrestling and MMA but did not do the striking sparring and in writing the feel I made a good decision.
As fighters we do not have the number of impacts that NFL players have but not one gets punched in the head more than us. As fighters are competitive by nature it is hard for us to take a night off sparing without a visual injury as we feel like a pussy. But we have to put our health and more importantly our future health as a priority. Rugby is now taking this very seriously with Dane Coles and Ben Smith having rests due to concussion. There are also numerous players in rugby, NFL, Pro wrestling, fighters and many other athletes who call their career early due to concussion concerns. So let’s look after ourselves and team mates and back their decision to rest a knock to the head.
Gareth Lewis
Head MMA Instructor
The New Era of Talking
Over the past two weeks I have watched two big fights, one boxing and one MMA and outside of the fights there was one thing that seemed to take my focus. The commenting is moving in to a new era.
In the early days of the UFC they had Jeff Blatnick (Olympic Wrestling Gold medallist), Bill ‘Super Foot’ Wallace (Martial Arts Legend and Jim Brown (NFL Hall of Famer) all of who had no idea about MMA. I remember when a fighter was locked in triangle and Blatnick said ‘He should be fine as he has an arm in’ then was very surprised when he tapped. As the sport progressed they got new people to commentate until they got the team of Mike Goldberg and Joe Rogan (Goldberg started earlier). They are the voices for almost every major fight in the UFC from UFC 15 1997 -2017. Goldberg had the voice ‘and here we go’ and Rogan had the knowledge and it worked well for a long time. That was until 2017 and Goldberg got his marching orders but Rogan stayed on. As Joe Rogan doesn’t like flying and so many fights on there have been others calling the fights. Some of the new commentators have been great, Brian Stan and Dominic Cruz are two of my favourites. Watching the Jones v DC fight card really highlighted the big difference to me. Joe Rogan knows the techniques and how all the moves work but has never fought in the octagon. Then you get Dominic Cruz who is one of the best fighters in the UFC, what was really surprising about him is how scientific his commentary is. Keeping in mind that his fight style seems so laissez faire it is easy to think that he isn’t a scientific fighter. Then you hear him talk about a fight and he takes it too another level. Where he leaves Rogan in the dust is in talking about the fighter preparation, their mind set and fight plans / issues during the fight. When you have Rogan and Cruz alongside each other you can tell that Rogan is lacking on that insight.
In boxing Bob Sheridan is just annoying, he always talks about his resume and uses this line when talking about how judges may of scored a round ‘I have commentated 300 title fights, but what do I know’. Then he always goes on about the local fighter, he went over the top on David Tua back in the day and now goes over the top about Joseph Parker. You can always tell who is signing his cheque as he mainly talks about that fighter and their crew. One of his comments that sits in my head was ‘Kevin Barry is one the most respected trainers in the world’, which is not accurate. At the time Kevin Barry had not trained a world champion, he now has Parker, there are other trainers out there which are light years beyond him including Nacho Berinstien (20 World Champions), Emanuael Steward (30 World Champions), Freddy Roach (27 World Champions). Then when watching the Lomachenko fight Teddy Atlas was calling the fight and if you had a drink every time he said ‘he should go to the body and let some air out the tyres, put some water in the basement’ then you would get rather sloshed. There was moment in the fight that when Lomachenko landed a right hand near the ropes and the opponent moved his head away then dropped level and came back in to avoid another punch and caused a head clash and a cut. Teddy Atlas said I am not is his brain but that looked like an intentional head butt, then went on about silly things that a frustrated fight can do. There was a boxer who was also calling the fight who said, no I think he was just moving his head away from danger there was not intent, Teddy then went on a little rant. To me it came down to someone who was looking from a perspective from outside the ring whereas the boxer had the perspective from inside the ring and in the fighters head. Later in the fight Teddy was going off topic and the other commentators had to get him back to talking about the fight he was watching, this happened a few times.
When watching the fights you can really hear the difference between the side line experts and the actual fighters. The fighters give a deeper insight to what is going on inside the ring / cage. Teddy Atlas, Joe Rogan and Bob Sheridan are connected with the history of their sport as their voice is connected to lot of big fights, it just seems that it has moved on and having the fighters on the microphone makes a world of difference. They will always have the person who has had the media training who has a good voice and clever catch phrases known as the colour commentator, I just hope that during the fight that you hear the expert, or play by play commentator, talk more. There is evidence in a number of sports where the ‘voices’ of the sport are getting older and leaving the commentary team that you find that them replaced by experts and it seems to be where sport is going.
Gareth Lewis
Head MMA Instructor