Sean: What are we going to see from you in this upcoming fight?
Wrestler who had never even come CLOSE to finishing an opponent: Im going to go in there and knock him out/submit him with my new BJJ/boxing skills.
We hear this CONSTANTLY from fighters we have interviewed multiple times. I often wonder who they think they are fooling? This hearkens back a little to my previous blog about boring fighters. There is a certain self-consciousness that comes with being a boring fighter, as a result they are often trying to convince everyone that THIS will be the time they really show that they have picked up the skill set to run through opponents in a dramatic fashion. Nine times out of ten it is total bullshit. After a certain number of fights, it is fairly obvious what kind of fighter someone is. There can be dramatic changes but that fighter has to want to change, and in the case of a successful wrestler they have very little incentive to do so. The Ben Askrens of the world who are totally honest about their game plan during the fight (work the takedown until someone can stop me) are pretty rare. Finishing someone isn't just a matter of having the necessary skills, its about having the proper instincts. Finishers understand the balance of risk versus reward and know when to put it on the line to end a fight. If you haven't displayed those instincts in your previous ten performances, you are unlikely to develop them now. We don't care, from a journalistic perspective, how a fighter performs, just dont piss on us and expect us to think its raining.
Sean: How would you rate your performance in your last fight?
Fighter: I don't like to make excuses...
...and then they make excuses. The only variance in these exchanges is what excuses they make. Fighting is a sport of extreme heights and crushing lows as you are the only person in the cage. Losing the Super Bowl must suck, but at least you can take comfort in the fact that you may not have had anything to do with it. If the QB threw for 300 yards with no picks, he did his part, factors beyond his control cost him the game and thats the way it is. A fighter has no such recourse, and yet they look for one. Ive seen one-sided blowouts that were blamed on minuscule problems. In a close fight, the fact that you didnt have your lucky mouthpiece might have made the difference, in a 15 minute ass-whipping the other guy was probably better than you. An important thing to keep in mind is that we do a pre-fight interview with every fighter before the event. In that interview EVERYTHING is great: the camp was awesome, I'm injury free, I'm in the best shape of my career. In the next interview after a losing effort they were suddenly falling apart. They were injured, they just got out of the ER, their coaching was terrible, and their dog was killed in a freak blender accident the week before. Tito Ortiz wouldn't shut up about how he was the picture of health before the second Griffin fight, as soon as he lost he sounded like he was on death's door in the weeks leading up to the fight. I think it's part of the mental recovery process for a lot of fighters after a loss to find an outside source for their in-ring difficulties, but the ones who acknowledge their own shortcomings are the ones who find the most success in the comeback fight.
Sean: How would you rate your performance in your last fight?
Fighter: I was sick with Ebola, both of my arms were broken, and my coach only speaks Swahili. But I' not taking anything away from my opponent.
I know this one is similar to my last one, but I find this one particularly irritating. They are going out of their way to make it clear that they aren't disrespecting their opponent when that is clearly what they are doing. Any time you attribute your defeat to something other than the skill and talent of your opponent you are BY DEFINITION taking something away from them. Part of this is due to the fact that the people who are doing the interviewing often want the fighter to make excuses. Not only does it make for better sound bites, but it's important for a promotion to give the audience a reason to believe that a fighter coming off of a loss will give a better performance than they did last time, especially in a rematch. If the guy who beat you is just better, then why should anyone pay good money to see it happen again? I prefer it when a fighter admits their shortcomings and instead focuses on how they have eliminated them.
Pre-fight interview: My opponent is a bum who isn't on my level and I'm going to smash him.
Post-fight interview: My opponent is a great fighter, he's awesome, he's the most talented and determined individual on the planet and it was an honor to fight him.
Sure, some of that shift in perspective is due to genuine respect generated by a hard fight between two professionals, and part of it is post-fight endorphins. Another angle people seem to forget is that no one wants credit for beating up a bum. It benefits the victorious fighter to elevate the stature of his opponent ONCE HE HAS BEATEN HIM. If he was the bum you said he was in the beginning, why should anyone care that you ran through him in the first round? Its funny how fighters build the guys they beat into the second coming of Sugar Ray Robinson. What I find really strange in the Tito-Ken effect, where two fighters seem to bury the hatchet after the first fight, only to start the trash talk all over again before the rematch. It seems to me that it is more efficient to build your opponent up beforehand, that way your bases are covered either way. Hard to explain how you lost to a guy that didnt deserve to be in the same cage with you. As Bob Arum famously said after being caught changing his story "Yesterday I was lying, today I'm telling the truth..."
