Thursday, August 6, 2015

The Burden Of Greatness

Sports fans, and fight fans specifically, have a love-hate relationship with greatness. We love and appreciate a dominant and technical fighter. We reward them with our adoration and pay-per-view dollars and we endlessly analyze their every career move.

What we all want to see is greatness tested. A dominant performance is one thing, it is to be appreciated and admired for sure, but seeing a great athlete having to overcome adversity is what most sports fans really live for. In that moment of determination a god becomes mortal. We fans struggle in our daily lives in a myriad of ways: in our jobs, our relationships, our quests to live elusive dreams. When we see a great athlete stumble, we see a bit of ourselves. The idea that they can overcome gives us a bit more hope that we can do the same.

When we looks back on the career of a true great, we acknowledge the dominate performances, but we WORSHIP the determination of a comeback, an upset, a come-from-behind miracle. Ali is defined by his wars with Frazier. The fact that he said after the second fight "It was like death. Closest thing to dyin' that I know of." defines his heart and courage. The upsets against Foreman and Liston, fighters NO ONE thought he could beat, were the bookends to his Cinderella story.

What lingers in the background of every discussion of a truly great fighter is the questioning of that greatness in relation to the opposition they have faced. In that regard combat sports are comparatively unique. Someone's greatness in another sport (baseball is perhaps the best example) is often defined in statistical terms. In debating the greatest pitcher of all time ERA's, strikeouts, and world series titles will all be cited. The idea of how many great teams and hitters they faced will usually not be an issue. In debating the merits of the '85 Bears as the greatest football team ever, the fact that the Patriots they faced in the Super Bowl weren't that good usually doesn't provide much of a counter argument. In combat sports the level of opposition is EVERYTHING and it is unfortunately completely subjective and relative.

Q: How good is a fighter?
A: They are as good as the opposition they have beaten.
Q: How do you define how good their opposition was?
A: By examining who THEY beat.

…and the serpent eats its own tail.

Both the MMA and boxing worlds, the two worlds in which I make my living and life, have stars who are currently mired in the kind of circular debates that fight fans love the way mushrooms love shit and darkness.

Ronda Rousey recently dispatched yet another "challenger" in under a minute and Floyd Mayweather selected Andre Berto as his "final" opponent.  Both fighters are dominant in entirely different, and in fact polar opposite, ways. Ronda has fought 12 times in her MMA career and has gone past a minute a total of three times (Sarah McMann made it by a mere 6 seconds) and only Meisha Tate took her past the first round. Her entire 6-fight UFC career has lasted just under 8 minutes. Considering the fact that she has been the only champ in the division, her dominance is unparalleled in MMA's brief history.

Floyd is a phenomenal 48-0 and has looked almost untouchable doing it. He has taken on the best boxers of his era and made them look like amateurs. He has dominated the likes of Manny Pacquiao. Shane Mosley, Canello Alvarez, and Miguel Cotto. The downside of Mayweather's victories in the eyes of most fans is that they are almost universally unsatisfying. Most casual fans are not enamored with Floyd's displays of technical brilliance: they want drama and action. Unfortunately those are two qualities that are generally lacking from Mayweather's performances. He has one knockout since coming back from a brief hiatus in 2009 and that was a controversial one against Victor Ortiz when Ortiz tried to "hug it out" after a flagrant foul (protect yourselves at all times!) and hasn't scored back-to-back finishes since 2005.  

Ronda and Floyd compete in different sports with different promotional systems. In MMA, promotions rule their stable of fighters. The UFC is the sole voice in who the next challenger for Ronda's belt is, so building up that challenger to the best of their abilities is entirely the UFC's problem. The difficulty is that the pickings are amazingly slim. Ronda's UFC opponents have averaged 1.7 UFC fights before they faced the champ, giving the promotion precious little time to build them as contenders. They did a masterful job of building hype around the Tate rematch, despite the fact that their first fight ended brutally in the first round. The promo for the Correia fight that showed a montage of Ronda's victories looked, to me, like an anti-PPV advertisement and begged the question "Why should I pay 60$ for a fight that's going to end in under a minute?" That is, of course, exactly what happened.  Having a pet shark is great, its keeping them fed that is the problem.

Mayweather competes in one of the most storied divisions in boxing history. Hall of famers like Ray Robinson, Pernell Whitaker, Tommy Hearns, and Ray Leonard have all called it home and the champ at 147 is almost always among the pound-for-pound kings. Floyd's run has had no lack of names and now that he has faced, and dismantled, Manny Pacquiao its hard to say he has ducked anyone in the division. His critics haven't pointed to his lack of opposition, but to his lack of finishing instincts. Floyd has always fallen into the "hit and not get hit" category of fighters and chooses to out-box his opponents, even when the opportunity to finish them seems to present itself.

Floyd has come to the point in his career that he can choose who he wants to fight and his choice of Andre Berto has his "final" test has raised more than a few voices of criticism. Berto was once an elite welterweight, but is 3-3 in his last six fights. I called his last fight against Josesito Lopez and although he won by KO, he was behind on the scorecards and didn't look like the Berto of old. On my personal list of possible Mayweather contenders Berto would have been behind such names as Keith Thurman, Danny Garcia, Amir Khan, Shawn Porter, and Kell Brooke. All of them have fought better talent more recently than Berto and are fresher in the minds of boxing fans old and new. That being said, I still don't believe any possible name gives Floyd much trouble at this stage in his career. He is simply too fast, too smart, and too elusive for anyone to land a serious punch against him.  

The boxing public want desperately to see Floyd have the kind of moments that Ali had against Frazier and Robinson had against Turpin and Fulmer. Can he stand being bloody, exhausted, behind on the scorecards? Can he find it in his heart to come back and dig deep for a victory that requires not just technique, but will and determination as well? It is unlikely we will ever know. The only undefeated fighter is father time, and unless Floyd allows himself to stick around the sport long enough for time to erode his skills no one will be able to tarnish his spectacular record.

Ronda decimates contenders we didn't know anything about, while Floyd picks apart the biggest names in the sport and cruises to a unanimous decision. Both results kind of leave you thinking about all the things you could have bought with that money you spent on a PPV.  

Of the two fighters, Ronda is the only one with a true challenge on the horizon. Cyborg is in a similar position to Ronda in terms of her dominance in the sport of woman's MMA. She hasn't lost since her MMA debut and has KO'd 12 out of 14 victims. Much like Rousey, she has a rare combination of speed, aggressiveness, and power.

The difficulty in making a "superfight" between Ronda and Cyborg lies in two parts. The first issue is their weight disparity. Cyborg competes 10 pounds heavier than Ronda and its a ROUGH cut. Cyborg publicized a picture of her stepping on the scale at 175 shortly after a fight, a weigh-in difference of 30 pounds. Given female physiology that is an AMAZING amount of weight. Weight is usually cut by "wringing" the moisture out of muscle tissue. Considering that women have, on average, 33% less muscle than men of comparable size the cut is usually much harder for females. Dana White has publicly stated that the champ, Ronda in this case, doesn't move up in weight: if Cyborg can't make 135, tough beans. Dana has said a lot of outlandish things, but his logic on this point is pretty solid. Ronda would be giving Cyborg a HUGE physical advantage in stepping up to 145 to take her on. Catch weights have been proposed, but nothing is yet written in stone. Considering Cyborg's difficulties with 145, anything lower is a massive promotional gamble. Huge hype would be behind a Cyborg-Ronda fight and Cyborg not making weight would be a disaster for everyone involved.

The second issue is: she might win. MMA fans tend to forget that we have been down a similar road to this one before. Gina Carano was, in many ways, Ronda before Ronda. She was a fighter with legit skills and movie-star good looks. She didn't have the finishing ability of Ronda, but was nonetheless 7-0 when she squared off with Cyborg in 2009. There is a sinking you see in the pit of most fighters' stomachs when their opponent takes their best punch and comes forward smiling, I saw that look in Gina Carano pretty early against Cyborg. Cyborg dominated the fight and stopped Gina with one second to go in the first round. Gina has yet (as of August 2015) to fight again and seems to have decided that starring in movies would be better for her overall health.

One of the results of Cyborg's destruction of Gina is that interest in woman's MMA took a nose-dive. She had three fights as Strikeforce champ and none of them were competitive. Her four fights in Invicta were equally one-sided, only Marloes Coenen took her past the 2nd round in either promotion. Dana's much publicized "Wanderlei in a dress" comments underscore the fact that she doesn't have the sex appeal of Gina or Ronda, nor is english her first language. To trade a crossover star like Ronda for the fighting machine that is Cyborg is a nightmare for the Zuffa brand.

The aforementioned weight disparity raises other questions if Cyborg should prove victorious. The first is: Could Cyborg defend the belt or make weight for a rematch? It would be a miracle for Cyborg to make 135, or even 140, for a showdown with Ronda. IF she can, and wins, what then? If the fight is competitive at ALL there will be calls for a rematch and Cyborg has to make weight again, but this time with the advantage of having already won and being able to say "At my weight or live with your loss".
The second question is what would be done with Cyborg if she can't make 135 with any consistency. There is (as of August 2015) no 145 women's class in the UFC. To have Cyborg win her megafight with Ronda, only to then fight elsewhere, makes the result a complete wash for the UFC.

The simple fact is that the UFC brass might not have many choices when it comes to Ronda's next fight. Ronda-Tate 3 is on the table but, as I have previously mentioned, the first two fights weren't particularly competitive and its unlikely a trilogy would be a stand-alone PPV draw. The Cyborg-Ronda fight would be EASILY the biggest woman's fight in MMA history and should draw huge buy numbers. The flip-side to the problems with Cyborg winning is that Ronda winning makes her an even bigger star and a loss might not be the end of the world if a catchweight is in place as there is no shame in a loss to a naturally bigger fighter.

Fans love that special moment when a the invincible look vulnerable and the gods look like they might just be humans after all.  Only time will tell if either of these seemingly superhuman fighters will be tested for our viewing pleasure. If they are, we will be able to tell our kids where we were and how we felt during an historic moment. The great thing about the majesty of sports is seeing the unexpected, that moment that you just had to be there for...