A thing about Hotline Miami.

I've been procrastinating about writing a big piece about Hotline Miami, looking at every level and the interstitial segments of unconvincing normality. But like I said, procrastination.

So I'm going to just put one thought out there - and I haven't seen anyone else raise it yet. Hopefully I'm not thinking this is some great gaming epiphany that others pointed out on day one. But it convinced me there was much more darkness to Hotline Miami's design than just what's in the plot.

Here we go:

Hotline Miami (with a few unfortunate boss fight exceptions) is one hit, one kill. So a single click of the mouse and you have dispatched your adversary. Except when your victim is helpless. Then you must press "Space" and then click. And then click again. And sometimes again. And again. And again.

And sometimes it's forcing you to do this to a clearly innocent individual. That's when it first struck me. When I realised that here I was, clicking away almost mindlessly, trying to squeeze (well, more gouge) the life out of some poor innocent.

What devious, evil design from Dennaton.

The triumphal tale of TFC1

                                                                     

[A disclaimer - I won't be talking about the fights here, more about my experiences in watching the event come together.  If you want the details of the fights, Fight News Australia has an excellent story on those.]                     

[Another disclaimer - I grew up in Launceston.  I've spent enough time running like hell from mobs in City Park when trying to get home from a night out or getting bailed up by four guys with knives to have earned the right to be at least slightly rude about my childhood home.]           

         

Nothing makes you sound like a complete spanner more than shilling for something with an awful name.  Back in the nineties, the venue was called Elphin Sports Arena.  It's the home of a women's semi-pro basketball team - the Launceston Tornadoes, as well as some local volleyball and badminton leagues.  At some point, that obviously changed.  Gone is the innocuous venue name, replaced not with an awful piece of corporate branding, but with the title: "Action Packed Stadium".  I don't know about you, but watching solid fundamentals of basketball or badminton on display isn't really what "Action Packed" is all about to me.  So on Saturday the 19th of February, when the Tasmanian Fighting Championship held their inaugural show there and I ended up sitting at the commentary desk, having to use the phrase "Action Packed Stadium" made me flinch.

In fact, there was a lot of flinching going on in the lead-up to the event.  It seemed that up until the moment that the first strike was thrown that the show may not go on.  But let's go back to a quieter time - the afternoon before on a quiet Launceston street.  I'd flown back to the city where I grew up in the hopes of getting some MMA judging experience.  Tasmania doesn't have a commission, while my home state of Victoria does.  And the Victorian commission is violently protective of it's domain.  In order to get licenced as a judge, I needed experience judging.  In order to get experience judging, I needed to be licenced as a judge.  So when I heard that Tasmanian Fighting Championship was coming up I contacted the promoter, Heath Ewart of Launceston Combat Club, directly in the hopes of being able to do some shadow judging.  When I was offered a slot as a judge I jumped at the opportunity.  Training would apparently, be provided prior to the event.

So, last Friday I flew down to Launceston and made my way to the weigh-in venue, Extreme MMA (a MMA speciality retailer) where the diversity of MMA fans, enthusiasts and participants could be seen (at least if you're not Bob Arum).  I recognised some faces from BJJ tournaments and other events, but primarily it was faces that I recognised from my twenty plus years in Tasmania.  As more and more camps arrived (many of whom I'd not heard of before) I was impressed by the variety of gyms who have developed in Tasmania in the past decade, not to mention the mix of people who were either competing or supporting.  I'd tell you that there were shoulder and sleeve tribal tattoos on a good percentage of these folks, but you've probably guessed that much anyway.  As I had never met the promoter face to face yet I introduced myself and asked one of the guys in a Launceston Combat Club top if he could point him out.  "I've got no idea where he is.  He just left a few minutes ago to do something."  This line was repeated to most new arrivals who were eager to check in.

True story: there's a Muay Thai/MMA team in Launceston called Abaddon's Legion. 

Their logo also feature Cthulhu for extra win.

As I looked around the room, admiring the diversity of MMA clothing available (skulls and chains - now available from five different brands) I noticed that everyone was avoiding a point in the centre of the shop.  I then realised that the weigh-in scales were sitting in the middle of the floor.  On the carpet.  This may set me apart as being overly nit-picky, but it immediately put the wrong impression into my head.  The fact that they were on the carpet was hardly as much of an issue as when guys did start weighing in, they were so excited that they could wait for the scales to calibrate between each person leading to some guys initially weighing in thirty kilos underweight.  Thankfully, the right eyebrows were raised by this and after the over-exuberance of the weigh-ins causing multiple delays everyone tipped the scales just right.

Stuart Dare initially weighed in as a sub-flyweight.

It was now time for me to be trained as a judge.  Pete Hickmott, who had been brought in to be the lead official and referee went over the rules and judging criteria and then, apparently satisfied with my knowledge, put on a few fights to watch asking me at the end of each round for my score and reasoning.  For the first time, my statements regarding how a round was scored and why counted for more than just postcount on the interwebs.  This was why I had come.  This was what I wanted to do.  An hour later, the seminar ended.  None of the other judges had attended, they all being notable personalities in martial arts around Launceston and not needed the anointing.  There was nothing left to do, but grab some food and wait for fight day to roll around.

Action Packed Stadium was certainly action packed when I arrived on the Saturday afternoon - the lighting and sound rigs were still being finished, the seating was being sorted and the fighters were generally milling around looking a little lost.  Most notable though was the ring.  The ring rose like a monolith in the centre of the venue.  I stand 6'6" and the canvas was only just below my eye level.  As I eyed off the ring ropes and posts, I contemplated the kind of damage that would be caused by someone falling out of that ring.  Needless to say, the fighter briefings by Peter Hickmott featured some impressive language on the dangers of putting someone through those ropes and the penalties that would ensue.  This towering setup necessitated having both sets of entrance stairs stacked on top of each other to form one larger staircase in order to allow people to climb into the ring.  This might sound terrible, but in reality, what it meant was amazing pro-wrestling style exits of the ring by cornermen and cameramen who needed to get out quickly and couldn't make it to the neutral staircase.  An unintended consequence, but a great one to be sure.

Remember when I said I was 6'6"?  This was my eye-level at ring-side.

As with the weigh-ins there was a lot of confusion as to where the promoter was.  Heath was once again jumping feet first into the last minute organising, apparently trying to organise numbering for the seating, and then as the night went on, disappearing out the door with a grimace on his face on a mission find bandages and tape, ice and I'm sure at some point a moment to try and regain a bit of sanity.  Eventually all the fighters and their coaches arrived the fighter briefings began.  During the pre-show fighter briefings I caught my first glimpse of a man I initially assumed was a farrier who had come into the wrong building. When he was introduced as the physician for the evening my heart skipped a beat.  "What if someone does a Corey Hill?"  I thought, "Will he know what to do, or will he just set up the screens in the ring and then make the long slow walk up the stairs with shotgun under his arm?"  

The doctor is in.

As the fighters made their way past the doctor for final check-ups and onto their dressing rooms to prepare, I made myself comfortable along a wall and watched as the crowd began to trickle in.  I'd been told that they had sold a little under 900 tickets in pre-sales, a fairly impressive number for a debut show in Launceston.  And as the crowd filled the seating it was clear that this show was going to be a success for TFC in creating a local brand.  Even at this late stage the identities of the other two judges were still unknown to Peter and myself and he set off to find Heath and get the judging situation sorted.  It was ten minutes until the curtains were scheduled to come up.  A few minutes passed and Heath came over to me: "How do you feel about doing commentary?"  I hesitated for a moment.  I'd come here with the express intent of getting some judging experience.  But I had done all those years of community radio.  "I liked the way you broke down those fights we watched last night.  Give it a shot."  And with that, I was the commentator.  After overcoming my momentary shock I chased down Heath, "Is there a second commentator?"

"No."

"OK, I've got a friend here, is it alright if I grab them?"

"That's fine."

"What kind of commentary do you want?"

"Just go with what you feel like."  And with that Heath took off again.  I grabbed my friend Gerry from the crowd and we made our way over to the production tables to find out more about what we were going to do.  With the crowd nearly all seated, the music pumping and the officials all in place around the ring, it seemed that TFC1 was actually going to happen.

And then the building's fire alarm sounded.

Turns out that having smoke machines going for about half an hour in a stadium without great airflow tends not to end well.  Heath, on hearing the call from the building's manager that the place had to be evacuated at the very moment of his presumptive triumph looked the closest I've ever seen in reality to someone ready to Hulk out.

Heath about 30 seconds after the alarm.

Thankfully, no one must have been setting fire to stolen cars in Ravenswood because the Fire Brigade response was swift and even before the evacuation had been completed the crowd was being turned around to re-enter.  Gerry and I received a quick briefing on the equipment, where we learned much to our relief that there was not going to be any live commentary and that it would all be edited in during post-production on the DVD.  The lead producer gave us a quick brief on where the commentary would be inserted and said that we needed to plug the sponsors when we could.  "Who the fuck are the sponsors?"  The producer could only give us one name.  Gerry ran off on the first of his fact-finding missions and returned with a list of sponsors, some of them phonetically spelt because he couldn't be certain what the actual name was he had been given.  But at least after just five minutes notice, we were ready.

As we sat at the desk though a sudden realisation dawned.  "Who the fuck is fighting on this card?"  We scrounged around and came up with a list of the fighter names and their match-ups.  A few minutes of running around his contacts in the local martial arts scene and Gerry had a partial list of their gyms as well.  That was it.  My 3G connection was spotty (gee, thanks Vodafone) and so we couldn't reliably access the Fight Finder or event Google in time to get details on most of the competitors.  For the most part we were scrawling notes on the back of a snaffled scorecard or in a tiny notebook as the ring announcer introduced each fighter.  Thankfully there was a Pride style walkout prior to the first fight so if we missed them the first time, we had a chance to get these details when it came to their fight.  Sometimes we had a clue who they were.  Sometimes we just didn't.  And sometimes they both had amazing nicknames - case in point: Andrew "Big Sexy" Nash v Colin "Stinky" Finger.

Let's be honest with ourselves, who can hate on a Kevin Nash reference?

By the end of round 1 of the first fight there were furtive glances exchanged amongst all the judges tables (we shared a table with one of the judges).  We all had the same problem - even with the tables a good six feet back from the ring we still couldn't see a lot of the action, such was it's Cyclopean splendour.  As one, the judges tables we shuffled back another few feet until we sat directly in front of the first row of seating.  Now capable of being able to mostly see the fights without having to stand up the call continued.  In the interlude between the first and second fight we had pizza and ice cold water delivered to the commentary position.  It was a bounty which we had not expected and looked forward to savouring as soon as we could go off mic at the end of the next fight.  Then in a long range mission designed to deny the enemy resources and comfort, which David Stirling himself would have been proud of one of the other judges snuck over and stole these precious victuals from under our noses.  Knowing this judge's background, Gerry advised we let the matter go and asked one of the waitresses if we could kindly have some more water please.

Not pictured: our goddamn pizza.

A few more fights passed and the crowd was truly pumped.  We were encouraged in the commentary position by a life-affirming Bas Rutten re-tweet.  And thus far, the fights had all been solid.  And then the action paused for the first time to allow a charity auction.  As we were to find out, this was going towards a good cause, but we hadn't really expected it.  To be honest I don't think the ring girls had either.  The strain on their faces as they carried around the boxing, MMA and AC/DC memorabilia in frames the size of them was evident.  Especially as the bidding on some items dragged on.  Whoever selected the items for the event had a keen grasp of the intended audience.  And it seems that the intended audience was people who wear motocross t-shirts, because I'm pretty sure that everyone who bought something that night was wearing one.  A later interlude provided a chance for Heath to take a mic himself and thank everyone who had helped bring the Tasmanian Fighting Championship to fruition.  He gave an over sized novelty cheque to charity and then he proposed to his girlfriend in the middle of the ring.  When his proposal was accepted, we had what I'm pretty certain was the biggest cheer of the night.  

As the final brace of fights occurred, we realised that we must have been sitting in front of the 10th Planet section, because some people in the crowd were clearly getting blazed.  In a space were 6 of the ringside tables had apparently been bought out by the Tasmanian Police I'm not sure how bright this particular move was.  Nevertheless, as the final bell rang after an textbook armbar it was evident that the audience had by and large been well behaved.  For all the mullets, rats tails and back-hawks in attendance at an event in Launceston, the fighting had remained  within the ring.  Impressive though that fact was, what was more impressive was the Tasmanian Fighting Championship 1 had been a success.  As the crowd emptied out of the building and everyone grouped together to discuss the outcomes of the night it was all positive.  The crowd had a great time, the fights were impressive and, well, it happened.

Sure, there were no UFC champions crowned (in fact there were no TFC champions crowned either), but what it exposed was a wealth of local talent.  There were gyms and academies that until the weigh-ins I'd never heard of.  Hell, there were gyms that even some of the other fighters and trainers hadn't heard of.  MMA in Tasmania is exploding at the moment, with not just academies springing up, but also with multiple promotions running in a state of just 500,000 people.  There are so many schools now producing fighters who have the opportunity to fight locally now to test themselves before moving up to the larger shows such as CFC.  This can only be a great thing for the local scene and I hope that Tasmanian fighters will be given the right opportunities to develop.  Also, for any promoters out there, there's a commentary crew who would like some opportunities to develop too.

Thanks to:

Heath Ewart of Van Demon Fight Gear & Promotions, Tasmanian Fighting Championship and Launceston Combat Club, Peter Hickmott of RINGS Toowoomba, Hybrid Training Centre, Kaos Dojo, Team SKB MMA, Tasmanian Wing Chun Academy, Huon Valley MMA, Abaddon's Legion Muay Thai ...  And I'm sure I've forgotten some of you, but thank you for making this such a great event.

Poor judging and poor performance

I want to start this column with a thought experiment.  You're in the last round of a fight.  Your opponent has been all over you the whole fight - and not being Leonard Garcia, you’re damn sure the judges don't have it in your favour.  The bell rings and you come out.  What do you do?

It's completely reasonable to assume that for some fighters, they might keep working on their game plan - especially if it involves waiting for the opponent to slip up or leave a gap.  But what if you opponent is some kind of killer space robot with English as a second language like Aldo, GSP or Silva?  Can you really afford to wait for him to make a mistake?  Will they even make a mistake?

So you keep on waiting for them to make a mistake and in the meantime, you're getting beaten up or getting taken down.  There's now a minute left in the fight.  There is no way that you can win this with the judges.  What do you do now?

Is there a certain point in a fight, where you have to abandon your game plan, caution and self-preservation and just go hog wild?  Lead with a flying knee and when you land, you land squarely in the giant footsteps of an angry Wanderlei Silva?

MMA is different to other sports in this case.  In hockey, pulling the goalie in the dying moments usually doesn't risk you getting knocked out.  In the NFL, that last second Hail Mary pass generally doesn't have a 50/50 chance of ending with you being medically suspended for 8 months while your brain, jaw and orbital recovers.

But by the same measure, not going for it has its own risks.  We've recently seen Gerald Harris being fired (allegedly) for failing to do anything in this sort of scenario.  We've seen fights go down, especially those involved GSP and Anderson Silva, where the fight has been so dramatically lopsided that it's almost incomprehensible that their opponent hasn't thrown their game plan out the window, fired their cornermen and taken the shouted advice of the guy in the crowd with "JUST BLEED" painted on his chest.

In every sport, martial art and competitive event of any type that I've been involved in, there will often come a time when you have to admit that your only real hope lies in throwing all your chips on the table at once and hoping like hell that when the dust settles, it's gone in your favour.  Sometimes this can take a hell of a lot of work to do, especially if you have spent weeks or months planning and preparing and then find all your hard work negated or even find yourself completely outclassed by your opponent.

However it seems that there is a tendency in MMA, for completely understandable reasons, to stick to the original game plan.  First - people don't like getting knocked the fuck out or having someone rip their knee apart.  Second - MMA truly is the home of the flash finish (usually by KO), sometimes that monster across from you will make that tiniest mistake on which you can capitalise.  Third - you never know your luck with the judges.

I'd like to pretend that this third point doesn't play into the fighter mindset, but at this point I don't think that you can.  Dana has built the UFC empire upon two lines: "Do you wanna be a fucking fighter?" and "Never leave it in the hands of the judges."  One of these is a platitude.  The other is completely disingenuous.

You should be able to leave it in the hands of the judges.  The judges are there to make a decision about the fight using very specific criteria.  When judges offer up mind bogglingly bad scorecards, the response shouldn't be "Well, they do say 'never leave it in the hands of the judges'."  It should be, "Who were the judges, is there an appeal process and failing that, is there a disciplinary or review process for these judges?"  We'll be honest here and say that most athletics commissions are political animals, primarily concerned with maintaining a delicate balance between public opinion, government interests and the money of the promoters.

Spats, like the one that has come from The Ultimate Fighter finale serve little purpose.  Joe Rogan calls some folks idiots.  Dana White expresses disbelief.  Keith Kizer points out the glaring holes in their arguments and then says something dumb himself.  And then the fans dogpile everyone with a torrent of foul-mouthed abuse.

Rogan and White were correct to point out the absurd wrongness of the scoring of the Phan/Garcia fight.  However the fact that they said several things that just weren't true gave Kizer all the ammunition he needed to shut down the argument for judging reform once more.  Kizer is correct in that the UFC, when operating in areas where there is no specific regulation pick and choose their judges and other officials.  And the fact that repeat offenders in the awful scores department keep on getting selected shows that there's problems on both sides there.

I personally feel that the 10 point must scoring system can work just fine for MMA (even without the hallowed 10-10 rounds).  Doing half-points, Japanese style scoring or anything else just gives the Tony Weeks, Cecil Peoples, Adelaide Byrds and Douglas Crosby's of the world a different manner in which to make an awful decision.  The problem is that these decisions are being made and there is no accountability for the people who make them.  Judge's need to be made to account for controversial scorecards, not just by "making an argument", but by going through the fight round by round, providing frank and clear reasons for their choice of scoring, given the criteria against which the fight is being judged in front of an impartial panel.  And if they fail to satisfy the panel that they made a reasonable and logical decision, then it's back to being a back-up, watching over someone's shoulder and doing shadow scorecards until you can do it right.

However, this action is reliant of the 400lb gorilla in the room wanting change.  And if you'll allow me my moment of tin-foil hattery, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the UFC doesn't want judging to change.  They love the fact that the judges seem to be so bugfuck crazy that they might give the fight away to someone who just got plastered all over the cage for 3 rounds.

Why?  Because, as TJ De Santis of Sherdog has said repeatedly "in MMA, sloppy is spelled with a dollar sign".  Take any of Leonard Garcia's fights.  He gets lit up like Hiroshima in most of his fights, yet walks away with a win.  Does Zuffa give a shit?  No.  Because they just got a fight of the night out of him.  Their viewership went up.  They had bums in seats in the arena.  And most importantly, at most it cost them a few tens of thousands in bonus money for the unlucky other party.

Being able to say: "don't leave it in the hands of the judges" is a nice way of saying: "chase that bonus money".  Because if you catch a KO of the night bonus, then sure, that's good for you.  But it also means that Zuffa has filler should the event run short, they've got highlights to try and shop to Sportscentre, they've got something tailor-made for UFC Wired and more material for UFC Knockouts Twenty-Seven (or whatever they're up to there).  A knockout is a strong motivator to get someone who's just watching casually to tune in for the full broadcast.

For promoters, a killer finish (be it a KO or submission) is a goldmine - imagine if Bellator's first season had not had Toby Imada and Yahir Reyes setting the world on fire with their highlight reel finishes.  The picture is probably none too pretty.  And by selling the idea that the only way to be sure that you aren't going to be robbed is by finishing, and then they are just making a safe investment for the future.  However cruel that might be to the fighters who get robbed in the meantime.

MMA: the status quo and the mainstream

On Monday's Beatdown (29 Nov 2010) on the Sherdog Radio Network, there was a lot of talk about "The Cult of the Status Quo".  The idea that fans of something don't want it to get bigger because they feel special for being a larger part of something small.  In the case of MMA this translates into at best a distaste and at worst outright loathing and rudeness towards new fans.  According to some  UG dwellers and other "hardcore" fans, I'd be a TUF n00b.  A fairweather fan.  My love for the sport don't count because I wasn't there in the dark ages.

Here's some background on myself as a MMA fan.  Back in the 90s I was aware of this thing called the Ultimate Fighting Championship.  I'd seen pictures and read some articles in magazines about guys like Royce Gracie, Ken Shamrock and Dan Severn.  But I never saw any of the early UFCs until much, much later - as this was a time when unless you knew someone who had the tapes (and in Tasmania, there weren't that many of those people around and I wasn't yet in those circles), you didn't get to see them.  In fact the first MMA show that I ever saw was a Japanese MMA show.  A friend and I were drunk one night in 2000 and watching some cable TV late one night at our residential college at university and came across this amazing broadcast which was labelled "Bushido" (possibly a relabelled Pride product, as their actual Bushido shows weren't til later).  For a few minutes we were debating as to whether it was real or just some really well faked pro-wrestling, as of course neither of us had heard of Pride or even the term “MMA” at that point.  And then someone had his arm broken while checking a kick (if my ten year old memory serves me correctly).  And being two drunken uni guys, awestruck at the sight of this dude wanting to continue to fight with a broken arm we were hooked.  For a few weeks there was a regular showing of this "Bushido" on cable late at night and then it stopped.  I still occasionally got glimpses into this world, but it wasn't until years later that I got back into the sport.

In 2005, a friend showed me the first season of TUF.  And I was hooked again – say what you want, but this show has done more for the sport than all the hardcore fans combined.  By the end of 2005 I'd cleaned out all of the local video stores of their available MMA collections.  Mostly it was Zuffa era DVDs, but with some gems in there.  Including one that to this day, remains my most fondly remembered MMA event: IFC Global Domination.  A classic one night tournament who's list of competitors  reads like a who's who of the Middleweight and Light Heavyweight division nowadays.

The face of a champion.

Since being introduced back into the sport by the emergence of TUF, I have seen every UFC show that has been put on.  The majority of Pride, Dream, Strikeforce, Elite XC, Sengoku and K-1 as well.  I watch Inside MMA and The Voice versus.  I've watched Shooto amateur matches and followed NCAA wrestling and high level submission grappling to see where new talent might arise from.  Hell, I even watched Yamma.  Every single day I trawl through RSS feeds and front pages of nearly a dozen MMA news and opinion sites, I listen to MMA podcasts, I follow fighters, promoters and journalists on twitter.  I evangelise MMA to my friends and colleagues who show an interest, giving them advice on what to watch, where to read up on the sport or lending them events from my collection to enjoy.

So what if their first experience with the sport was catching an out of context highlight on UFC Wired last night?  Or watching Tony Bonello head-kick a guy on Bully Beatdown?  The fact is that they saw something that interested them and it'd be a damn shame to quench that spark just because you feel that this new fan isn’t worthy because they didn’t watch the Pride Open Weight Grand Prix back in 2000.  Sure I've corrected people that the sport isn't the UFC, but in fact MMA.  But I did it by explaining to them  the history and facts, not just by shouting them down.  But I suppose none of this is valid as I am, according to UG mouth-breather logic, a TUF n00b.

Damn you if you think that this isn't awesome.

Is this an impediment to the mainstream advancement of the sport?  I doubt it.  I mean how many of the 1 million who buy the larger UFC PPVs actually ever wonder "what is this UG that Rogan just alluded to?", let alone actually follow up and decide to go and wade into that particular cesspool.  Hell, how many of the UG even buy their PPVs rather than torrenting or streaming them?  There’s a reason that Dana hates the internet.  But this segues nicely into my next talking point: how mainstream can MMA go in it's current state?

I suppose we've got the fact that it's not yet mainstream to both thank and blame for avoiding any real ramifications from the Rogan/Rios spat of the past weeks.  I'm not going to bother going into details here as you probably already know what happened if you’ve gotten this far into this post, but suffice to say that a journalist and a commentator after exchanging some initial unpleasantries online decided to keep on going rather than just letting it go.  This was an ugly moment, by no means as ugly as Strikeforce: Nashville or Paul Daley proving that you can be a bigger heel than Koscheck, because it didn't happen live on national television (insert Gus Johnson joke here).  It was hidden from all but the hardcore fans who follow these folks on twitter and read a bunch of MMA sites.  Imagine for a moment if Chris Collinsworth were to react in the same manner to being called out by Jay Glazer.  Because that's the equivalent scenario in the NFL - the premiere commentator gets in a blue with one of the most well known MMA journalists.  You can bet your arse that Collinsworth would have found himself without his sweet Sunday Night Football job anymore and Jay Glazer would probably be looking at updating his resume too.  Because of the level of exposure that those two have as a consequence of the level of exposure of the NFL, the repercussions would have been much, much greater.  Meanwhile, an ill-considered exchange in MMA goes unnoticed by all but the most attentive of fans.

Don't try and pretend that just because it's a MMA forum you're any less of a dork.

This kind of behaviour has to either stop, or at the very least be seriously addressed before MMA can really go mainstream.  All sports have their douchebags and troublemakers, but usually the faces of the game are kept squeaky clean.  True, Dana cuts an impressive PR figure, despite his irrepressible language and Brock manages to be a massive draw despite have an erect penis tattooed on his chest.  But can you really expect a major UFC event to rate similarly to a Superbowl when you apply the same (albeit ridiculous) moral standards to both events?  If you have a goddamn congressional hearing into some not-boob being perhaps flashed during a Superbowl, then pause for a moment and imagine what happens should you treat America to five minutes of Chris Tuscherer rolling on the floor dry-retching while Rogan and Goldberg try and find a way to not talk about how hard he just got hit in the nuts or have BJ running around a cage licking Joe Stevenson's blood off his gloves while screaming.  Hell, if you want an even better example, imagine Shinya Aoki celebrating a victory in his own inimitable way live on network TV with the Superbowl demographic watching.

Arm breaking optional.

The limits of MMAs penetration into the mainstream are a direct product of the sport itself.  A child of any age can sit and watch nearly any stick and ball sport for as long as their attention span holds out.  But recently I watched a niece get freaked out (I won’t go as far as to say “traumatised”, but others would) when she saw Chuck's latest KO, where he was laying on the canvas, eyes wide open, but with no one at home.  It took a lot of explaining to both child and wife by the father to deal with the consequences there.  I've discussed this issue with many friends and family, trying to figure out "when is a good time for a child to start watching MMA?"  

Pictured: Not a good time.

My son watches some now and then at age one, but for how much longer?  I'd like to say that he'll be able to keep watching for as long as he is interested and my eventual conversations with him about it keep him responsible.  But you can't just go and play a bit of pick-up MMA down at the local park, like you can with most other sports.  My son, should he be interested, will get to go to BJJ classes (as I do), and can try other sports as he wishes.  But the lack of a casual weekend bunch of buddies version of MMA only enforces the separation between the fan and the sport.

The gap is narrowed in other ways though - MMA fighters remain the most approachable athletes I've ever encountered.  In no other sport is there so much opportunity for interaction, in person or electronically, without having to put up $40 to get some douchebag at a desk to sign an autograph or pose for a picture.  If MMA gets bigger, can we still count on guys like Mayhem, Mr Wonderful and Big Country to reply to all their messages on twitter and the like?  I hope so, but in a larger MMA world, with more fans and more media attention will there suddenly be a barrier of PR and talent managers between the fans and the stars?  Probably - but unlike many in the cult of the status quo, I don't see this as an entirely bad thing.  Because unlike them, I don't value myself above the sport.  I'd rather see Phil Davis doing a sitdown interview on network TV to talk about his next fight than responding to a tweet from me.  Because the sport may not be bigger than all of us yet, but it is more important.

The $500 challenge.

I've decided, based on my finances, serious gaming backlog and a discussion that I heard on Gamers With Jobs to give something a try:
For the next year (that is from Oct 1 this year, to Sep 30 next year), I am going to budget myself $500 for gaming.  It sounds like a lot, but it's about 10 bucks a week.  And I'll be interested to see what I end up trying in terms of new genres, purchasing methods and outlets that I had not considered before.


That's five hundred Australian by the way.  So that's 4 full priced retail games.  Guess what my plan won't be.


Exclusions from this budget are:
XBox Live Subscription
Replacement hardware - in the unfortunate event of a console or PC dying, then a replacement will not count towards this.


Perhaps in a future challenge I'll try to include both those too.


So, from my starting $500, I've got:
MS Points to the value of $16.50
From that I picked up the two expansions to Toy Soldiers, a XBLA title that I adore.


Remaining:
$483.50

How can anyone argue for Fedor being no.1 in Pound for Pound?

There are 4 guys who are clearly heads and shoulders above all others when people compile their Pound for Pound lists: Anderson Silva, BJ Penn, Fedor Emelianenko, Georges St Pierre. But how would you rank these four? There are several metrics for Pound for Pound discussion which I’ll break down.

The first is very creative, and as a result the hardest to rationalise: imagine that all fighters are magically scaled to be in the same weight division - who wins? This isn't a very popular metric, but is one that is used by some in their arguments as you could say that if it wasn't for size, then Anderson would beat Fedor on the feet every time, or that if BJ hadn't been undersized compared to GSP, his skills would have let him control that fight. In this scenario Anderson Silva's striking is too good for anyone else in this list, and even should someone get him to the ground it's been shown that he can do enough not just to survive, but to win. BJ's boxing is a serious threat to most and his ground game is probably the best of anyone on this list should they all be the same size, but against Silva, his boxing will still fall short and against GSP he'll likely get pinned against a cage by a fighter who will still be physically stronger and a much more skilled wrestler. GSP has shown time and again that with his ability to get the measure of his opponents and then wrestle them through the mat for five rounds that should he get hands on his opponent, then they are going wherever he wants them to be – but first he has to get inside Silva and though GSP has good stand up, he’s not at Silva’s level and on the ground, after the Hardy performance it’s clear Silva or BJ at his size would give him fits. So when you have 3 guys theoretically the same size as Fedor, each of whom outclasses him in his given area, what do you think can happen? He can definitely throw a brilliantly timed, hand-pulverizing counter or pull off some sneaky sambo, but on a virtual, level playing field, he's going to lose to all 3 of his fellow Pound for Pounders nine times out of ten.

Assuming everyone is the same size

1) Anderson Silva

2) GSP

3) BJ Penn

4) Fedor

The second, more popular metric is to look at their accomplishments relative to each other in their divisions. This is a better measure, but can be further confused by asking the question "if this is Pound for Pound", then what have they done outside their weight division?

In that case, we have to immediately move GSP and Fedor down the list as they haven't had any fights outside of their weight divisions in what we'll call "relevant history". Sure Fedor beat Aoki in an exhibition grappling match, but if someone wants to claim that as a pound-for-pound relevant bout, I will personally laugh in their face. Meanwhile both BJ and Anderson have fought above their weight division with great success. Indeed, the argument can (and has) been made that BJ could beat anyone at Welterweight except for GSP. Meanwhile Anderson has embarrassed two Light Heavyweights, including a recent title holder.

So the list using these metrics would probably look like this:

Accomplishments outside their weight division

1) BJ Penn

2) Anderson Silva

3) GSP

4) Fedor

But why is GSP above Fedor in this list? Because of the third metric: dominance in their division. This is where I (and many others) feel the most weight should lie. First in this list is probably GSP as, since the Serra fight, he has never looked in trouble. No opponent has come close to finishing him and though he mightn't have finished fights emphatically, there's never any question of who won or lost. Add to this that there is no legitimate contender at this time for the welterweight crown and you have as close to the definition of divisional dominance as you can get. Second would be BJ Penn, as he is close to cleaning house in lightweight, which is a much deeper division - and again, no one has really had him in a bad spot.

Anderson and Fedor sit in an interesting position here. Fedor has dominated the division available to him, with wins over such "luminaries" in the past 4 years as Coleman, Hunt, Lindland, Choi, Sylvia, Arlovski and Rogers. He has been unquestionably rocked on a few occasions during these bouts, but ended all of them in fairly decisive manner. Meanwhile Silva has fought more than twice as many fights in that timeframe, many of them against top 10 competitors. The issue here is that in the eyes of some, he has failed to dominant in some of these performances. But I'm going to rule against Fedor here as his "dominance of the heavyweight division" has been against fighters who are at best, able to be described as on the decline, and at their worst, freak shows. Fedor’s management has locked him away from what is currently the deepest pool of heavyweight talent in the sport's history and without any real test against them, then Fedor will have to continue to sink in these rankings as no one should seriously rate Werdum or Overeem at this time.

Dominance in their division

1) GSP

2) BJ Penn

3) Anderson Silva

4) Fedor

So, does anyone have any observations about these 3 lists? I'll point out the obvious one. That in each of them the 3 top guys have all switched positions, so that they all rate first, second and third in the respective metrics. Meanwhile Fedor finishes in fourth place every time. In fact, I'm willing to go out on a limb and say that by the end of this year, Fedor will not feature in the top five of any realistic pound for pound list as the quality of the competition he will face cannot stand up against guys who are testing themselves against fellow top competitors regularly. Sure, he will in all likelihood go undefeated, but when you last match against a truly relevant opponent was back when Pride was still around, you have to do more than fight Werdum to get back into contention. At this point I'd say that the winner of Lesnar/Carwin is more deserving of Fedor's spot on this list than he will be, unless he somehow beats Werdum so badly that we all forget to play six-degrees-of-MMA-separation and look at Werdum's history and those of his wins and losses and realise just how irrelevant that fight really is in the heavyweight division.

Before anyone jumps on me for it - I'm not a Fedor hater. I love watching him fight because it always turns into some bizarro world where the most outrageous things happen and I find that to be outstanding. But I can't and won't take him seriously as a top heavyweight contender, let alone a pound for pound contender until he takes on some real competition again.

A lost hobby

It was interesting to revisit Tasmania recently and see how much and how little had changed. It also reminded me of how much I miss pen and paper and tabletop gaming. Not over Skype or using IRC or anything like that - but actually face to face, around a table.

This was mainly triggered by seeing the finest collection of ADnD 2e that I have personally witnessed in a long, long time. It was also the first time that I ever saw a Birthright boxset in the wild - rather than mocking me from the shelf in Birchalls in 1996. This collection was all in the hands of someone who I knew was an old LAN hand, but had no idea was into RPGs. And apparently they still play. It made for a nice sideline to the conversation which up until then had been dominated by our respective wive's baby talk.

It was also triggered by walking through an arcade in Launceston - vaguely remembering that there was a store there that I wanted to check out that wasn't open the last time I visited, and then discovering that it's a goddamn LARP supply store. In Launceston. With no less than 3 different sign up sheets for LARP organisations around the town. And that's a city and surrounds of only 100k or so still. If that isn't the sign that somewhere has a serious gaming population I don't know what it.

But desite that store exisiting and there being so many groups, there is no more Electric Adventures/Legends, no more Robot Boy, no more comics stores - indeed Birchalls seems to be the only retailer that stocks any of the actual gaming products anymore. So what had once been at least an apparently thriving town for tabletop gaming now appears fairly desolate. Similarly with Hobart, where there was once Ellison Hawker/Area 52, Electric Adventures and Just Games (was that it's name?) - there is now only Area 52. Not to say that these stores don't have a fairly impressive range of miniatures, rulebooks, RPGs and more. But Birchalls in Launceston lacks on thing - tables.

I remember when Legends occupied a large corner in Launceston, with the whole ground floor being it's retail area and upstairs were tables and terrain galore. It was the focal point for the games community - a place where you could have games, watch games, meet other gamers, have notices put up and arrangements made. Area 52 in Hobart still fills this role with it's Battle Bunker, where even early on a Sunday morning I was still able to run into people I know having (or attempting to have) games. For most of us though, the internet does the organising now. In Melbourne I found gaming groups online as there is no "Friendly Local Gaming Store" - sure Mindgames has a notice board, but most people don't look at it that much, and there are so many people who never even go into the store - instead choosing to shop online. Local also has a completely different definition here - having to commute nearly half an hour (by car) to get to your gaming venue is a different story to when most people live within a few blocks of each other (or at the very least a few suburbs).

It's also very difficult to find a good group. It turns out that years of playing together through university and beyond and slowly adding and subtracting people from the group means that everyone interacted and got along well. It wouldn't have worked if they didn't. We all generally agreed on the type of games that we liked and weren't afraid to give and receive feedback. The groups I've spoken to and played with over here - they've been fairly varied. Some were excellent and introduced me to new games, styles and ideas, but the timing and location of their sessions were just a little too difficult. Others I gave up on after e-mails or phone calls made it clear that it just wouldn't work.

As such, most of my gaming since I moved to Melbourne has been done via Skype or various chat programs. But this lacks a lot - it's hard to game when everyone has a computer in front of them and is probably browsing their RSS feeds and e-mail. It's harder still because everyone is talking over everyone else because there's not the non-verbal cues and communication.

Also - you feel like a bit of a dick sitting in a room with a headset on talking in character. Especially if your wife is on her laptop next to you. Most of all I miss the social aspects of gaming - having regular get togethers with friends and acquaintances, or open invite days at Area 52 to play card or board games. In fact, most of my socialisation came during these game sessions - because that was when you could guarantee you'd have your friends together in one place.

Because really, when you get down to it a copy of a RPG is really a social device as much as it is a game. It's there to bring people to a table around it. Those people will just as often talk more about everything else than they will about the game. For me, gaming was my version of going out for drinks with friends. And I realised that it'd been more than a year since I'd played an RPG. I hadn't played a wargame since I lived in Hobart. And the only reason I'd played some card/board games in the past year was because SDnet Aussies had a geek-together in Melbourne for the Star Trek reboot.

But despite all of this, I don't want to cut the cord with gaming. I remember just how much fun it is and want to get back into it. But it's all about finding the people, the time and the place.