Apparently while we were away and not looking, a deal was struck for a fight between Bernard Hopkins and Roy Jones. Contrary to what most of us thought, or believed, or thought should be, these 2 guys are still fighting. I have watched both guys in the last few years and however hard I look, I can’t find any evidence suggesting that this is a fight that needs to be made at all.
I watched Bernard’s last 5 or so fights and o be fair, if he wants to, there is nothing we have seen in the ring that suggests he should stop fighting. Except that he is like a hundred years old. Bernard is a badass, was always a badass. Bernard’s badassitude has never been in doubt. In his last 5 fights, he destroyed Tarver and he was respectable in a draw against Wright. When he lost to Calzaghe you couldn’t help thinking that just a little more effort and work from Bernard and it would have been a fifty- fifty fight. He schooled and embarrassed Pavlik a fight in which he was an enormous underdog. He put in enough work to beat Ornelas as he should have in tune up fight.
Roy Jones on the other hand has provided indisputable evidence that he needs to find a new career. Once upon a time he was a real badass. Once upon a time, his badassitude was undisputed. That was once upon a time. Since he was knocked out by Tarver (twice) Roy has never been the same again. He fights scared. He does not have the assuredness that he used to have. He is really scared of getting hit – most likely because he tends to get knocked out whenever he is hit. In his last five fights, he beat Felix Trinidad, a fight Trinidad should never have taken anyway and he was battered by Calzaghe in a fight that was painful to watch. Then he came back to beat Omar Sheika (who the heck is Omar Sheika?) and Jeff Lacy, a guy who a) was highly overhyped, and b) has been done for a while. Then he was put to sleep a few in the 1st round (WTF?!) by Danny (who the heck is that guy?!!) Green a few weeks ago.
And they still made the fight between Roy Jones and Bernard Hopkins? Come on…!!
Mother Nature is Badass. Those of us who live in the Washington saw just a wee peek of her badassitude this week when, in a 24 hour period, she dropped more snow in the region than we had seen in decades and totally brought the region to its knees. What if instead of 24 hours, we had had snow for 48 hours? Today another snow storm is expected to drop about half of what we got last week. There is no question that if she dropped as much as she did last week, we would at a minimum be taking a standing eight! In the scheme of things one could even argue that 30 inches of snow twice in a week is not a very big deal. But it is just a window into Mother Nature’s badassitude.
When she unleashes her awesome mother nature does not need 24 hours. She does not even need minutes to unleash most awe inspiring power ever seen by man. She brought down Haiti in 30 seconds. 30 seconds folks. The Tsunami in Indonesia when it hit land, literally took seconds and the damage was done. Even when Mother Nature is doing just what she does every day, the results are lethal. Try to walk in the desert for example, or unprotected in Antarctica. Think about volcanoes. Think about floods we have seen. Rainstorms, sandstorms…. And yet by the same token, the recuperative and renewing capabilities of mother nature and simply miraculous.
A few years ago when I was on a cruise, I was standing on my balcony looking out at the sea – at the huge expanse of calm. Water and water as far as the eye could see. I was struck by how insignificant we were by comparison. It almost seemed like the sea was watching us, letting us play, just letting us get away with it whatever it was. Like she knew that if she wanted, she could with one wave, wipe us out. Yet it was all so quiet and calm. The calm that only comes with extreme badassitude! What a badass!
The Saints looked good. 2 things were badass for the Saints in the game – going for it on fourth down at the goal line and the last minute drive for the 3 points at the end of the 1st half. I didn’t think very much of the on site kick but I guess it was interesting. The Colts too looked pretty badass with the 4 and 2 at the 50! At the 50! That was badassitude.
As the game progressed though, you could see that the Saints seemed more comfortable and confident of what they wanted to do and they were showing a certain stone cold confidence (otherwise known as pure badassitude) in the ability to move the ball as they wanted. That said, the Colts just did not seem to be clicking as well as they should have. And they had a few tough things go against them – some dropped balls including loosing the onsite kick (the folks in Philadelphia were not surprised to identify the culprit as one Hank Baskett – he had been pulling that kind of crap for a while with the Eagles until he was ran out of town)
By the way, does anyone think as little of Jim Nantz as I do? I positively consider him to be a fully fledged punkass. Were it not for Simms, the game calling would stink beyond belief. It was so lackluster, if an alien was visiting earth and was told Nantz announcing the biggest sports event of the year, why the alien might think we were an awfully quiet lot.
The interception by the Saints was great – by one Tracy Porter. Apparently the same guy who might have ended Bret Favre’s career with an interception 2 weeks ago. Sometimes you just can’t make any of this shit up. And there was something so complete in the way the game ended – with an incomplete pass on 4th and goal. Now the drivel about New Orleans Saints, what they mean to the city, the inspiration etc, etc, is going to kick into over-drive. I am changing channels every time I hear it. Here is my take – they were the badasses of the season. Their Badassitude came through.
Don’t look now folks but this ship that was so completely misdirected by the Bushies, could be starting to turn around. Unemployment is down to 9.6% from over 10%. What if it reduced by that many percentage points every couple of months? By early fall, the number would be sub 8%. The Democracts, underserving as I think they are (who wastes the biggest majorities in history for zilch like they have? Shame!!), could all of a sudden start looking like they are badass, like they have some shit, like they did something! All of a sudden, Obama’s badassitude (even though he has not shown barely a pinch since he was inaugurated) would start to tip the scale. All of a sudden, the Armagedon that everyone is predicting for the Democrats would still be an Armagedon – for the Republicans. Interesting. No? But then again, the Democrats have Reid and Rahm Emanuel. They would find a way to screw even that up too. Can you say healthcare?
Watching Rachel Maddow on MSNC, doing her show from New Orleans. She is gangly, she is very academic, which means that she is very smart, she is a little easy on the eyes, but more than anything else, she is a badass. We watched her from her early days as an analyst during the election and, uncharacteristically for liberal, she kicked conservative ass without any reservation. My girl, no pun intended has some serious balls! But more than that she takes incredible pains to educate and pursue informed discussion. On the badassitude, she is in rarified territory.
I was rooting around the web earlier today when I came upon pictures of Pink from her badass Grammy performance last week. Then I decided to watch that performance again.
Pure. BadaSSitude. Period
I spend a lot of time thinking about badassitude – the way true badasses carry, exhibit and display their badassedness. Sometimes it is a trick finding true and pure badassitude because you have to make judgments at 2 levels – a) that the dude or dudette is a badass and b) that the dude or dudette has any badassitude. The two judgments are remotely related but mostly not. A badass can have so little badassitude that it would be within reason to describe him or her as a punkass!
A punkass is anyone with zero or no badassitude except that the punkass tends mostly to be a pretender. Not only does a punkass not have any badassitude, a punkass for the most part pretends to have badassitude. And a punkass tends to lie (this is the first indicator of a punkass – lying). A punkass tends to pretend that all the badassitude that is contrary to their punkassedness does not exist.
Imagine, for lack of a better description, a politician whose public positions have become untenable. The one thing long term politicians have learned to do rather well, is to ignore the existence of new or contrary information and persist, however ridiculous it sounds, on espousing a ridiculously untenable (fictional) position in spite of the evidence. Side note – Susan Collins, the Republican senator from Maine twisting in the wind, trying to explain her completely fictional pronouncements about events surrounding Abdul Mutallab’s arrest et al was exemplary in the display of punkassitude.
On this blog and to be fair, if we are going to talk about badassitude, we have to similarly examine the depravity, sadness, failure, no account sorryness, lying, dishonesty etc., that describes the opposite and that opposite is punkassitude. So we should assume, as we go forward that if we rule that one has exhibited complete badassitude fail, then by the same token, or by implication, they must have achieved close to total punkassitude.
I was sitting here, with not very much to do, channel surfing and I remembered that Strikeforce had some fights on. Now Strikeforce does put on some entertaining fights but their stable of fighters is not quite as good and deep as the UFC. On another occasion, we will have a discussion about fighters being locked into contracts with one promotion or another. I have always liked the boxing model where a badass can pit his or her badassitude against whoever else thinks they have the badassitude to compete, and they can choose to use a promoter, or not, or change a promoter. And the big names make obscene amounts of money in that model. But that is a subject for another day. (Those of you who have visited us here before are familiar with some of my musings on MMA v Boxing).
The first fight featured Bobby Lashley against one no account Simms whose single claim to fame was being a competitor on UTF where he was for the most part nothing but a poor attempt at comic relief who otherwise got kicked in the ass. The fight did not last long. Simms did not touch Lashley with one (I mean not one – seriously) punch for the duration of the fight. There are those who might argue that the fight was stopped prematurely but if you do not even touch your opponent, and the guy is kicking your ass for the entire duration of the fight, there is no reason the ref should allow the fight to continue. I still do not think that Bobby Lashley is yet a very good MMA fighter, but he is getting better and definitely does not suck.
The fight between Robbie Lawler and Melvin Manhoef was a fascinating one – and a teaching moment for all young fighters. Manhoef showed some of the cleanest, most patient techniques and fighting style that I have seen in a while this side of Anderson Silva. In a fight he should have finished early with a knockout, he lost from a moment of carelessness and, to be fair, a lucky shot by Lawler. The lesson for all you boys and girls is this: DON’T EVER DROP YOUR HANDS, even when you think you are winning big. I am sure Lawler will not be looking for a rematch against Manhoef any time soon.
Herschel Walker was awefully impressive. The guys is 47 years old and he looked awefully good, very comfortable and had a rather easy night kicking Greg Nagy’s ass, a big strong kid more than 20 years his junior. And he almost didn’t look like he broke a sweat or even needed to take a deep breath. I was happy for him and I hope he can quit and not try to hang around . The fight business is brutal and 47 is 47. On the badassitude scale for the night, Herschel Walker’s score was a definite outlier. In every way, he owned the super high quotient and deservedly so.
I continue to be impressed by Chris Cyborg. The girl can fight and she is laser focused. Over the years, I have found that girls who can fight and who are good at it really bring the house when they fight. I remember sparring with some girls who were ridiculously badass and relentless. They wanted to take your head off and worked every which way to do so. Cyborg has a lot of that – and badassitude aplenty. I am still curious how she would fare against Gina the 2nd time around. Of course Gina would have to prepare better, like a fighter and forget the celebrity shit that I think compromised her fighting. If she still wants to fight that is.
Nick Diaz started his fight against Marius Zaromskis like he wanted to finish it in 15 seconds, and he almost did. I like Diaz. He is one of the few MMA fighters with truly good boxing skills. He almost had his lights turned out by Zaromskis with a punch that caught him flash but it was a thing of beauty watching him come back with a whole bunch of badassitude to finish the fight. It was all hands boys and girls – this from a multi black belt in several martial arts. Very good shit!!
Much better fight night than I thought it would be. Sometimes you don’t need big names. You just need people who want to compete, and win.
Today, Steve Jobs introduced the iPad – the long rumoured, anticipated and expected tablet. He called it “a truly magical and revolutionary product today”. Maybe not so much. We already have iphones, netbooks and laptops so there are no surprises with any one of the things the iPad can do. But to be sure, the magic is in the package of all the things it can do easily, intuitively and at a truly magical price for an apple product.
True, at first glance, it looks like just a giant iPod. But there are many who know way more about Steve Jobs and Apple who will tell you that this is the gadget he has always wanted to build and that he only built the iPhone because that was what the available tech allowed at the time. No argument from me there. The concept that is today the The iPad , was first presented in an Apple concept video as the Knowledge Navigator in 1987. 1987!! That was before the internet folks. These guys understood that there would soon be some ubiquitous network intermediating information exchange. You watch that video, replace the voice commands with commands typed into a keyboard, or maybe not if you have the Google voice search app or similar, and you have the iPad.
There is no shortage of accolades and opinions on the release. The folks over at the Guardian featured a coterie of expert reactions (praise really) ranging from design through tech and functionality. I have not seen the iPad but I watched Steve Jobs’s presentation. From all indications, Apple hit this one out of the park. Maura Judkis takes a look at some of the outstanding green features of the iPad – it’s BPR-free, PVC-free, has arsenic-free display glass, a mercury-free LCD display, 10 hour battery life and more. Dan Frakes gushes about the iPads best five surprises: It is unlocked (woo hoo!), it has external keyboard support it has Epub support and, listen to this pc users, it has a productivity suite with support for Microsoft office!! (I think this is one big deal that not too many people are talking about).
Probably the most disruptive feature of the iPad is the business model. An apple product with, according to Steve Jobs, magical and revolutionary features is coming out of the gate at, by apple product standards, a measly $499. For a comparison point, an unsubsidized iPhone or Nexus One is more expensive. Not only that, the exclusivity that attends the iPhone is absent. The Wall Street Journal likes their business model too (caveat, there are many things we know WSJ liked in the past that imploded, but still…).
Here are a few things I can say with absolute certainty about the iPad: a) If you make your living on netbooks, find another line of business. Netbooks as we know them today are dead. Period. b) If you are a product manager for Kindle or a similar product, you have your work cut out for you. Except that for a little bit, the Amazon leverage will prop up the product. I will be curious to see how it survives on functionality. c) If you are an iPhone owner, particularly in the US, you like this. First, there is the cross pollination of functionality that you benefit from. Second, there is a partnership with AT&T which will bring in a whole new set of productivity users who will demand more from AT&T. At some point here very soon, it will finally become clear to AT&T that they will have to outspend the competition beefing up their wireless networks or they will not be in business very long. Customers can only take shit for so long – the more customers there are, the shorter that bullshit window.
Steve Jobs is geek. He is a badass. The boys and girls at Apple are geeks. They are badass. The guys over at Apple in product management are the badasses I want to be when I grow. But when you think about it, there is no badass who has shown greater badassitude than Steve Jobs. This guys imagined this device, even before the technological components were even possible. He stuck with it, did what he could with the available technology of the times and, today, we have an even better Knowledge Navigator aka the iPad. Steve Jobs = Badassitude!
I am a fight fan. I love the fights. As a kid I boxed, then got into martial arts which I practice to this day, many, many years later. There are not many fights that counted in the past couple of decades that I did not watch boxing contests, mma fights, even tough man contests. Remember K1?. I have watched a them all.
I watch fights with the enthusiasm of a fan and the also very much the eye of a fighter. I try to study them, I try to understand their techniques and I try to understand what they do and why and how they do what they do. And I enjoy the fights. A lot. What I have found over the years is that boxers use more of the arrows in their quivers so to speak, while MMA fighters use far less of the arrows in their quiver.
A good boxer will throw 500 punches in a fight, each with a lot of skill, each studied, quick measured, looking for something specific, going for something specific. Watch Floyd Mayweather or the Pac man work. Watch film of Delahoya or Sugar Shane, Roy Jones, the great ones like Hagler, Ray. The greatest of them all, Ali, smoking Joe. It is fascinating and I think it is this quality that allows the best fighters to make obscene amounts of money. On the other hand, MMA for all their skill often disappoint. Most MMA fighters are accomplished martial arts black belts. A good black belt has so many arrows in the quiver, one would think that watching one fight should be spellbinding. What we see more often than not is a pair of fighter stuck in what looks like a mediocre grappling contest. Why did grappling become so dominant in MMA? Or a pair of fighters with the second rate boxing skills swinging wildly. True, there have been exceptions. Chuck was awfully entertaining with a limited set of skills. When Anderson Silva decides to fights, he has a lot of good stuff. And GPS is always good for an exciting night. But not very many more. For example, I have always believed that nothing can beat a well executed kick. If that kick is a spinning back kick, it can be lethal because we all know how much damage it can do. There are only probably 2 or 3 fighters that I have seen use it effectively. Why? And that is just one example.
Boxers are badass. MMA fighters are badass. Why don’t MMA fighters expose all their badassitude in every single fight, using what they have and know, flawlessly?