I love the fights. Boxing, MMA, Karate. You name it, I love the fights. I love the idea of a mano a mano contest, where one guy (or gal) looks the other in the eye and the other guy (or gal) sees the badassitude in that guy’s (or gal’s) eyes and the full intent to kick ass. And the guy (or gal) has to show their own badassitude to the opponent and take the responsibility, single handedly, to stop the opponent.
It is always an interesting experience for me when I watch different fighting arts back to back or even at the same time, flipping back and forth. This evening, I was watching boxing side by side with MMA, flipping back and forth. Different experiences, same thrill. The thrill of watching the 2 opponents go at it, understanding what each is doing, and seeing what they are trying to do work (or not) is a fascinating thing. Often, the fight plan (or lack of) gets much clearer much sooner in boxing than in MMA.
In MMA, you are often first waiting to see what tool set the fighter is working with (I have expressed thoughts about this in this blog before) and then figure out what the strategy is. In boxing, because the fighters are only limited to stand up, you are working with a smaller universe of possible strategies. If you have a good eye for the game, you will see a lot of things very clearly very fast. You will begin to get the sense for a fighter’s badassitude pretty quickly and discern what they are trying to do and how. And you tend to see hpwt the opponent is also doing to counter.
I come back to the question often debated – which fighting art provides a more accurate test of the skills involved? Boxing without question does a better job. But as to which art provides more excitement? My answer would be – give me 2 very good fighters, and no matter the fighting art, I am going to have a good time watching.
Mallam Mantari Lamal with Mainasara, a Hyena, Nigeria 2005
Peter Hugo photo series “Hyena People of Nigera” is a must see work about some real badass boys. Done back in 2005, he captured pictures of guys in Nigeria who walked around with hyenas and baboons for pets. Apparently, the guys who keep these badass pets are debt collectors. When they come to collect, they have their pets with them, I suspect ready to at least suggest that they could take the muzzle off for a minute. I also suspect their collection track record is spotless.
When I first saw this picture, there was this caption to it which read “next time you’re overcome with delusions of badassitude, remember this and say — no you are not tough. This is tough.” No argument here.
I was recently engaged in an argument with a guy who knows quite a bit about basketball. The subject was this – between Lebron James or Kobe Bryant, who has more basketball badassitude. There is no doubt both guys are badass. Very, very badass. But at the height of their game, who would you give the edge? Who is the badasser badass?
It is easy to take the short route in this equation and use championships as the tie breaker. In that case, you would easily give it to Kobe. Or, you could opt for overall statistics and, on the basis of triple doubles and such, it seems to me you would go with Lebron. Or you could argue age or youth for that matter, and future upside, and again that would go to Lebron. But that would be a punkass approach to measuring badassitude.
These two guys have talent to spare. Heck, Kobe scored 80 points in a game that he finished on the bench. On the bench folks. Kobe was sitting on the bench, the game was still being played and he already had 80 points!!! Now if that is not badassitude, I do not know what is. For Lebron, the thing that totally laid bare his unadulterated badassitude for me did not even happen during a game (we see enough of those anyway). He was on 60 minutes or some such show talking to (Steve Croft?). He tells the guy he can turn his back and make a shot from way over there. Just like that, he turns around, shoots the ball – backward. Back-freaking-ward!!! And …. Swoosh!! Nothing but net. If that is not pure badassitude, I don’t know what is.
But I have watched both these guys for a while. I have watched them work when the game was on the line. When one of these guys absolutely has to get the game won. I have also watched basketball for a long time. There is killer instinct that comes out of a badass when he is the only one that everyone is counting on to deliver. No disrespect to Lebron cause I love the guy, but in those moments when the only thing on deck is to do everything and anything to win, Kobe is badasser. But who knows, by the end of this season, I might change my mind.
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!
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.
Coming off last week’s playoff games, we had four badass teams, teaming with pure badassitude, going into the championship week. Two games were played. In the AFC, the Colts, despite a shaky first half, won handily. We knew they were badass. We knew they had gobbles of badassitude. Both things held. Two things were apparent and instructive, speaking of the total badassitude of the colts: a) The drive for a touchdown just before the end of the first half, and b) Watching their head coach, Jim Caldwell talk about the game at half time and what he thought they needed to and would do in the second half. Badassitude aplenty is what that was! The Jets were badass and to the extent possible, most of their badassitude held. They just ran into a superior Colts team. They lost, but one came away thinking they were badass and their badassitude held.
In the NFC championship game, the Vikings came in looking very badass. Across the board, led by Favre, Minnesota had proven without a doubt that they were badass. There was, again, badassitude aplenty on that team. And it held. Bret had his ass kicked every which way during the game. You saw clear indication that the old man was in with vicious young ‘uns. They knocked him down, pushed him around, roughed him up, but the old man kept picking himself up, dusting himself off, and kicking ass himself. The team lost fumbles, were intercepted, were pushed around but they fought to the very end. Badass, were the Vikings, holding on, without a doubt to their badassitude!!
The Saints came into the game looking very badass. Yours truly thought they came with more badassitude than any other team coming into this championship weekend. Yours truly thinks they were the one team that left the weekend with decidedly less badassitude than they came in with. The offense seemed to hesitate, couldn’t quite figure out how to kick ass with the many turnovers and advantages they had, and mostly got lucky. Luck does not a badass make and is not the stuff of which badassitude is made. In an interesting irony, a winning team, the New Orleans Saints, came out of the championship weekend having lost the most badassitude of all the teams we watched. If I was a betting man, and I am not, and I discourage it, I would put my money on the Colts.
The other day, Jermaine Taylor dropped out of the Super Six. That was quite a fall. He quit. He was beaten, had lost one too many times for his, and all his fans’ liking and it was time for him to man-up and admit what had become obvious: At this moment, in this environment, in his condition, he did not belong in the Super Six.
Maybe we should have more of these Super Six kinds of tournaments, unglamorous as they might seem. You see, in boxing, it is easy for any comer to up and claim that he is good enough for this and that and the other title shot. That they should fight this and the other person. That they are ready. That so and so and the other is ducking them.
What is true though, is that if you picked 6 of the top fighters in any weight class, using a bunch of criteria to select the fighters, you will typically end up with a good representation of the top of that weight class. If then you ask the fighters you have selected to fight each other in a round robin tournament to determine who among them should earn the right to fight for the championship, you will if nothing else find out who is not only the badassest of the bunch, but more so, whose badassitude quotient can stand up to a comparison with, say the most venomous of serpents. One would; a) have to be real badass fight after fight to win, and b) ridiculously high in badassitude quotient to keep winning and c)dripping with pure badassitude to win it all.
For the longest time, I thought Jermaine Taylor was a badass and that from the way carried himself in and out of the ring, he had plenty of badassitude to spare. Then Pavlick kicked his ass. And then again. Before we knew it, he had lost 5 straight. I like to think that it is a credit to the abundance of badassitude he used to have that he was invited to the Super Six. But alas, I think he is done. In boxing, some guys last while others don’t. He lasted as long as he was going to. Jermaine Taylor is no longer a badass. Jermaine Taylor, as a boxer, no longer has any badassitude.
