Floyd Mayweather vs Ronda Rousey? A Technical Breakdown

Floyd "Money" Mayweather has a weird cultural narrative around him.  He's often cast as the Bad Guy in WWE-style fight marketing whenever he has a boxing match, largely due to how arrogant he is and how extravagantly he spends his own money.  It's a silly act that works to create drama for a fight.  But he also has a very real record of domestic abuse, and the boxing media is usually pretty silent about the issue.

So, Money Mayweather is marketed as a terrible person for silly reasons, but is actually a terrible person in a way that those involved with the boxing industry are largely silent about.  Gotta love the bullshit theater behind professional sports, eh?

The man is great at two things: boxing and trolling people.

Well, UFC women's bantamweight champion Ronda "Rowdy" Rousey has taken shots at Money Mayweather for his history of domestic abuse.  Her most recent dig came after winning the ESPY Fighter of the Year award, when she sarcastically wondered how it felt for a girl to be beating him for a change (Mayweather was also nominated for the award).  He responded with an uninspired comment about how much money he makes, and now the internet is abuzz with talks of a hypothetical Money vs Rowdy match up.

There are plenty of people, qualified and unqualified alike, offering their opinions as to who would win in a hypothetical MMA fight between the two.  Rather than just give my opinion like everyone else, I'll break down different factors to consider in a hypothetical match between the two.

And no, this won't just be me saying "Mayweather's hope lies in his boxing while Rousey's lies in her grappling" like everyone else.  We'll be digging a little deeper than that.

Factors in Rousey's Favor
1. Mayweather's Stance: When developing as a fighter of any sort, one deceptively important decision comes in the details of your stance.  Do you make your stance more side on, so that your lead leg and shoulder are far forward and your body is practically perpendicular with your opponent's, or should you be more squared up, so that your entire body is facing towards your opponent's?

No fighter will either square up completely or go completely side on.  The trick comes in deciding exactly how squared up or side on your stance should be.  In boxing, there is good argument to be made for standing more side on than squared up.  It presents less of a target to your opponent, and also allows you to protect your face better when you hide your chin behind your lead shoulder, which will absorb most shots aimed at your head from that side (this is known as a "shoulder roll").  Mayweather is a prime example of a boxer who stands in a very side on stance, and is an absolute super saiyan when it comes to using the shoulder roll.

Notice how he is almost perpendicular to his opponent, and because of that

his lead shoulder protects him from his opponent's right hand quite nicely.

It serves him very well in boxing.  In MMA (as well as kickboxing), however, there are a lot more than just punches to take into account.

When you stand in a side on stance like Mayweather does, your lead leg is very far forward.  This is good in that it gives you range, but it also leaves your leg very exposed to attack.  This doesn't matter in boxing, of course, but in a combat sport where kicks are allowed, it becomes a serious problem.  In the UFC, fights have been won by TKOs by leg kick, and even fights that don't end explicitly in TKO by leg kick can still be decided by them because they severely limit movement when done consistently and with effort.

Against someone like Mayweather, who has no experience dealing with kicks, Rousey could go to town on his lead leg.  She could also go for single leg takedowns against that leg; it's not her specialty, since she is much more adept at the clinch, but against someone as untrained in grappling as Mayweather she'd still be able to get the single leg pretty consistently.

2.  The Clinch: No, this isn't me insulting your fighting knowledge by saying Rousey has an advantage here.  What I'm talking about is Mayweather's love of the clinch.  Money has made a science of not getting hit in his matches; when he is at range, he uses his fantastic footwork, head movement, and aforementioned shoulder rollering to avoid damage.  When he's forced into an up close exchange, however, one of his favorite tactics is to dive into the clinch after throwing a combination.  This happens time and time again in his matches, including against Manny Pacquiao, which upset a lot of people who expect boxing matches to be Rock Em Sock Em Robot matches where fighters stand in front of each other and exchange haymakers until someone falls down.

Though a lot of the memes made after the match were, admittedly, pretty hilarious.

Mayweather's tendency to clinch would get him into huge trouble against Rousey.  Now, obviously he'll be aware of this and wouldn't consciously choose to clinch against Rousey.  The issue, though, is that he has spent over two decades, day in and day out for hours on end, cultivating a boxing style that includes a habit of clinching with fellow boxers as a defense tactic.  That's not something that would be easily dropped after a few months, or even a year, of training against an instinct you have developed as long as someone born in the mid-90s has been alive.

3.  Variety of Attack: MMA is full of examples of "superior" strikers getting out-struck by people who are grappling specialists.  Often, fans will either attribute this to the striker having an "off night" against the grappler or the striker getting "exposed" by losing on the feet, depending on whether or not they were rooting for the striker.  What it actually is, however, is a case of MMA science.

When you're such a good grappler that your opponent is afraid of grappling against you, it actually opens up your ability to land strikes.  The reason is this: defending against a clinch or takedown attempt is very different from defending against strikes.  A strategy that elite MMA fighters with a grappling base love to use is feinting a takedown, which causes an opponent to drop their hands, then throwing a strike that catches their opponent off-guard.  Former heavyweight champion Cain Velasquez is an ace at mixing up his grappling and striking offense this way.

Wrestling-based Velasquez would not have landed this many punches

against punching-specialist Dos Santos in a pure boxing match.

Ronda Rousey is no Cain Velasquez (that's not an insult- very few fighters can do what he does), but she nonetheless mixes up her strikes and grappling nicely, especially during her last few fights.  To be clear, her boxing needs work: she throws wild strikes and walks straight forward toward her opponents (more on that in the next section).  But when she comes toward them, her opponent has no idea if she is going to attempt to clinch or hit her, because she is known to alternate between both.  They have to be ready for anything, and spreading an opponent's defense thin like that means you can land good shots against someone who is theoretically the "better" striker.

Factors in Mayweather's Favor
1.   Physical Strength: I'm not going to go into this too much because most people know this already, but yes, cisgendered men are generally physically stronger than cisgendered women of the same size.  That would affect how the bout was fought, because Rousey would need to be much more careful about messing up against Floyd than the other way around.

Of course, we've seen it before where the smaller person uses superior fighting technique and strategy to beat the bigger person:

...but the fact remains that a disparity between their physical strength exists.

2.  Footwork: Mayweather is an expert at controlling range.  When he wants to get close, he clinches; when he wants to be far away, he uses his excellent footwork.  I already mentioned how his clinching would become a liability against Rousey, but his footwork would be exactly the opposite.

As I alluded to above, Rousey's main tactic for getting into the clinch against her opponents has been walking straight toward them and swinging away.  In her most recent match against the hilariously over-matched Bethe Correia she did exactly that.  Against someone like Mayweather, who has the ability to use his footwork to circle out against danger or come in on varied lines of attack, Rousey's tactic of walking straight forward to engage her opponent would fail miserably.

3.  Body Shots: If Rousey's key to slowing down Mayweather is leg kicks, then Mayweather's best shot at slowing down Rousey is through body shots.  Good body shots are devastating (I know from experience; I dreaded them in both boxing and muay thai sparring).  They also rob you of energy.  Because MMA fighters don't have time to develop their striking ability as much as boxers and kickboxers do, however, they often neglect body shots and mostly hunt for the head when throwing their punches (though there are exceptions, such as the aforementioned Junior Dos Santos and the Diaz brothers).

Dos Santos landing a body shot, which we don't see enough of in MMA.

Boxers are much better at throwing body shots consistently, and Mayweather is no exception.  He goes to the body often, and uses this as an important part of his fighting strategy.  There's the old saying in boxing that when someone covers the head, you attack the body, and when they cover the body, you attack the head.  Floyd, like every other high level boxer, uses this strategy.  If he could land body shots consistently against Rousey, she'd fatigue quickly and possibly drop her guard, allowing for Mayweather to aim shots at her head.

Keys to Victory
Rousey: Rousey's biggest key to victory would be to attack that lead leg which Mayweather leaves sticking out while in his heavily side on stance.  She could attempt leg kicks to slow him down and draw out the match, single leg takedowns to try and get him to the ground and end it quickly, or, ideally, alternate between both.  If she did this while improving her ring craft to a level that she isn't just walking straight forward and swinging, she would eventually get the fight to the ground and undoubtedly finish it.

Mayweather:  Mayweather would want to use his footwork to control the range of the fight.  He'd have to stay mostly on the outside, only coming in on smart lines of attack to throw a few punches then get right back out before Rousey could get her hands on him.  He'd want to make sure he alternated between shots to the body and head in order to keep Rousey guessing.  Every additional way in which he could make himself elusive would, of course, come in handy.

Verdict
It would be an intense fight, but in the end, history has shown that as long as a grappler has at least a little striking competence, they will beat the striker with little grappling competence, even if there's a strength gap.  We saw it when Royce Gracie dominated the early UFC tournaments, even when his opponents out-weighed him dramatically (before weight classes, 176 pound Royce often went up against men who weighed well over 200 pounds).  We continued to see it time and time again in Pride and the UFC, before fighters became well rounded enough that striking specialists learned basic grappling techniques and defense.

The greatest MMA heavyweight of all time, Fedor Emelianenko, weighed in the range of

about 220-230 pounds in his prime, and was the smaller guy in almost all of his fights.

In this throwback to 90s/early 00's-era MMA, all Rousey would need against Mayweather is one chance to get the fight to the ground.  That could come about in a number of ways: catching Mayweather in the clinch as he steps in for an attack; getting a single leg takedown on Mayweather's vulnerable lead leg; being able to initiate the clinch against Mayweather later in the fight after cutting off his mobility with repeated leg kicks; Mayweather instinctively clinching against her, as he has a habit of doing.  It would only take one of these things happening, at any point during the fight, for Rousey to get the fight to the ground, in which case the fight would play out similarly to Randy Couture vs James Toney.

A lot of people think the strength disparity would be too much for Rousey to overcome.  And in the striking exchanges, they very well would be.  If Rousey got it in her head that she could actually beat him while staying in striking range the entire match she'd probably lose very quickly, even if her boxing skill level were at all comparable to Mayweather's (and it definitely isn't).

But MMA has a science and set of tactics behind it that are very different than boxing's, and Rousey's experience with and understanding of them outweighs Mayweather's substantially.  Physical strength matters- there's a reason why weight classes exist- but there is an irrefutable mountain of evidence that shows elite skill set can overcome a physical strength disparity if the physically stronger person isn't near their opponent's skill level.

Prediction: Rousey.

Sonny Liston and the Tragedy of Formerly Incarcerated People

Few people know the name Sonny Liston.  Is that... a spokesperson for mouthwash products?  A mascot for a generic Sunny-Delight ripoff juice brand?  A loveable character in a sitcom from the 70's?

Few people know his name, yet he is in one of the most iconic photographs of the 20th Century.  In fact, the photo may be the most iconic sports picture of the 20th Century.

Yeah, that's the one.

Sonny Liston captured the heavyweight title from Floyd Patterson on September 25th, 1962.  On February 25th, 1964, Liston lost the title to Muhammad Ali, then still known as Cassius Clay.  Yet Sonny Liston's story is much, much bigger than a simple fight record.  He fought as a heavyweight boxer during an era when boxing was one of the three major sports in the United States and the heavyweight champion had a larger than life cultural narrative attached to them.  Liston had his own narrative thrust upon him, and it wasn't pleasant.

Charles "Sonny" Liston was probably born some time between 1929 to 1932.  Yes, "probably", you read that right.  His real date of birth isn't actually known.  His parents were Tobe Liston and Helen Baskin, who lived in extreme poverty as sharecroppers in Arkansas.  Growing up, Liston's father beat Sonny and his siblings severely.  His mother left his father in 1946; she brought some of her children with her to St Louis, Missouri, but wasn't able to bring all of them.  Sonny was one of the ones who got left behind.

Liston worked various odd jobs until he could finally afford to run away to St Louis to be with his mom.  When he moved to the new city he tried to go to school, but was mocked for his illiteracy and quickly dropped out.  With no prospects for education or decent work, he turned to crime to feed himself and his family.  He had numerous run-ins with law enforcement, his first arrest coming in 1950 for armed robbery of a diner and two gas stations.  Sentenced to five years, he famously said "at least I'm guaranteed three meals a day."  During his time in prison, he learned how to box thanks to one of the Catholic priests who held services there.

Liston was released on parole in October of 1952.  Soon thereafter, he began his professional career as a boxer.  However, because of his criminal record, the only people who would finance him were those with connections to organized crime.  Having no other options- boxing was the only legitimate work he found that he could make a living off of- he became signed professionally under management connected to the underworld.  He also worked as an enforcer for them to supplement his income as a boxer.

Thus, the narrative around Liston as a boxer became that of a violent "thug."

Sonny Liston in his earlier days as a professional.

As a boxer, his style unfortunately supplemented the thug narrative.  He had the largest hands of any heavyweight champion ever, at 15 inches around, and an otherworldly power in his punches.  He scored many knockouts, which excited fans but further added to the negative image of him in the media.  To them this wasn't someone using "the sweet science" to defeat his opponents, but rather someone so strong he was almost more beast than man.

During the rest of the 50's Liston found success in the ring, but encounters with the law outside of it. As a youth he had been pushed into a life of crime by desperate circumstances, which wasn't helped by his large and threatening appearance.  Now he found himself stuck in a vicious cycle of being monitored and confronted by cops simply for being Sonny Liston, which created tensions between him and law enforcement that only added further to his demonization.  He was arrested multiple times while working for the mob enforcers that society had all but literally thrown him toward.

By the dawn of the next decade, however, he finally became a serious contender for the heavyweight championship.  He could no longer be ignored.  He could be, and was, very much loathed, however.  Especially in comparison to the reigning champion, Floyd Patterson.

Patterson was born January 4th, 1935.  On November 26th, 1956, he knocked out the elusive, all-time great Archie Moore to become the youngest ever heavyweight boxing champion at age 21.  Like Joe Louis over a decade before him, he was adored by everyone, even a good portion of white America.  He was quiet, thoughtful, and very open about his insecurities.  He supported integration and the Democratic Party, as opposed to the black militancy that Muhammad Ali would later come to represent.  He was, in many ways, the 'Good Negro' archetype to Sonny Liston's 'Bad Negro' archetype.

Floyd Patterson

Floyd Patterson grew up in conditions not too different from Sonny Liston: extreme poverty and hunger, which caused him to eventually resort to crime.  Specifically, petty theft.  There was one major difference between the youth of Sonny Liston and Floyd Patterson, however, which defined the vastly different trajectories their lives would take: instead of ending up in prison, a teenage Patterson was sent to a reform school named Wiltwyck (a school championed by Eleanor Roosevelt, who Patterson became friends with).  The class sizes were small, the teachers were excellent, and, above all, Patterson was taught that he was worth something in a positive, affirming environment.  He spent two years there, and he credited it with completely turning his life around.

This opportunity that Patterson received but Liston didn't could be its own chapter in Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers. In the Floyd Patterson biography written by W.K. Stratton, the writer mentions this disparity in opportunity and Patterson's awareness of it.  "Unlike Floyd, [Liston] was offered no opportunities akin to Wiltwyck to help him overcome his troubles. [...] Patterson saw much of himself in Liston. Floyd believed he could have ended up just like Liston- threatened by cops, doing time in prison, answering to gangsters- if life hadn't provided him opportunities Liston never received."

Many people didn't want the Patterson vs Liston fight to happen.  Everyone from the NAACP leadership to President JFK himself urged Patterson not to fight Liston.  The boxing press alternated between calling Liston a brute who didn't have the character of a champion to calling Patterson a coward for dodging Liston.  The bout was eventually signed, however, thanks in large part to Patterson thinking Liston deserved a chance at redemption.  Everyone from Frank Sinatra to Jackie Robinson heartily endorsed Floyd Patterson.

The fight itself was brutal.  Patterson used his wily head movement and landed his trademark left hook a few times.  It worked at lessening the severity of Liston's assault, but ultimately Liston was too much for him.  Liston used his signature approach of leading with his left hand, which was his dominant hand, a strategy Bruce Lee would be proud of.  Not only did he have power, but he had strong fundamentals and varied his jabbing technique as well.

Patterson vs Liston

Just past the two minute mark, it happened: Patterson hit the canvas.  The supposedly 'evil' side won by knockout.

Everyone in the world not named Sonny Liston seemed to be disappointed.  In a casual interview with writer James Baldwin before the fight, in which Sonny Liston opened up because Baldwin was one of the few people who ever approached him like a human being instead of a monster, Liston had said "I wouldn't be no bad example if I was up there.  I could tell a lot of those children what they need to know because I passed that way.  I could make them listen."

The day after winning the championship, Liston boarded a plane to Philadelphia.  He told one of his friends with him, reporter Jack McKinney, his plans for turning his image around.  "There's a lot of things I'm gonna do.  But one thing's very important: I want to reach my people.  I want to reach then and tell them, 'you don't have to worry about me disgracing you.  You won't have to worry about me stopping your progress.'  I want to go to colored churches and colored neighborhoods.  I know it was in the papers that the better class of colored people were hoping I'd lose, praying even, because they were afraid I wouldn't know how to act... I don't mean to be saying I'm just gonna be champion of my own people.  It says now I'm the world's champion and that's just the way it's gonna be.  I want to go to a lot of places- like orphan homes and reform schools.  I'll be able to say, 'kid, I know it's tough for you and it might even get tougher.  But don't give up on the world.  Good things can happen if you let them.'"

When he arrived at the airport after the fight, he walked from his seat to the outside with anticipation.  This was it, his new beginning.  He would move beyond his troubled past and start life anew, the heavyweight champion of the world, a man who'd made some mistakes but ultimately came to grow as a person.  A real underdog story in the flesh.

...except, the only people awaiting him outside were an adversarial boxing press, and a small group of them at that.  Not a single fan had shown up.

As McKinney said about their arrival: "You could see Sonny literally deflate like a balloon with the air being let out.  It was a good forty five seconds or minute before he finished taking in the whole scene, confirming to himself that there was nothing there, and then the next thing you know, his back stiffened and his shoulders rose, as if he was saying to himself, 'well, if this is the way it's going to be...'"

 Holy shit, here's a picture of kittens to counter how depressing that was.

 And so it was that Liston remained the "thug" heavyweight champion.  He faced Patterson in a rematch less than a year later, one which wasn't warranted after such a decisive victory, but was nonetheless demanded by the world in the hope that Patterson would regain his former title.  He quickly defeated Patterson once more, then faced a brash young challenger named Cassius Clay on February 24th, 1964.  The rest is history.

Liston never regained the title, but continued his mob-backed boxing career until his death in December of 1970.  He was found January 5th, 1971, by his wife, dead in their Las Vegas home after she returned home from a trip she had been on for two weeks.  His body was badly decomposed, and they couldn't figure out if it was a heroin overdose or lung congestion and heart failure that did him in, as he had a history of both heart and lung disease.  Like with his birth, Liston's exact date of death couldn't be determined, though the coroner estimated it to be December 30th.

To go back to James Baldwin's interview before the first Liston/Patterson fight, Baldwin said he went away from their meeting liking Liston.  "While there is a great deal of violence in him, I sense no cruelty at all.  Anyone who cared to could turn him into taffy.  [...]  it seems to me that he has suffered a great deal.  It is in his face, in the silence of that face, and in the curiously distant light in the eyes- a light which rarely signals because there have been so few answering signals."

Liston was the product of systematic racism and classism in a country that didn't like to acknowledge the uncomfortable reality, or even existence, of either of those forces.  When the reality of his experiences came with him into the limelight, society at large turned on him for his desperate responses to them.  Even the liberals.

Fast forward to the United States today.  We make up only about 5% of the world population, but almost 25% of the world's prison population.  Since 1970, our prison population has gone up about 700%.  About 37.6% of the prison population is black, despite making up about 13% of the total population.  Our bloated criminal justice system is still taking people who could be so much more, doing so because lobbying by large corporations keep legal penalties harsh so they can pay pocket change for prison labor, rather than pay normal employees proper wages.

Their board of directors are still hard at work trying to figure out

if there is a way to pay people exclusively in middle fingers.

I could go on about the systematic reasons behind why the prison industrial complex exists and all the ways in which prisons are so inhumane- not to mention how they create a culture of violence that often forces non violent offenders to become violent as a means of survival- but this post is about the experiences of formerly incarcerated people like Sonny Liston.

To my surprise, I've learned that most formerly incarcerated people don't go on to become heavyweight boxing champions that are loathed by the world at large.  In fact, many don't even become professional boxers at all!  Still, the core of Liston's experience is very common for those who serve their time in prison: stigmas attached to their status make it hard for them to transition back into life in the outside world.

Job and housing applications often require people to disclose whether or not they've been to prison, especially for a felony.  Many employers, especially in a hyper-competitive job market like our current one, instantly discard applications from felonies.  On top of that, the time those who have been locked up spent in prison means a gap in previous employment, credit building, and other such factors employers and/or landlords may look at when considering applicants.  Thus, even the more open-minded types of employers and landlords find gaps on applications from formerly incarcerated people that others don't have.

Thus creating a tragic cycle of Cookie Crisp theft and incarceration with no end in sight.

Think about that for a moment.  Getting by is hard enough as it is without a criminal record.  Just keeping your head above water in a fiscal sense is a terrifying and draining experience, and as we lose more private sector jobs to outsourcing or automation and more public sector jobs to tax breaks for the wealthy, it can only become harder.

Now imagine that same scenario we all face, but people don't want to hire you for even the minimum wage jobs, nor accept you as a tenant.

To be clear, this isn't to say that people in jail are perfect angels, or that employers and landlords don't have the right to know if applicants have ever committed a serious crime before.  The problem is that we live in a time where higher education, public assistance programs, and public spaces are receiving far less funding than they were a generation ago.  Meanwhile, as I mentioned above, the prison system is thriving and incarceration is at an all time high.  Over half a century later, young Floyd Pattersons and Sonny Listons everywhere are much more likely to end up in prison than in a place like Wiltwyck.  They'll get busted for minor offenses, get swallowed up by the prison machine, and get stuck in a cycle of incarceration that benefits no one except for the wealthy who lobby for harsh incarceration laws.

Don't take my word for it, either.  Michael A Wood is one of the many current or former (in his case, former) police officers talking about the problem with policing as it is currently constructed.  In a fantastic podcast interview with Joe Rogan, he recalls one kid in particular when he first started working as a cop in a unit dedicated to drugs: "I would interview these guys in the little rooms. And this one guy, Daniel Taylor, is the one I'm specifically remembering. And he was just a marijuana dealer, and he had a kid, and he was struggling to have this kid. He was young, he was trying to help. But he had gotten locked up a lot when he was younger, so he was selling weed to try to buy diapers for his kid. And he would tell me his stories, and he would be crying.

And it was just like, 'fuck!' There's no difference between this kid and me. There's nothing. The only difference is that when I had a dimebag in my pocket, there wasn't a chance in hell that anyone was gonna look. But him, he was gonna get caught eventually. And it sent him into that spiral. And this could've been a good kid. I wouldn't be surprised if he were still in jail now. There was nothing wrong with him.  Our whole system created a criminal out of a decent kid."

 We need to overhaul the system from the ground up so that people who are born into disadvantaged circumstances have room to grow and thrive.  As things are now, people in low income neighborhoods- especially low income black or Latino neighborhoods- are far, far more likely to end up with a prison sentence than with adequate resources for success.  And so there will continue to be more Sonny Listons, more Daniel Taylors, more children who could've been so much more and found so much more happiness if they'd only had the opportunity.

We need more Wiltwycks, not more prisons.


Note: all of the biographical information not linked to a website comes either from David Remnick's "King of the World: Muhammad Ali and the Rise of an American Hero" (a fantastic book which also dedicates its opening chapters to both Floyd Patterson and Sonny Liston to give context to the rise of Muhammad Ali) or W.K. Stratton's aforementioned biography of Floyd Patterson.

The Importance of History

For those of you reading who don't personally know me, a couple months ago I began working as a mentor for an after school program at an elementary school.  It's been a great experience so far.  One thing I try to do with the students in the program is ask them about their classes and what they've been learning about.  The other day, I had just such a conversation with one of my students.  As we talked about learning and which classes she likes, she told me point blank that she finds history boring.  I was saddened but not at all surprised.  It is a sentiment that all too many people have, and it's a serious problem.

And it's not really their fault, either.

This fall I'll be starting graduate school at San Diego State University, going for an MA in History with the goal of becoming a community college professor.  It'll be a tough road- and I don't just mean my schooling.  There's a good chance I'll be hired as an adjunct professor, and if so, a 25% chance I'll be on public assistance considering how little adjuncts are paid.  It'll be tough, but it will be worth it.

"And that concludes today's lecture about US-Nicaraguan relations during the pre- and post-revolutionary years through the lens of gender.  Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go rummage through a garbage can because I haven't eaten today."

But if you had told me ten years ago this would be my current path, my fifteen year old self would probably laugh at you.  Because back then, I still viewed history the way most people do: a long list of dates and proper nouns to memorize.  A bunch of names, places, and events that told me about the past, but not much else.  Even the war stories that were supposed to be "exciting" for male students held little interest for me.  There were some things here and there that captured my attention, but history as a whole?  Gracias, pero no.

In the time between then and now, however, my view on history has changed thanks to a variety of chances to see it in a different light.  From great teachers and professors, to the community college debate circuit, to underground hip hop (especially Immortal Technique), I was given the chance to learn that history is so much more than a list of numbers and words to memorize.

One of the most oft-repeated sentiments about history is that learning about our past helps us understand the present.  It's one of the most cliche sayings about history, but also one of the truest.  Knowledge of history allows us to give context to the world around us.  As a culture, we don't like learning about the past because we confuse knowing about the past with being stuck in the past (just look up all those feel-good graphics floating around on Facebook about never looking back and always living in the present).  But we miss out on so much of the world when we don't understand where everything came from.

To give an example, in my Top Everything of 2014 post my "Actual News Story of the Year" choice went to the US beginning to normalize relations with Cuba.  Now, to someone whose only knowledge of the history of US-Cuba relations is "Castro took over in a revolution and then there were missiles and the trade embargo happened because... communism?" are missing out on a lot of important information

The most important information: the Cuban rebels were known for their beards,

and were actually called Barbudos (bearded ones) by much of the press.

To give an incredibly brief summary of US-Cuban history, things started with the Spanish American War that began in 1898 between the US and Spain over Spain's territories.  The US won, and in 1903 the Platt Amendment was passed to make Cuba a "protectorate" (read: colony without using the word "colony") of the US.  That meant that whenever Cuba did anything to stand up for itself, and/or did anything to go against US interests, the US would intervene.  Those who came to power in Cuba had to be loyal to US interests, or they would be overthrown.

Revolt was common, but none truly succeeded until the 1959 Revolution, Fidel chief amongst the figures in the revolution.  Fidel's leadership after the revolution involved both good and bad: he mobilized literacy and healthcare campaigns in the countryside, changed the economy from the ground up to an egalitarian model that created a lot of gains for those who had been at the bottom, and overall created a strong socialist state that helped the people who needed it most.  On the other hand, he was a repressive dick who didn't allow the slightest bit of dissent or non-state approved voices.  But, however repressive he was, he wasn't any worse than Fulgencio Batista, his US-backed predecessor that he overthrew in the Revolution.

The Cubans that came to the US immediately after the 1959 Revolution were largely wealthy elites (which is why Cuban Americans are known for being staunchly conservative).  And, with their wealth and disdain for Castro, a strong anti-Fidel lobby was born.  The influence of the first wave of Cuban immigrants in favor of blacklisting Fidel's Cuba, and the lack of wealthy opposition, meant that the embargo with Cuba hadn't gone anywhere even a couple decades past the Cold War.  Politicians who tried in the past were met with fierce opposition from these first wave Cuban immigrants, while not having much of a political base of support in favor of normalizing relations with Cuba (plenty of people are for it, but no one has been for it strongly enough to lobby and organize around it as a cause).

So the embargo remained until the present, where most first wave Cuban immigrants have now died off, and both their descendants and later Cuban immigrants simply don't hold the same anti-Fidel opinions the first wave of immigrants did.  With less of a lobby around to fight against normalizing relations with Cuba, it has finally become a distinct possibility to do so.

Though we all know Pitbull's hardline pro-party outlook
is the most important Cuban American lobby of all.

Knowing just those four paragraphs of information drastically changes how we can look at, and think critically about, the normalization of relations between the United States and Cuba.  There is so much more to this situation than "Cuba and the US didn't get along, communism is bad, trade embargo!"  And it brings up a lot of questions, the proper examination and answering of which are far beyond the scope of this post.

Beyond simply understanding the present, understanding history means we also have extra information that allows us to make more informed decisions when going into the future.  To stick with this same example, I support the idea of normalizing relations with Cuba.  But what will this normalization of relations look like?  Because using historical precedent, we see that when the US and Cuba had strong ties, the US was using Cuba like a colony.  That raises questions that need to be thought about moving forward, questions that we won't think to ask when we aren't aware of the comprehensive history behind a certain issue.  And right now many students in K-12 aren't taught a comprehensive history that challenges them to think critically.

To be clear, I don't think the watering down of history is some grand conspiracy that everyone in the K-12 education system is involved in.  Rather, I think it's a combination of a variety of factors,
none of which involve a bunch of shady Illuminati-types sitting around a table and laughing manically to themselves.

Yet, intentional or not, we have to teach history in a way that feels relevant and important to those learning it.  Otherwise, we are doomed to continue hearing students talk about how "boring" history is as their actual history is being ineffectually taught (or in some cases, like with ethnic studies in Arizona, even denied) to them.  More students like the ones in the program I mentor for, or even fifteen year old me, will continue to avoid history.  And there is no way we should want that to happen.  History is too important.

Nerd Culture, Artistic Merit, and Criticism

I am a proud nerd.  I play video games, read graphic novels and manga, and a few weeks ago I went to Wonder Con to be surrounded by my people.  If there is someone out there who thinks they could ever beat me in a pointless trivia contest about the nerdy shit I like, especially Final Fantasy games, they've got another thing coming.

A picture of me at Wonder Con, my natural habitat.

One of the biggest debates right now involving nerd culture is whether or not video games can legitimately be considered art.  There are a ton of positions people have taken in the debate- some say yes simply because it is a form of entertainment and that's enough to qualify it as art; some say yes because they think well made games have artistic merit beyond entertainment; some say no because they don't think games have any artistic merit; some say no, not out of disdain, but because they believe the interactive nature of games qualifies it as something else instead; some don't care because they think "real" art is a bullshit concept; some don't care because they simply don't care what their games are considered, they just want to play them.

Obviously, gamers as a whole have responded overwhelmingly in favor of considering games to be art.  As for me, I fall somewhere between "yes, video games at their best have artistic merit to them" and "I don't really give a shit because 'artistic merit' is an ambiguous, ever-changing, and often elitist concept" in the way I view it.  I personally play most of the video games I do because I enjoy the narratives in them, and I think the interactivity games have between player and character can add a certain dimension to story telling that other mediums don't have.  I don't really care about the opinion of the type of snobs who debate what "real" art is.  But, since I do think games have a lot to offer as an artistic medium for people who are serious about story telling, I'd therefore like them taken seriously by aspiring story-tellers so that we can continue to see great games get made.  I've written about poignant moments in video games before, and have used video game stories and characters as examples in other posts I've written about story telling.

Yet I've also noticed an alarming double standard in a substantial portion of the gaming community.  We want to claim our games are worth the classification of "art", and therefore have merit to them.  But, at the same time, whenever someone critically examines our medium in a way we don't like- especially when it comes to serious social issues like racism or sexism- a lot of us collectively lose. Our. Shit.

 

On second thought, nah, creating a game where you beat up a woman for gently calling out sexism
in games is a totally healthy and productive form of discourse, and not at all horrifyingly atrocious.

Aside from hordes of misogynists trying to run women off the internet (or out of campus speaking engagements with threats of school shootings) for speaking up about misogyny in games, one of the most common responses from gamers to these types of criticisms is "leave us alone, it's just entertainment!"  And yes, games certainly are entertainment, too.  But if we want our medium to be taken seriously- and it's pretty clear that most of us do- then we have to stop throwing a violent tantrum every time someone critiques our medium in a way we don't like.

Don't get me wrong, I get it.  We used to constantly be given shit for our past time, with criticisms ranging from gaming being a waste of time to it being used as a scapegoat for horrible acts of violence like school shootings.  Now, just when society is starting to take the medium more seriously, and with it also now becoming a popular activity that a substantial portion of the population enjoys, there are social critics saying our hobby has issues with sexism, or racism, or homophobia?  I just want to play video games in peace and have that be respected, damn it!

But here's the thing: we should be happy this is happening.  Because serious conversations about these topics don't happen for shit that no one takes seriously.  Has anyone ever had an in depth, nuanced conversation about race and gender dynamics in Family Circus?  Of course not, because nobody gives a shit.  The only time Family Circus has ever brought anything worthwhile to the table was when the comic was dubbed over by a PG-13 Robot created by a mohawk-sporting badass who wanted to teach that robot about the human concepts of friendship and absolute despair.

Thanks, PG-13 Bot.

We're living during a time where people are having serious conversations about video games through the lens of different social science, humanities, and social justice lenses.  When I went to Wonder Con, there were actually panels about these sorts of topics.  Panels about video games (and comics) and where they intersect with different topics like psychology, sociology, feminism, ethnic studies, anthropology, political science, economics, and more.  This isn't something that would be happening if we didn't take games seriously.

Taking something seriously as an art form doesn't only mean praising what it does well.  It means critically analyzing it, examining the medium through various lenses and trying to make thoughtful observations about what you experience.  We can't expect all of those observations to be ones we as gamers like.  And creating a shit storm each time that happens is like a teenager begging their parents for a car, getting it, and then getting upset whenever they have to pay for gas or take responsibility whenever they get into an accident.

I love gaming, and I will continue to think games have merit as an art form.  For that very same reason, I will also continue trying to think critically about games when playing them.  Including thinking about serious topics that might bring up uncomfortable observations.  Because both games and the gaming community do have some serious issues that need addressing (and subsequent action to be taken).  Not because there is inherently anything wrong with gaming or the people in it, as these issues can be found in anywhere; rather, because these games are created within societies that have these same issues.  And if we can't come to terms with the idea of games being analyzed in ways we don't like, then we have no business claiming games should be taken seriously.

But I think we should.  Because games are awesome for so many reasons, and have a lot to offer beyond only entertainment.  It's on us, as gamers, to decide if we want to recognize that, and everything that comes with it.

The Traditional Martial Arts Renaissance in MMA

The early days of MMA were an exciting, wild time filled with the sort of style vs style battles you normally see in anime or disco era martial arts movies.  Then, as the years went by and fighters began to find what works and what doesn't in MMA competition, certain martial arts were found to be more effective arts to train in for those looking to compete in the ring.  Some of the most proven arts in professional MMA include Boxing, Muay Thai, Kyokushin (or any other hard contact) Karate, Wrestling, Judo, Sambo, and Jiujitsu.

Over the last few years, however, moves from "traditional" martial arts have emerged in the arsenals of top MMA fighters.  Lyoto Machida, using his base as a Shotokan Karate practitioner with extensive experience in point sparring, is the fighter most often brought up as an example.  There are plenty of other examples, as well, such as Anthony Pettis throwing no-setup kicks from his Tae Kwon Do background, or Vitor Belfort (among many others) and his new found love for the spinning back kick.  Other moves like axe kicks and side kicks are now being used by so many fighters it's hard to think of just one example.  Jone Jones, Machida, Robbie Lawler, and other fighters have even began using hand-trapping fights in a way that resembles Jeet Kune Do, which gets a lot of its hand-trapping methods from Wing Chun.

Machida does with his Karate what every 8 year old training Karate at the YMCA day dreams about.

So what gives?

Before we go any further, it's important to make a note about the concept of "traditional" martial arts, as it's an ambiguous and often inaccurate concept.  Traditional martial arts theoretically describe martial arts that have been around for a long time.  However, Aikido is generally considered to be a traditional martial art while Judo isn't, despite the fact that Judo is actually a couple decades older than Aikido.  Wrestling has been around for a damn long time, and yet it isn't considered a traditional martial art by most people.

When people refer to "traditional" martial arts, most of the time what they're actually referring to are East Asian martial arts with a sense of mystique around them and an odd fetish for "tradition", even if the traditions have been fabricated.  These martial arts, such as Karate, Kenpo, Aikido, Kung Fu, Wing Chun, Tae Kwon Do, and Tang Soo Do, are what we talk about when discussing "traditional" martial arts.

So why hadn't we seen more of these styles- and moves associated with them- pop up in the ring until the last five or so years?  Was it because they were inherently inferior?  Was it because they were "too deadly" for the ring?  Was it because their qi blasts only work on the invisible ninjas that follow practitioners of these arts around on a daily basis?

Was it because Shaolin practitioners spent their time kicking ass at soccer instead?

The answer is simple: it's all in the training.

Martial arts are most effective when you pressure test what you've been learning, that way you learn to apply your techniques under fire.  It's a concept I talked about on my previous blog, but really it's something that a lot of people in the martial arts community have already been talking about for a long time.  Martial arts training without real sparring or its equivalent (randori in Judo, rolling in Jiujitsu, etc) is worthless.

In other fields, it seems like the most self-evident concept in the world.  If you said you wanted to become a professional quarterback by only playing games of catch and never actually playing a game of football, people would laugh at you.  If you were a scientist who made a bunch of claims without submitting the evidence for those claims to peer review, you'd probably start at least a dozen rap beefs with other scientists in your area of study.

The same ideas apply to martial arts.  You can't get good at something without actually doing it, and you can't say what you're doing works without actual empirical evidence (and I don't mean anecdotes about how some guy totally used Aikido to take out some nameless mugger on the street).  Yes, learning techniques by applying them against compliant partners is crucial for learning the proper way to execute any technique in martial arts.  But only applying what you learn against compliant partners means you'll never be able to apply what you learn against someone putting up some resistance, whether in the ring or on the "streets" that people love to theorize so much about.

I'm great at shooting hoops, which means I could totally become a high level shooting guard!

And that's where traditional martial arts largely fail.  An overwhelming majority of instructors in these arts avoid pressure testing what they teach.

Now, of course, people have a variety of reasons to train martial arts, and not all of them are actually trying to learn to fight.  There's nothing wrong with that.  The problem is many traditional martial art schools brand themselves as teaching "real" self-defense, and then use ridiculous excuses like "what we teach is too deadly for sparring!!!" to avoid pressure testing their techniques.

As mentioned above, when MMA became big, people from all sorts of styles came to compete.  And those who came from schools that didn't pressure test what they learned got obliterated.  One of the most enduring examples was Rhodes vs Ettish, where experienced kickboxer Johnny Rhodes took on Karate blackbelt Fred Ettish.  The results weren't pretty.

 

Though Ettish has since taken MMA seriously and won a match at 53 years old.

 Because of the horrible success rate of traditional martial arts in the early days of MMA, people largely dismissed them entirely.  As the infant years of MMA passed and people began to see which martial artists were having the most success, they worked off the assumption that those arts producing the most successful fighters were the best to train in.  And they weren't wrong, either- but it wasn't because these martial arts were inherently better.  Rather, it was because those had much more schools training with pressure testing than those of traditional martial art schools.

So, during the '00s, we mostly saw fighters with a background in better-proven martial arts fighting.  Then Machida came and changed the game with his background in Shotokan Karate.

Recently, Jack Slack- one of the best martial arts writers around right now, if not the best- wrote an article about Machida's background in point fighting.  The gist: it's great for getting in and out, but the scoring system means it often turns into a game of tag that doesn't prepare you for an actual fight (hell, considering point sparring teaches you to reset after landing a single hit, it could be argued that it actually makes you worse at fighting than you were before).  But what Machida did was combine his point sparring Shotokan background with the full contact, pressure tested methods and arts that fighters use.

Now, Machida wasn't the first big MMA fighter with a background in a traditional martial art (Chuck Liddell had a background in Kenpo, for example).  But Machida was the first fighter where his traditional martial arts background was both an integral part of his fighting style and how he was marketed to fight fans.  When Machida became the UFC's light heavyweight champion, it was declared to be a success for Shotokan Karate, as well as other point sparring martial arts in general.

The amount of people signing up for Tag-Ryu Karate skyrocketed.

Then, in February of 2011, Machida's training partner and professional Matrix ninja Anderson Silva knocked out Vitor Belfort with a front kick.  Two months later, in April, Machida knocked out Randy Couture with a crane kick.  All of a sudden, not only did point sparring have some credibility as a training tool, but so did flashy kicks that had mostly been disregarded by the MMA world for the previous decade.  These weren't the first flashy kick knockouts to happen in MMA, of course, but they were the first ones that happened on a big enough stage for everyone to take notice and start paying attention.

So now, almost half a decade later, MMA fighters have started experimenting and finding success with techniques from traditional martial arts in substantial numbers.  The spinning back kick and side kick in particular have become popular over the last few years.  And, as I mentioned above, hand trapping has began to emerge for fighters who are in a nebulous area between boxing and clinch range.

I love watching MMA, as well as other martial arts, because I love watching the art and breaking down the science behind everything that is happening.  And it makes me excited that both the art and the science behind MMA keep evolving as this young sport continues to develop.  As fighters and coaches continue to expand their repertoire, everyone in the martial arts community wins.  Except for those "too deadly to spar" dorks.

The Millennial Generation: Entitlement and Cynicism?

I was born in January of 1990, one month after the Cold War was officially declared over by George Bush Sr and Mikhail Gorbachev at a summit held in Malta.  I am, basically, right in the middle of what US society collectively refers to as the "millennial" generation.  As with defining most generations, there's no solid agreement as to when the exact dates are, but the general consensus is that the millennial generation began somewhere in the early or mid-80s and ended in the early 00's.

As millennials, we occupy a unique time in history.  We were around before computers and cellphones were commonplace, coming of age just as they started to take off; we grew up in a world where there was only one global hegemonic power, the United States, unlike most of the rest of human history that had multiple world powers vying for control; we experienced both Anchorman and Mean Girls.

And, just like figuring out the exact period of time that encompasses a certain generation, trying to figure out how to collectively define our generation has generated a lot of different ideas as to how we can do so.  Some of the proposed ideas come from our shared experiences: the internet, globalization, 9/11, the Great Recession.  Others come from traits that we supposedly have: entitlement, idealism, cynicism, sarcasm.

My persistent efforts to get social scientists to collectively refer to us as

"Generation Pokemon Stadium" have, alas, yielded no results so far.

Amidst all the thoughtful analyses about our generation, however, is also a metric shit ton of content by people that were somehow paid to write articles that basically amount to "get off my lawn and stop it with your dag-gum hippity hop music, you hooligans!"  There is no shortage of articles talking about how terrible we are as a generation, saying that we don't have any work ethic and our economic woes are the result of that (rather than, say, that whole Great Recession thing).

It'd be easy to just respond "nuh uh!" and call these people unkind names.  Or even point out that, hey, if you're the generation that raised us, you're actually insulting your own parenting skills each time you talk about how spoiled we are.  But, as usual, a more nuanced and thoughtful response is probably the more productive route.  Why are so many older people so likely to believe we are spoiled and entitled?  And might there, perhaps, be a kernel of truth to that notion?

First off, it's important to get something out of the way: we're inheriting a global economy that is pretty fucked.  There's a reason we're so cynical, and there's not really much room for debate here.  Income inequality is the worst it's been since right before the Great Depression, and on a world wide scale, the 85 richest people in the world have more wealth than the poorest half of the world's population.  Unemployment in the United States is still severe, even for people with a degree, and it will remain so because there are a lot of jobs that are simply never coming back.  It's not just one cause, either, but a number of them: shipping jobs overseas, automating jobs so that people no longer have to do them, less public sector jobs due to lower tax revenues to fund them, and many other reasons, there are a lot of jobs that are now gone forever.

And yet jobs like "millennium falcon pilot" haven't even popped up in their place

And there's something kind of cool about some of those.  Some blue collar jobs are very dangerous, for instance, and making them more efficient or even automated is great.  What isn't great, though, is that all of these factors together get rid of so many jobs and create such an overcrowded job market that many people simply give up, which has also made a lot of unemployment statistics look less severe than they actually are.

Put into the context of recent history, wages have stagnated over the last few decades for the middle class and actually declined for low income people.  Minimum wage, adjusted for inflation, certainly isn't what it used to be.  Meanwhile, healthcare costs, college tuition costs, and other vital living expenses have increased exponentially even when wages haven't.

Basically, we're inheriting a job market and economy in a condition much worse than our parents did.  There's even a pretty great (yet infuriating) meme about this whole shindig.

To any older adults reading this: yes, this is actually a completely foreign concept to us.

So when you read an article about us "choosing" to put off buying houses, or have children, or get married, know that it's not actually a "choice" on our end.  Yes, as a generation, a lot of us question the values of previous generations, and there are plenty of us who actually would choose to put off these things as individuals.  But it's not rebelliousness or laziness or anything like that which explains this incident on the larger level- it's our economic condition.

But, surely, with our Sony Gamestations and Nintendo Playcubes, we're still spoiled, right?  We grew up pampered, even if we inherited a tough economy.  Surely we can find a way to both blame millennials while admitting that they don't have the same labor benefits or opportunities our parents did?

Actually, in a way, yes.  Because prices for consumer electronics, such as computers, have plummeted over the last few decades.  Likewise, 51% of US households own gaming consoles, with the average number per household being not one system, but two.  So all of us as a society, especially us younger folks, do enjoy easier access to electronic entertainment and media.

But here's the thing that often gets missed in these conversations about all the material benefits we enjoy: it connects to our economic situation, because these low prices are the result of lower labor costs.  We enjoy cheaper products, but at the expense of meager wages.  So a 20-something (or someone of any age, really, since the average age of someone who works for minimum wage is 35) working a part time job while also on food stamps or a healthcare assistance program like Medi-Cal isn't a moocher if they happen to own an iPone.  Rather, our current societal reality is that a cellphone is actually way, way easier to afford than medical care and many other costs of living (also, while we still think of cellphones as a luxury good, they have actually become more of a necessity now that everyone [including potential employers] assume you have one).

Feel free to keep posting those shitty, judgmental memes instead of thinking critically, though.

And I think our different economic realities help explain why a lot of older adults think millennials are so spoiled.  Because I don't think most adults who say we have it easy are Disney movie villains who secretly know the truth and are saying we have it easy as some sort of conspiracy to undermine us.

When I was a preteen, a cellphone was something only a few people had.  And now, about a decade and a half later, they're a necessity, along with computers.  That's a weird concept for me to grasp, and I'm someone who came of age during that shift.  For someone who was middle aged (or even elderly) when this shift started, people who grew up in an era without widespread cellphone and computer use, and only a fraction of the entertainment media we have available to us today?  The idea that we have it rough when we have so many conveniences available to us must be hard to swallow.  And they're not completely wrong, either; all of these things are pretty fucking sweet.

And beyond that, the challenges we face are a lot less romantic on paper than those faced by previous generations.  A large chunk of the 20th Century was defined by the Cold War, when almost every country in the world- even the neutral ones- genuinely feared they could get wiped off the map.  There was an immediate, tangible threat.  Before that, it was the Great Depression, where people were starving in ridiculous numbers, and the World Wars, where millions upon millions of people died.

Today, the United States is the world's biggest superpower, and other emerging superpowers like China and India are far too economically intertwined with us for there to be a war any time soon.  There are a lot of problems that stem from this situation (again, especially economic), but all out warfare or famine that threatens humanity as a whole isn't one of them.  And, while my generation was around for the worst attack on US soil that we have ever suffered, none of us actually think that we are in any danger of being invaded and destroyed as a country because of how ridiculously high our military budget is.

Which is outrageous, considering all we needed to end the Cold War was a boxing match

Instead of a big war*, today our biggest problem is trying to navigate a post-employment economy.  It's a big deal, but it doesn't have the same ring to it, especially when as a culture we are taught to look up to the hyper-wealthy elite who have exacerbated these conditions we face.  We have reached a point where, as a species, we aren't really struggling for survival against the elements or each other anymore.  We still suffer from both of those, but we probably won't be wiped out by them.  We're past the point of worrying about warfare or famine sealing humanity's collective fate.

So here we are as millennials, individually struggling for economic survival in a post-physical survival world.  We have a lot available to us that previous generations didn't, but we also face difficulties that our parents didn't.  The conditions we live in and the problems lying ahead of us are unique to our generation, and a lot of older people don't understand that.  So they look down on us- not because there is something inherently wrong with Baby Boomers in particular, but because human beings in general are terrible at putting themselves in other peoples' shoes.

Hopefully, we don't repeat these same mistake and start talking shit about the generation after us.

*It should be noted that while the so-called War on Terror in the Middle East hasn't been a huge war for us in terms of lost lives and perceived threat while compared to other wars, (1)we have still lost soldiers and (2)people in the Middle East have lost many, many lives, including thousands upon thousands of innocent civilian lives, because of the pointless and costly violence we initiated