Other times I have seen UFC events at bars I noticed the typical people associated with its early subculture: tough guy skin heads with Tapout shirts and scowls that they had rightfully earned by their tough, limit testing two free lessons at an MMA gym. As the UFC becomes more mainstream it is starting to lose touch with its earlier subculture, like anything that goes from niche to popular, and I must say that this is a case of cultural hegemony that I am totally okay with.
Tito Ortiz and Antonio Rogerio Nogueira faced off in the first fight that I will describe. Tito Ortiz is nicknamed “The Huntington Beach Badboy,” and is even more of a diva than that moniker implies. Once, after beating a fighter named Guy Mezger, he actually had a shirt ready to wear that said “Gay [sic] Mezger is my Bitch!” Antonio Rogerio Nogueira, also known as Lil Nog, was derived from his older brother Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira through a series of spells obtained from the Necronomicon. The original plan was to create a Nogueira for everyone weight class, but a group of intrepid youth destroyed the accursed text before the laws of nature could be further perverted.
When the fight started, Ortiz opened with a flurry of shots that illustrated he wasn’t the fighter he used to be. He shot for a leg hug, but Lil Nog was able to deflect it like it wasn’t no thang. The two were exchanging hits until finally Lil Nog hit Ortiz with a left hook that opened him to a crazy flurry of punches, the likes of which you usually only see in an anime. Speaking of anime, Lil Nog spent the rest of the round taking advantage of Ortiz in a way that would fit right in with weird anime porn. Lil Nog was the tentacle monster, Ortiz the oddly childlike victim, and the audience the sick fucks who were actually getting some sort of pleasure out of all this.
As the flurry went on, Lil Nog hit Ortiz with a knee that put him to the canvas quicker than an artist’s paint brush with marijuana. From there Ortiz was able to regain his composure enough reclaim his guard, but it was pointless. It would be like a member at Westboro Baptist fixing his hat before giving a sermon to make sure he didn’t come off as crazy. Lil Nog kept pounding away at Ortiz, who was covering up and offering no sort of offense. I think the knee may have scrambled Ortiz’s mind around so badly that he actually thought he was a punching bag. Meanwhile, the ref watched with a tragic sort of apathy. It felt like I was watching a documentary about the Rwandan genocide and the ref was the international community. Finally, just as I started dialing the number for Amnesty International, the fight was ended and we all felt a little bit worse about ourselves.
Next was Frank Mir and Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira, the twin “brother” of Lil Nog. Both Mir and Big Nog have surprising similar styles: they are primarily Brazilian Jiu-jitsu practitioners, have established a solid striking skill set to balance out their fighting abilities, and are badass enough to have withstood attacks by motor vehicles (Big Nog by a truck when he was a kid and Mir by a car while on his motorcycle during his time in the UFC). Mir was considered to have a slight edge with striking while Big Nog was considered to have the edge on the ground. The two had fought before, where Frank Mir defeated Big Nog by technical knockout. This time would go a little differently.
When the fight started, it was clear the two were out to destroy each other. They hit and wrassled with the type of stubborn intensity you see from people who are each convinced they are correct in a Facebook argument. Eventually, Big Nog hit Mir with a left hand that dropped him in a manner almost identical to the way Lil Nog had dropped Ortiz before. The stars began to align and everything was going just the way the prophecy had foretold; the elders watched with grim acceptance.
Big Nog jumped on Mir to get in a guillotine that seemed more like a formality than anything at that point. However, Mir still had some fight in him and rolled them over. The two began to fight for position with so much rolling I thought they were trying to intimidate each other by acting like car wheels. Eventually, in a stunning upset, Mir ended up with a perfect kimura locked on Big Nog. I don’t know anything about Brazilian body language, but apparently tapping just isn’t part of their body’s vocabulary. Mir had to destroy Big Nog’s arm to end the fight, as well as any chance of the prophecy coming to fruition. It was shocking for Mir to win by submission; it was the equivalent of beating someone in the Guinness Book of World Records at a time wasting contest. The elders were once again at ease.
The main event of the evening was Lyoto Machida vs Jon Jones. Lyoto Machida is a counter fighter and one of the few fighters who have successfully used Karate as his MMA base. Jon Jones is a lab experiment designed to see if creativity and Mr Fantastic’s DNA could become a successful MMA fighter. Up until this point Jones had never been seriously challenged, succeeding in reminding human beings just how fragile we are. Going into the fight, no one expected Machida to win. Watching him walk into the cage was like watching a black guy or scantily clad white woman go investigate a strange sound in a horror movie. We couldn’t bring ourselves to look away, partially because we paid to get in and partially because the human psyche has some very dark corners.
The fight started with Jones crouched down as the two fighters approached each other, and everyone watched with more anticipation than they would watching a news report about a celebrity meltdown that involved side boob. The two started slow, just trying to test each other out. They each avoided strikes as if they were big corporations in a developing nation. Then Machida got the better of Jones in an exchange where he was able to use his Shotokan skills to quickly get in and out to avoid any real damage. He then did it again, and again. The crowd was stunned, especially Jones’s corner, which was composed of scientists with the type of questionable ethics that Nietzsche warned about. By the time the first round ended, the unthinkable happened: not only did Machida still possess use of his cognitive faculties, but he had actually won the first round! It was proof that a level 33 monk could stand up to an aeon. Ordinary humans around the world cheered, while Fantastic Four fans and “human” experiments sat disappointed.
The next round looked like the first, until Jones was able to use his wrestling. He got Machida up against the fence and got a takedown. While Machida is a black belt in BJJ, that doesn’t matter if your opponent doesn’t possess the anatomy of a normal human. He was able to dominate Machida and hit him with an elbow filled with such hatred and disregard for human life that the United States CIA would have given it funding and military training during the Cold War. After some scrambling around the ref stopped the fight to check if it would need to be ended on a doctor’s stoppage. Machida must have done something to piss off the physician, though, because he allowed the slaughter to continue.
At this point, Machida looked exactly like you would expect someone to look after fighting a man-made demigod familiar with every concept in fighting except failure. The two exchanged and Machida lost his footing, having already checked out of this fight. He tried to get back up, but Jones got him in a standing guillotine and pressed him against the fence. Machida, knowing all would be lost for mortals everywhere if he tapped out, decided he would tough it out. It was a noble gesture, but just ended in the ref ending the fight after Machida passed out. The second Jones let go of what was once Machida’s neck, Machida collapsed to the ground. The victory was actually called a “technical submission."
Thus Jon Jones retained the light heavyweight belt, considered by many to be of more merit than the heavyweight title. I was impressed by the way Jones spoke immediately after the fight: he gave Machida credit as a fighter and also clarified that he wasn’t out to hurt anything, including those who would identify themselves as homo sapiens. “I didn’t ask to be created in a lab,” Jones pointed out when being interviewed by Joe Rogan. “I only wish to dedicate the rest of my life to understanding this human concept of ‘friendship,’ while continuing to fulfill the desire of my creators to fight. Everything I am is a reflection of you as a people.”
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