No straw-man fights in UFC

Bernard Fernandez, Philadelphia Daily News

Thursday, Aug. 6, 2009 | 2:05 a.m.

Grammatical nitpickers have long noted that the framers of the U.S. Constitution erred in the first sentence of that esteemed document’s preamble, which begins, “We the people of the United States, in order for form a more perfect union …”

Technically speaking, you cannot improve on perfection. That’s like saying a woman is a little bit pregnant. Certain things are, or aren’t. There’s little or no room for anything in-between.

Sports, though, represent an area that is not so much black-and-white as shrouded in shades of gray. Even a .400 hitter in baseball, an endangered species that in these times is more rarely spotted than whooping cranes in the wild, fails on six out of 10 official at-bats. Jim Brown fumbled every now and then, and Michael Jordan was known to miss the occasional buzzer-beating shot that might have won a game. It’s the small imperfections of our brightest athletic luminaries that serve to underscore the greatness of their many successes.

Boxing, though, is the last preserve of artificially manufactured perfection. Many prospects are spoon-fed designated victims in the belief that, once their record becomes shiny enough, they can make a quick score at the box office. Only when paired against someone capable of and willing to fight back are false heroes of the prize ring exposed as pretenders.

The deep thinkers behind the explosion in popularity of mixed martial arts cite the rise and inevitable fall of boxing’s unblemished fakes as one of the reasons their enterprise has avoided some of the problems that continue to plague the older, more traditional combat sport. It’s all right to lose, the theory goes, so long as a defeat comes against a competitive opponent, in an entertaining match. It’s a philosophy that allowed boxing’s late, great human highlight reel, Arturo Gatti, to remain a major attraction despite his periodic stumbles.

The four MMA fighters in the two featured bouts of UFC 101, which will be staged Saturday night before a sellout (or close to it) crowd at the Wachovia Center, have a combined record of 66-17-1. By boxing standards, those guys would almost qualify as journeymen, not as champions or major contenders.

But it’s the fact that BJ Penn (13-5-1), Kenny Florian (13-3), Anderson Silva (24-4) and Forrest Griffin (16-5) can and do lose that makes them so attractive to fans. See, to gain anything worthwhile, you have to risk something worthwhile.

Put it this way: Buster Douglas might have pulled off boxing’s biggest upset when, as a 42-1 underdog, he shocked the seemingly invincible Mike Tyson — but in the UFC, there are no 42-1 underdogs. Or even 10-1 underdogs.

“When you look at our sport, there are so many ways to win and so many ways to lose,” said UFC President Dana White, who prides himself on offering his customers matchups in which the outcome is never predetermined.

“(Lyoto) Machida is, like, 17-0 or 18-0 now (actually 15-0). That’s so unusual. For any of the top fighters in the UFC to go long periods of time without losing a fight is unusual. Kenny Florian hasn’t lost in 2-1/2 years, but that’s very tough to do.

“Fighters who are paired against opponents who have virtually no chance of winning is one of the reasons why people are starting to get sick of boxing. You see too many guys who are, like, 42-0 with a bunch of knockouts and they’ve only fought three or four real fights.”

Tito Ortiz, one of MMA’s most enduring stars, last week re-signed a promotional contract with UFC for major bucks following a 14-month recovery from back surgery. Ortiz has a 15-6-1 record, which in boxing would mean he’d still be fighting six-rounders at the Blue Horizon or some equivalent venue.

“UFC has never had a gimme fight,” Ortiz said. “Every one is action-packed. Fans always get the best. Even the fights that aren’t main events could be main events.

“No UFC fighter ever gets to 40-0 because they’re competing against the best in the world. It’s not like boxing, where you fight a bunch of Joe Shmoes before you move up. So what if you knock out guys like that? What does it prove? Boxing has good fighters, but they’re not facing the same level of competition as regularly as UFC guys.”

It’s the variety of fighting disciplines, of course, that make mixed martial arts so intriguing to its growing legion of devotees. Some fighters are excellent strikers, which basically means they have a knockout punch, like a boxer. But victories can also be achieved via submission, by ground-and-pound, by a referee stepping in and waving things off.

The list of premier MMA fighters includes proponents of Muy Thai, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, wrestling, boxing, judo. But even fighters primarily schooled in a particular discipline quickly come to learn that, to have any kind of success, they need to expand their repertoire. The best mixed martial artists are like major league pitchers who understand that it isn’t enough to just have a 96 mph fastball. If they can augment that with a knee-buckling curve or drop-off-the-table sinker, so much the better.

UFC legend Chuck “Iceman” Liddell, for instance, came to MMA as an accomplished wrestler who wasn’t allowed to punch anyone while on the mat. But opponents were so wary of his takedown techniques that they often left themselves open, and Liddell knew how to chill with one shot anyone who left his jaw even momentarily exposed.

“Every fight I have, I’m in with a bad man, a dangerous man,” Penn said. “And it’s not just me. At every UFC event, somebody good gets knocked off. That’s just the way it is.”

Former UFC light heavyweight champion Forrest Griffin agreed that the UFC is different than other MMA organizations in that the pressure to perform at a high level is unrelenting.

“You know you’re going to always fight the best guys,” Griffin said. “In PRIDE, [a onetime UFC competitor, now defunct], “they would put you in a tough fight, then they would put you in a giveaway. There are no giveaways in the UFC.”

Fernandez is a reporter for the Philadelphia Daily News. The Sun and Daily News are sharing stories in covering UFC 101.