One of the more depressing things to come out of this weekend in combat sports was the post fight behavior of Floyd Mayweather and its implications. This is nothing new from “Money,” who has never been known for acting with any sort of class and apparently doesn’t have a problem punching out women (as evidenced by his domestic abuse charges still pending) on top of his profession as a boxer. But it raises an interesting question into the realm of combat sports. Is the old professional wrestling standby of good guys and bad guys, better known as faces and heels respectively, good for combat sports?
Many say yes, as people need someone to cheer for and against, and with Mayweather inspiring plenty of reactions it would be hard to argue against. Mayweather is a natural bad guy who brings in viewers of people wanting to see him lose, which is why the Pacquiao fight has taken on much more of a significance in the past couple years. We want to see this fight now despite the fact that we probably won’t due to a variety of reasons, if only to see the best of the best for the first time in a long time. And it has to do with their being the only major boxing fight left that feels like an old-time fight of a good guy vs. a bad guy.
Manny has become the good guy in their positions as the two best pound for pound boxers in the world, almost by default. People like Manny much more, it seems, because the perception is that Mayweather is “ducking” the fight with him when the blame game is much more equal than either side will care to admit. Mayweather being the obnoxious jerk he is, and Pacquiao doing anything but, has given them a good and evil dynamic that is more about Mayweather’s persona than it is about the two of them. And it belies a point that people like to make about MMA: that it needs personas like Mayweather, of identifiable good and bad guys, for the “good of the sport.”
With pro wrestler Triple H arguing something similar, in that the UFC needs to “evolve” in the past couple weeks as an entertainment spectacle as well, the thing that seems to be on everyone’s mind is seeing the sport of MMA turn into something closer to professional wrestling with defined “good” and “bad” guys. The question seems to becoming whether or not the old time promotion of wrasslin’ is where MMA needs to go. In short, are guys like Mayweather good for combat sports? While the pro wrestling fan that most of MMA fans were as children wants to say yes, for the good of MMA and boxing this is the wrong path to go down. Why?
Because it’d rob fighters of any chance at being embraced for whom they are and not some outlandish cartoon character, that’s why.
One of the reasons why many fighters get embraced or disliked is for their personalities directly. Trying to fashion them into caricatures, like the oneMayweather has made himself into, would leave the UFC full of Chael Sonnen types trying to get a reaction as opposed to genuine personalities people connect with.
The best example of this is Brock Lesnar, the biggest PPV draw in UFC history and the one fighter every MMA fan has a strong dislike or interest in. And the one moment every points to as the moment when their final judgment on the guy happened at UFC 100, the biggest MMA pay per view of all time and home to one of the defining moments of Lesnar’s career.
After having lost to Frank Mir by kneebar, and subsequently won the UFC title from Randy Couture, Lesnar was in the unique postion against Mir as the antagonist to Mir’s place as the fan favorite.
How so?
In spite of Mir discussing on a radio station how he wanted to make Brock the first mortality in a UFC Octagon, which was preceded by the former champion spending the year between their first fight and their second fight turning trash talk into an art as opposed to a science, Mir somehow managed to be the good guy in all of this. Focusing on how good he was by making Brock tap to a knee bar, and how it’s a simple move that a guy like Lesnar wouldn’t know how to defend because Mir’s great at Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and how Lesnar was more muscle than talent, Mir found a way to get under Lesnar’s skin like no other fighter has been able to. Mir acted like a massive dick and still managed to win the crowd over for it because of how Lesnar came to fame.
Lesnar’s instant success in the sport, and top positioning because of his fame from his days as a pro wrestler, made him a hated man by a sizeable portion of the MMA community. Mir talked more trash about Lesnar than anyone had at this point and the rivalry between the two seemingly went from more professional to personal. Mir managed to tap into something that MMA fans could get behind that would be imitated by plenty of other fighters, including Chael Sonnen, and the matchup was one of epic proportions.
And then UFC 100 happened.
After Lesnar stopped Mir in dramatic fashion after dominating him, Brock let loose with one of the greatest post fight tirades in UFC history. Brock first began his celebration by taunting the bloodied and semi-conscious Mir. He screamed, “Talk all the shit you want now!” Then, with the assembled at Mandalay Bay booing him, Lesnar flipped off the crowd before spitting out his mouthpiece at the camera while seemingly frothing at the mouth. Lesnar was in the midst of one of the greatest moments of his career and wasn’t holding back.
Some comments to Joe Rogan a short while later, insulting a sponsor and then Mir before implying sexual relations with his wife later that night, and Lesnar’s place in fans hearts was secure.
Plenty hated Lesnar from that moment on quite viciously, if only for the lack of sportsmanship in a place where the discipline of martial arts generally wins out over this sort of behavior. Plenty loved Lesnar for it as well, a reaction from a fighter in the moment and letting himself be caught up in an adrenaline dump big enough to kill most normal human beings who aren’t 300 pound cheat codes like the former champ.
No one who saw that didn’t have an immediate reaction to it because it felt real and in the moment; whether you had liked Lesnar beforehand or hated him, his actions that night may have been apologized for by the man but it resonates for one main reason.
It was pure, genuine emotion coming out. It was as raw a moment one can have in sports, where the sheer power of unfettered adrenaline and emotion merge to let out something deeply personal inside for the whole world to see.
This wasn’t something being faked, like Josh Koscheck insulting Canadian hockey fans to drum up interest in a second fight with Georges St. Pierre. And it wasn’t something done to reinvent the image of someone going into a fight few thought he could win like Chael Sonnen. Brock may not have won the crowd that night but he did something he never could do in the WWE and something Triple H might never experience; have a genuinely emotional moment in victory.
And that’s what separates combat sports from professional wrestling and the like. Having guys try to stir the drink by being outrageous always feels hollow because no one wants to see someone acting like a jerk. They get interested in people who are genuinely so, which is why a fighter like Nick Diaz becomes interesting. This isn’t an act and people know it; if he was acting like a buffoon then people would’ve stopped caring a long time ago.
Genuine personalities can’t be created; they can only be revealed.
