Of Sport and Spectacle – What the Carlos Condit/Nick Diaz Fight At UFC 143 Says About Us En Masse

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One of the more amusing things to come out of UFC 143 is the reaction to Carlos Condit’s victory over Nick Diaz. A remarkably close fight to start with on a scoring basis, as you could argue anything from the 49-46 winning scorecard for Condit (two of the three judges scored it that way) to the same for a Diaz victory. You could argue a 48-47 victory for either fighter as well, like I had for Diaz. It was a close fight in the same way that the second Urijah Faber vs. Dominick Cruz fight was; you could justify nearly any scorecard.

I had no problem with the Condit victory, even though I scored it for Diaz. But the reaction to it has been much more amusing, for lack of a better word. More amusing than the fight itself or Nick Diaz’s “retirement” after the results were announced. It was in the reaction to the fight that really showed us much more about how we view MMA as a whole as opposed to anything else.

More specifically, it showed us who looks at it as a sport and who views it as a spectacle.

A generation ago Muhammad Ali bobbed and weaved and it was considered brilliant gamesmanship. Doing the boxing equivalent of Carlos Condit’s bob and weave style for the fight, we called it brilliant strategy. When the New Jersey Devils won a Stanley Cup with the neutral zone trap it was considered boring hockey but brilliant gamesmanship to capitalize on their advantages. The Denver Broncos got to the second round of the AFC playoffs in part because they went from a pro style offensive to a run oriented attack that wasn’t the most aesthetically pleasing. In all three circumstances we acknowledged as sports fans that adapting to the personnel provided and maximizing what you do best is part of sport as a whole. You do what it takes to win at all costs, even if it’s a matter of making it a bit uglier than normal to do so.

Winning is winning and style points don’t count on the scoreboard, unfortunately. We understand that as sports fans and yet the transition of that mentality into MMA hasn’t really gone through. If anything it showed that sometimes the most uneducated of us are perhaps the loudest.

Carlos Condit does the same thing as Ali did once upon a time to guys like Ken Norton and George Foreman in a boxing ring, weaving a brilliant strategy to neutralize Nick Diaz’s style by keeping his back off the cage and taking away his ability to throw power punches in volume, and the resulting histrionics would make you think he didn’t engage at all yet somehow managed to win the fight. People called it a “track meet” and criticized Condit for fighting to win as opposed to standing and trading “Toughman” style. If you didn’t watch the fight and just listened to those complaining the loudest you’d think it was a bigger theft than The Great Train Robbery of lore, one in which Condit had pulled a Kalib Starnes on Diaz and was somehow credited with the victory. That is until you actually watch the fight and realize that isn’t the case.

Carlos Condit executed a brilliant game and kept his composure in a fight that could’ve turned into a wild brawl that he could’ve lost. He could’ve wound up like Paul Daley, who opted to wade into Diaz’s strategy and wound being spectacularly finished in a round. Condit could’ve wound up like Evangelista “Cyborg” Santos, who followed a strong game plan before unwisely opting for the sloppy takedown after wading into Diaz’s pressure boxing game. Condit refused to play Diaz’s game and wound up winning the fight and the right to face Georges St. Pierre for the undisputed UFC welterweight title. In the process he advanced his career, made a lot of money and made a case that he’s the second best welterweight in the world. And the only ones upset about this are those who haven’t left the “Just Bleed” mentality behind as MMA has evolved as a sport and not a spectacle.

There’s a reason why fighters do things like game plan for an opponent in the same manner NFL teams study film on their opponent. MMA is a sport, first and foremost, and the key to it is winning. If Condit would’ve just stood and played “Rock ‘em Sock ‘em Robots” with Nick Diaz and been successful it would’ve been perhaps more spectacular to view but that’s not the key to being successful in MMA. The key is to win, first and foremost, and if you don’t understand that you don’t understand MMA. It’s derogatively called the “Just Bleed” crowd by many but it’s the correct point; it’s embarrassing sometimes to be a fan of the MMA when dealing with people who think the only way to really fight is to look like a couple of drunks fighting over a spilled drink at 2am.

The key is to view MMA as a sport, not a spectacle, and Condit’s strategy makes perfect sense to any reasonable, educated fight fan. The mere act of Condit not standing in front of Nick Diaz and trading punches until someone fell down, and the wave of stupidity it unleashed, revealed a lot in its wake. Most importantly it revealed just how far MMA fans need to come to take that final step from being viewed as being slightly higher than those of professional wrestling. If anything it revealed just how much further MMA has to go in order to reach any sort of permanent mainstream status. The UFC is the standard bearer and has plenty of room to go, as well, but it starts with MMA fans as a whole.

Sherdog’s Jordan Breen said it best on his “Beatdown after the Bell” radio broadcast immediately after UFC 143 when he posited the following scenario. If Bill Belichick ran the ball on every single play in the Super Bowl, squeaking out a 9-6 victory in the ugliest manner possible, we would applaud his ability to win the game. We wouldn’t say “What … is he too scared to throw the ball?” and imply he’s less of a man because of it. We’d complain about the game being boring but acknowledge that he did what he had to in order to win the biggest game of the year. In sport the end result matters; sometimes you win ugly but winning is the highest result and the only one that matters.

NFL teams don’t throw deep balls or do trick plays on every down because it’s bad strategy; we expect them to do what it takes to win the game. Sometimes you can sling the ball over the field and win, sometimes you do something else. In professional athletic competitions good strategy is how you win and expected. Yet in MMA we often criticize guys for being “scared” to fight because they grind out wins with wrestling, et al, as opposed to just slugging it out. It’s the difference between viewing it as competition in which you fight another person as opposed to wanting brawls and violence for the sake of. Being “entertaining” is a byproduct but not the most important thing in athletic competitions. New England Patriots fans would have rather seen their team grind out that 9-6 victory than lose like they did against the Giants this past Super Bowl.

Winning is the only thing that matters in the long run.

MMA fans would have rather seen Condit lose by “standing and banging” than win in a technically proficient manner. It’s disturbing as a fight fan to listen to and until we lose that mentality MMA will always be viewed as spectacle and not as sport. When we accept that fights can be won in many ways that aren’t as exciting as a couple of unemployed plumbers winging sloppy haymakers at one another to win $50 at a “Toughman” competition, MMA will be highly successful but not acceptable en masse.