Tripping point: MMA rife with amateurs
Dave Mandel/Sherdog.comAmir Sadollah laid waste to his fellow TUF cast members despite a non-existent pro résumé.Malcolm Gladwell, author of "The Tipping Point," stirred up lots of press last year when he proclaimed that anyone who wants to get good at anything needs to put in at least 10,000 hours of effort toward mastering it.
"You can't become a chess grand master unless you spend 10,000 hours on practice," Gladwell told an assembly in 2008. "The tennis prodigy who starts playing at 6 is playing in Wimbledon at 16 or 17, [like] Boris Becker. The classical musician who starts playing the violin at 4 is debuting at Carnegie Hall at 15 or so."
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Clearly, Gladwell has never met Brett Rogers.
Rogers has no wrestling credentials and no amateur striking background. Until recently, he was training part-time while working as a tire technician at a Sam's Club in Minnesota. In June, he knocked out Freddie Roach pupil and 10-year fight veteran Andrei Arlovski. On Nov. 7, he fights Fedor Emelianenko, the most reverentially regarded heavyweight in the sport, in what amounts to a world-title bout.
Rogers' limited background isn't unusual. In 2008, Amir Sadollah was cast in a season of "The Ultimate Fighter" and pitted against experienced athletes of various backgrounds. Despite having not a single professional bout on his record, he defeated five men to capture the series title; Brock Lesnar, while possessing a highly credible NCAA résumé, needed just five fights to earn his chance at -- and win -- the UFC heavyweight belt; on Saturday, amateur wrestler Daniel Cormier had his first professional fight after only four months of cross-training. In the field of medicine, this would be considered quackery.
The broken faces and bodies so artfully photographed are evidence that mixed martial arts is the most physically punishing and demanding sport in the world. Each fight is, to repeat an unoriginal thought, like a minor car accident. But with several successful participants putting only a few years -- or months -- of effort into preparation, it might not be the most technically strenuous activity out there.
Few in professional boxing have ever strolled into a title bout after only sporadic flirtation with training. Floyd Mayweather Jr., arguably the most talented stand-up fighter of his era, had 90 amateur bouts before turning pro. His display against Juan Manuel Marquez on Sept. 19 was the culmination of two decades in the gym, and it showed. The notion that those skills could come from hobby training is fiction.
If a Walmart cashier with a pair of heavy hands trained for three years and elected to fight Mayweather, it's possible he would die in the ring. And yet some give Rogers a "puncher's chance" against Emelianenko, who -- if his reputation is deserved -- should eject Rogers' molars through his nose.
This isn't necessarily a reflection on men like Lesnar and Cormier, who may be amateurs at throwing punches but have spent years building a foundation in wrestling. What's shocking is that Sadollah and Rogers, with no storied athletic backgrounds, can enter and exit a ring without being brutalized. (And, in Rogers' case, without being beaten.)
As a fan and observer, that kind of hospitality is a little embarrassing. MMA might be the only sport in which a kindergarten teacher -- Tim Hague -- can get a call-up to the major leagues. If that happens to any other civilian in any other sport, a movie gets made out of it. Here, it's routine.
What allows the inexperienced to be competitive in MMA? Much of it has to do with a key element in the upper platform of the sport: striking. At the regional/amateur level, stand-up exchanges can be pitiful. At the elite level, you can get by with a rudimentary skill set because most opponents are just as limited. Combine the defensive postures to ward off grapplers and the hours of the day spent working on other elements, and the price of admission to the sport can often be as reasonable as a modicum of power. Chuck Liddell spent years launching his Big Right Hand until the game evolved enough as to make it predictable; possessing "heavy hands" is listed on fighter breakdowns as though it were a skill.
Assisting the inexperience is glove size: Flimsy padding means heavy punchers don't need to worry about being diffused, and smaller equipment allows for the landing of cleaner blows. (Easier to parry and deflect when you have two enormous cushions in front of your face.)
Striking is the great equalizer of the sport: Virtually no one can spend a few years training jiu-jitsu or wrestling and become as proficient as a Lesnar or Demian Maia, but some Thai sparring and an opponent willing to engage on the feet could mean a CBS spot.
It's yet another parallel to boxing's earlier days. John L. Sullivan and his peers were frequently hard-chinned toughs who subsided on a diet of beer and bacon. There was no "amateur" decade to toil in before slamming someone's face into cobblestone. But as the sport grew and spread, it became necessary to educate younger athletes and offer a platform to sharpen developing skills.
The same will hold true for this sport. Ten or 15 years from now, the idea that someone could slide into a pro career at age 25 or 30 will seem absurd. Younger men (and women) raised on network broadcasts and YouTube videos will take up the sport at earlier ages, experience a developmental period and have a substantial martial arts education in place by the time they start rolling around on a Bud Light logo.
As a teenager, Georges St. Pierre watched UFC 1 in 1993 and began studying Kyokushin karate (and later, jiu-jitsu). Like most superb athletes, he found a direction early on and followed it. And he is currently the most impressive physical specimen in the sport.
For St. Pierre, 10,000 hours might be a conservative estimate. For most everyone else, it should probably become mandatory.
Jake Rossen is a contributor to Sherdog.com.
