On April 14th 2007, Fedor Emelianenko fought in his native russia for the first time in 6 years. Probably the greatest fighter who had ever lived up to this point, Fedor was in the midst of a legendary unbeaten streak that hasn’t seen an equal maybe ever, but across from him is not a terrifying threat to his status, but a little pink man without a hope in the world. Matt Lindland, one fot he world’s premier middleweights, steps in on short notice when negotiations fall through, and he is going toe to toe with a man who makes fellow heavyweights look like ants when he gets his hands on them - he has no chance, but he’s never stood down from a challenge before and he won’t stop now. This fight will last less than 3 minutes, in most worlds it’s a completely unremarkable affair, but in this world, the world we occupy, 30 seconds after the bell rings, we see the worst thing that has ever happened.
So you can see what went wrong here, Fedor was in the midst of defending a takedown, he had his arm over the ropes that definitely assisted him in keeping his balance, and right near the end he briefly grabs the ropes, and moments later, Lindland is reversed and now has Fedor on top of him as opposed to being on top himself. It’s a clear foul, and one the referee notices because he spends the entire time telling Fedor to let go of the ropes, but there’s no stop in the action or formal warning, so when Fedor reverses the takedown, it’s basically as if it didn’t happen as far as the fight is concerned. Now, in most instances, this is a borderline nonfactor - assuming Lindland got Fedor down, there is a really good chance that Fedor either scrambles up, sweeps Lindland or submits him from guard, but in the world we occupy, Fedor grabbing hte ropes was an affront to not just the sport of MMA, but decency itself. In forums that have either long been scrubbed from time or are just impossible to find, there were once 1000’s of posts on dozens of forums documenting the hardcore fan reaction to this, and it’s probably the best thing you could envision; There are the puritans who believe that Fedor’s rope grab should result in a no contest or at bare minimum a rematch, there are the agnostics who think that it doesn’t really matter, and then there are the crazies, and I love the crazies because they give the most interesting input. There are people who, for a decade and a half mind you, argued that Fedor intentionally cheated because Lindland posed such a threat with his wreslting that Fedor had to grab the ropes and utilize them to beat Lindland, and that if Lindland got on top of Fedor, who knows what would have happened. I have always loved Fedor/Lindland truthers, they are probably my favorite legacy crazy group in MMA, beating out stiff competition in Guram truthers and Bloodstain Lane. It’s funny to laugh at Fedor/Lindland truthers, but their particular psychosis betrays an innate quality in everybody who follows mixed martial arts and our willingness to play into hypotheticals to suit our agendas.
Fedor was the greatest fighter in the world, and for ages he was borderline unbeatable, so when Fedor stumbled, people were willing to project further than was warranted because the sample size of mistakes was just so small. People saw Fedor get cut, a problem of Fedor’s that saw the only two fights he didn’t win in his career come to be, and then grab the ropes to prevent a takedown, so that must mean that Fedor was concerned about the cut and had to cheat to get out of a bind - this is an interesting thought experiment because we can’t ever know. Who knows what would happen if Fedor ended up on the bottom against lindland, maybe Lindland lands punches to the cut and makes it worse, maybe a trigger happy doctor stops the fight and Lindland gets the win via TKO, we can’t ever know… so we assume. Depending on your bias and how willing you are to let those hypotheticals play out, you can imagine pretty much anything; it’s the magic of fouls in sports, you never know how much they truly change the game because once they happen, the original flow of the game was interrupted and now everything will be influenced by that. If you’re someone who really loves Team Quest fighters or wants to see Fedor lose, it’s easy to believe in the hypothetical reality where Lindland gets a takedown and rides out the round and Fedor’s corner stops it just as easy as it is to believe that Fedor would submit him from guard; We won’t ever know one way or the other because confirmation can never be received.
Fedor’s invulnerability allowed this insane sect of fans to exist, but it’s not the only place where you’ll see rules puritans; as forums like Reddit become more prominent in MMA culture and forums are aggregated by upvoted comments rather than by post date, hive mind mentality began to label fighters as unilateral cheaters based on a collection of gifs and how much people didn’t like them. The first person I saw this happen to was Jake Shields, and far be it from me to remind Jake’s new fanbase of neo nazis and people who totally aren’t neo nazis i don’t know why you would suggest that what are you a liberal not everyone who disagrees with you is a nazi that Shields didn’t always make the worst tweets you’ve ever seen; he used to be an incredible mma fighter. Shields is most known for his lows in MMA, a difficult thing to dissuade people from given his performances in big moments and also his post MMA Career, but what defined Shields for a long time was his UFC title fight with then Welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre. It was a really bad fight, not really ayone’s fault, but Shields poked GSP in the eyes a few times, in my opinion due to bad striking fundamentals and paws gone awry, but, whatever, that’s just my interpretation - most people’s interpretation was formed around slowed down, isolated replays posted on message boards that stripped context away from moments, and in those slow down clips, it really looks like Sheils is just jabbing at GSP’s eye with his fingers outstretched. GSP’s fanbase went to driving the narrative that Shields did this intentionally, and very few people liked Shields enough to combat it, and this stigma followed Shields for a long time. It follows a lot of other fighters in a way that I don’t think is necessarily warranted, but it just picked up momentum from online forums and their hivemind approach to interpretation - Tony Ferguson, Santiago Ponzinibbio, Michael Chandler, all labeleld some level of “dirty” fighter by mma fans, but they weren’t born from any deep dark story from obscure companies like Bodog or Shark Fights, just gfycat compilations posted on reddit of the times Santiago Ponzinnibio poked Gunnar Nelson in the eye - these thingsa ren’t conspiracies anymore, they’re just widely accepted truths about these fighters in the niche circles; borderline inside jokes among reddit users and twitter meme accounts.
I guess what I lament is that there is no more heart in fouling. Some people will say that attributing personality to fouls as if they exist outside of being acts by an individual is stupid, and, maybe it is, but the heart in fouls and how they are interpreted are what give so many of the old generation of fighters so much of their flavor. You don’t have to look much further than Matt Lindland, who famously submitted to Murilo Bustamante twice in the same night in their 2002 Middleweight title match. Matt Lindland was also notorious for not showering int he lead up to the fight, which, combined with his clinch grappling style of fighting, ensured that his opponent would be extremely uncomfortable for as long as the fight lasted. The difference between Matt Lindland’s very successful career being defined by moments that skirt the line of decency and fighters that have been deemed as dirty fighters in the modern day are a dramatic far sight from one another; Santiago Ponzinibbio won’t be remembered like Matt Lindland despite arguably reaching the same level of success of “vaguely a top fighter in a weight class”.
In a sport like MMA, where the boundaries of humanity are so ill defined and the downside to fouling is often a slap on the wrist, why not just foul? Look at fighters like Jon Jones, perhaps the most successful fighter who’s ever lived - Jones’s proclivity for breaking the rules inside the ring is perhaps only matched by his absolutely awe inspiring ways to break rules outside of it, and yet his success has never been impacted. Take his fight with Alexander Gustafsson in 2013 - Jones throws out eye poke attempts constantly, and connects with one or two despite this way of approaching clearly being against the rules… only, I don’t know that, because the referee of this fight is Big John McCarthy, a man who quite literally wrote the rules of the sport. If Jon Jones can constantly break rules that the special rule man has put down in stone with no repercussions, why not just commit fouls? What is the worst that can happen? You might say points being taken away, which can impact a decision in a close fight - Well, that means the fight both has to be close and the fight has to go to decision, which, according to a study done in 2013 by MMADecisions, only happen about twice a year, but, sure, that could happen, statistically it wont, but but sure… Let’s revisit Jon Jones. In 2019, Jon Jones has perhaps the dumbest fight in UFC History against Anthony Smith. After a relatively spirited first round where Smith loses in dramatic fashion, Anthony Smith decides that he wants to make it to a decision and not get finished, so he gives up trying to save his ego - what follows is Jon Jones keeping himself awake by fouling anthony smith. Kicks to a grounded opponent, eye pokes, Jones brings out the classics before, in round 4, Jones lands a knee to Smith and two points are deducted. This ends up mattering not at all, because not only was the fight nowhere close to being competitive, Jon Jones recorded a 2 point round he was deducted 2 points, recording what I think is the only 8-8 round in MMA History. You might ask yourself the question that has been asked since hte fight happened; what if the nuclear threat were enacted, and Anthony Smith took the foul and didn’t continue; Jones would be disqualified and Anthony Smith would become UFC Light Heavyweight Champion, an accolade that even if he wasn’t able to be proud of it would net him a substantial increase in money due to a champion’s rights in the UFC at this time with the Reebok Apparell deal. Nobody really knows why Smith didn’t do it, he was probably in his rights to, he wasn’t going to beat Jones, he probably wasn’t good to fight, he was getting decimated and then got kneed - just stay down and let Jones lay in the bed he made… he didn’t, and Jones escaped the hangman’s noose completely unscathed.
Mixed Martial Arts exists outside of the realm of peace and fairness. For all the storylines people try and weave, the majesty of Mixed MArtial Arts, much like its insistence that this is a sport with hard and fast rules, is completely imaginary. If you are a fighter who abides by fighting clean while knowing that you will receive no punishment, you are artificially handicapping yourself for no reason. If you’re a fan who holds fighters to an arbitrary standard of morality while you watch them kill each other in a cage with the faintest idea of rules that nobody enforces, you’re handicapping what makes the sport memorable. In 2007, Fedor Emelianenko was part of the worst thing that ever happened; he committed a foul so overtly that it forced forum nerds to create a world where he would lose had he not done it, separating any illusion that fans and fighters are engaging in good faith discourse about a sport. It was never about sports; it was always about ourselves, and the things we can take away from it.
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