I don't know if you can read it without a subscription to The Atlantic, but here is David Samuels's recent Atlantic article on the UFC championship fight between Rampage Jackson and Forrest Griffin. (By the way, Samuels wrote in The New Republic one of the best articles on Obama's autobiography (i.e., he clearly had read my stuff when researching his essay).
For an analysis of Rampage Jackson's cognitive decision-making skills in the wake of his loss to Griffin, when he was arrested after trying to sneak away in his vehicle from a traffic accident he caused, see What Would Tyler Durden Do?:
For an analysis of Rampage Jackson's cognitive decision-making skills in the wake of his loss to Griffin, when he was arrested after trying to sneak away in his vehicle from a traffic accident he caused, see What Would Tyler Durden Do?:
Rampage is maybe the most charismatic and likeable athlete to come around since Barkley, but he’s no criminal mastermind. He committed a hit and run in a [jacked-up monster] truck with his name and picture on the side. “Can you describe the vehicle that hit you, sir?” “Yes, imagine if Rampage Jackson was a truck.”
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
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16 comments:
Steve - thanks for turning me on to that Tyler Durden site- that guy Brendan who writes it is probably the funniest writer on the internet.... in fact, I am going to award him that title. What do you know about him? c'mon you gotta have something - was his paternal granddad Charlie Chaplin's stunt double in the Little tramp? Did his mom defend Roman Polanski in the trial of the decade? You know you've got something.
"Imagine if Rampage Jackson was a truck" - that's genius- all I could come up with was that he went on a, well, rampage.
Rampage suffered an emotional breakdown after his loss to Griffin, a fighter he really should have defeated. He didn't eat for days, ingesting only energy drinks, and eventually went nuts. His "rampage" did not reflect his usual "cognitive decision-making skills."
UFC fans got to know him reasonably well during his tenure as a coach on The Ultimate Fighter (Spike TV's reality show). He's far from dumb. And he's a very funny guy.
Steve, have you ever considered the correlation between intelligence and a sense of humor?
I am glad you are finally writing about the UFC!!!!
Rampage Jackson is not the most colorful and likeable athlete -- guys like Mir or Couture, or Mark Coleman, the guy who came up with ground and pound would fit that bill.
He's not stupid either, but he is unbalanced. He's probably too emotional to be a good UFC fighter, it seems to require an emotional distance and the ability to suffer, for long periods of time.
It's interesting, btw, that few Blacks get into Wrestling in High School or College. Wrestling is not flashy. It is fairly brutal. Yet it offers a very good path to College scholarships, and for those who want it, an avenue to Professional Wresting. Kurt Angle, and Brock Lesnar being two good examples. [Angle is much tougher.]
Yet there are relatively few Black Pro Wrestlers. The daily grind is hideously brutal -- guys there perform with injuries that would send football players to the hospital.
You see to need the ability to endure suffering to be successful in MMA and Wrestling, either Pro or amateur.
It's interesting, btw, that few Blacks get into Wrestling in High School or College. Wrestling is not flashy. It is fairly brutal. Yet it offers a very good path to College scholarships
Unfortunately, Title IX has forced many colleges to discontinue their wrestling programs.
Peter
OK, after this I'm going to stop responding to testing99.
Rampage Jackson is "probably too emotional to be a good UFC fighter"? He's probably the best light heavyweight in the world!
And he's "not the most colorful and likeable athlete"? This is a guy who shows up for fights wearing a heavy chain around his neck, howling like a wolf. In interviews, he's consistently hilarious.
Mir, Couture, and Coleman are all admirable fighters, but none of them (except maybe Mir) has a tenth of Rampage's personality.
Testing99, why do you want to piss on black fighters?
Thanks for exposing me to another tacky celeb culture website, Steve.
Oh yeah. As if the snarky commenters there are so far above the level of the targets of their outrage.
They sit behind their cheap Chinese keyboards with their bad credit.....wearing "sneakers with flashing lights in them", cheesy t-shirts, bad hair, garrish makeup and polycarbonate jewelry.....they slurp supersized soft drinks while sneering down from their electronic perches.....hurling vicious insults from a safe distance. Much like the rabble once did in a Roman stadium.
But enough about MarketWatch.com.....
One of the funniest things I heard Jackson say was before his fight with Marvin Eastman:
"It's time for a little bit of Black on Black crime"
More words of wisdom here:
http://www.losteyeball.com/index.php/2007/05/26/rampage-jackson-quotes/
It seems like more guys who played football in school wind up in pro wrestling. Former amateur wrestlers like Kurt Angle, Brock Lesnar, Shelton Benjamin and Bobby Lashley are a rarity.
testing99:
You know little about wrestling of the scholastic variety. It may be "brutal," but only when compared to tennis (or chess). The whole sport is so highly constrained by safety regulations that I'd expect that a major obstacle to a scholastic wrestler competing in MMA or UFC is simply overcoming inhibitions ingrained over the scholastic period.
Black rarity in the activity is more to be explained by cultural mileau. In the US, wrestling began and spread from (mostly-white) Oklahoma. And the spread was primarily of an "elitist" nature, confined mostly to relatively middle-to-upperclass suburban high schools, private academies, and colleges. Further, there was little or no "pro" attraction in the sport: that was a "show-business" arena and, moreover, applicable only to heavyweights (who, historically, at least, were almost never very accomplished wrestlers in a technical sense).
Blacks had little tradition of or acquaintance with that type of wrestling; they played other sports. But, as wrestling spread (with the development of more and more--ex-scholastic-wrestler--coaches, more blacks became exposed and experienced. But some blacks have been wrestling for quite some time, perhaps as long as wrestling has been a sport Lili Riefenstahl (of "Will to Power" infamy) made documentary film of the relatively remote Big Nuba and Little Nuba tribes and their traditional wrestling competition: actually, it's nearly identical to the scholastic or international amateur competition.
In my own view, the single most negative aspect of scholastic wrestling is the incentive (and lure) of "making weight" in order to compete at the lightest class possible. This isn't a "scientific" view--just a general opinion that extreme weight loss (typically involving more or less extreme dehydration on a recurrent basis) during what should be the normal growing and maturation period simply doesn't seem like a good thing.
".......to answer classic male questions such as: "Who would win in a fight: a boxer or a wrestler? A tai chi blackbelt or a krav maga adept?""
The answer? The fight promoter wins.
Ancient history may have an insight to the always-interesting wrestler/boxer question.
The ancient Olympics included an event called the Pancration (not sure of spelling--it's been over 50years) which pitted a wrestler against a boxer (and whose fists were armed with ancient "knucks" (leather affairs armed with metal spikes) called "cestus" (again, unsure of spelling).
Supposedly (according to whatever I'd read at the time), no boxer ever won the event through a period of 400 years or so (100 Olympiads). According to the same source, there were gladiators during the Roman era of circuses in the Coliseum who used (karate or judo-like) chops to great advantage.
Another thing to which I can attest is that, though I'd read of "karate" and "savate" when fairly young, these words were actually unknown when I was going to high school (mid-'50s). There was a general awareness of such things as "judo chops" but no use of the word "karate." As far as I know, the very first general exposure to such style of combat was the brief episode in "Bad Day At Black Rock," in which Spencer Tracy successfully defends himself against a couple thugs (one being Ernest Borgnine). But the word wasn't used in the movie and actually only started to become known some time later.
Black rarity in the activity is more to be explained by cultural mileau. In the US, wrestling began and spread from (mostly-white) Oklahoma. And the spread was primarily of an "elitist" nature, confined mostly to relatively middle-to-upperclass suburban high schools, private academies, and colleges. ...--gene berman
Indeed. Remember The World According to Garp?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_According_to_Garp
"Mark Coleman, the guy who came up with ground and pound would fit that bill."
He invented throwing someone to the ground and pounding the shite out of them? Really? I thought that was ogg after ugg looked at missus ogg in a funny way.
"Ancient history may have an insight to the always-interesting wrestler/boxer question.
The ancient Olympics included an event called the Pancration (not sure of spelling--it's been over 50years) which pitted a wrestler against a boxer (and whose fists were armed with ancient "knucks" (leather affairs armed with metal spikes) called "cestus" (again, unsure of spelling).
Supposedly (according to whatever I'd read at the time), no boxer ever won the event through a period of 400 years or so (100 Olympiads). According to the same source, there were gladiators during the Roman era of circuses in the Coliseum who used (karate or judo-like) chops to great advantage."
Pancration was a fight between two pancrationists and it was an all-in bout, striking with the hands and feet and both stand up and ground grappling. Basically think of it as being like MMA except people often chose to die rather than submit to a choke.
Historians and archaeologists who study the Hellenic Greeks have learned a good deal about the ancient sports from the statues and urns left behind to honour the olympians.
Boxing and wrestling were seperate events at the Olympics.
Anonymous:
I've read the Wiki entry, which totally supports your criticism. My only experience of the subject was from a single popular magazine
source back in the early '50s, so I have not the slightest hesitation in erasing the present content of my memory and replacing with what I'd presume to be the most authoritative current info.
Many thanks. (I gave up all reading of fiction in 1947 or '48--specifically to protect the contents of my mind and memory from accumulating an overwhelming burden of bullshit. Oddly (and sadly, maybe), it took me another 30 years to quit newspapers, newsmagazines, and TV news sources, though, even in my teens, I had some idea of the vulnerability of those to (either through ignorance or design). (You'd be surprised how frequently we got the deadly pinning combination, the "arsepress," the "reverse arsepress," and even the "arsebar" into the local and big-city sports results. We also used combinations like the "larnpress," as in "that'll larn ya!" successfully.
Had a buddy from Oklahoma who participated in high school wrestling there in the second half of the 1980s. He wrestled a decent number of blacks in the program. He complained that their hair gave them an advantage. (I am not making that up.) He claimed that their nappies were "scratchy" and that this was "unfair." LOL
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