Saturday Fights

The UFC has a big fight card coming up on Saturday.

The preliminary and early preliminary fights look OK, but it's the main card that shines.

In the first couple of these bouts, the #3 and #5 Light-Heavyweights fight, as do the #3 and #7 Welterweights. Nobody is getting and easy fight here.

After that the most feared female fighter on the planet, Chris Cyborg is up. This is only her second fight in the UFC, but her overall record is 17-1-1. Her only loss was her very first fight. She is a bit of a physical freak, looking much like a white Mike Tyson, and fights with shocking brutality. The only thing that seems to be holding back her career is Christine herself. She is forever making unrealistic demands of the UFC and her prospective opponents.

This time out the Womens 145 pound Championship is up for grabs between Cyborg and a respectable opponent in Tonya Evinger (19-5-0).

After the women, the Mens 145 pound World Champion, Tyron Woodley faces #1 contender Demian Maia. It will be a classic striker versus grappler match-up, although both have strong skills in every aspect of the game. This fight alone could easily highlight and headline the card.

However, it does not. The premier bout will be Light Heavyweight Champion Daniel Cormier facing #1 challenger Jon Jones. Cormier's record is 19-1, with his only loss being by decision to Jon Jones back in 2015.

Jon Jones' record is 22-1, with his only loss being by disqualification in a fight he was easily winning.

The interest comes not just in it being a re-match, but in speculation over Jones' deteriorated skills. You see, he has had a number of run ins with the law and sport regulators over criminal offences, alcohol, and failed drug tests. Since beating Daniel Cormier, he has only fought once, as opposed to Cormier's four victorious outings. Has Jones ability eroded away due to neglect and inactivity? We shall see.

The great news is that even if the Cormier-Jones bout gets cancelled at the last moment, or is boring, or has a fluke ending, there is still more than enough on the card to make a great event.

Fires

This year is a time of disaster for my Canadian province. British Columbia is being ravaged by wildfires through the central regions.

The danger is so bad that approximately 30,000 residents have been evacuated. Several towns have been largely abandoned. It being a largely rural area, thousands of animals have also been pulled out.

About 10,000 have been accommodated in the city of Kamloops. Others have been been directed to various centres as far away as Chilliwack.

This is as it should be. These refugees are people, and need our help. The hosting communities have been bending over backward to handle the influx, and the government is trying to provide sufficient support, and to even provide direct funding to those displaced.

This is all as it should be. I have not heard a single call for the refugees to be turned away, or for the host communities to, “look after their own first.”

To do so would be heartless, and unthinkable.

This is how it should be. We are one. We are the same. No tribes exist.

Looters have been caught, and there have even been arsonists.

Nobody has said that our refugees should be kept out, as looters and arsonists could be hiding in their midst. To do so would be ridiculous. Even if this were true, banning the vast majority of people needing refuge to keep out some hypothetical threat would not occur to anybody.

The refugees are us, and we are them.

Cancelled but Not

Here in Canada it is a long weekend right now. July 1^st is the anniversary of Canada's birth as a nation. That this year the day off of work is on Monday.

Friday is the start of the weekend, and there is an open mat Jiu-Jitsu time. Normally, I'd work with Tawha on polishing up the second-level testing technique, but this time she was away. Often nobody else shows up, but this Friday was different. Our chief instructor, Shawn Phillips needed a partner to work with on the third level testing stuff. It is important to get this done, as the level four stuff has just been released, and we don't get access until he completes testing for level three. I was free, and so we jumped right in to all of that.

Saturday morning is another open mat time, and I always go. Usually somebody shows up, but I was sceptical of anybody else being there on a long weekend, so I posted that I would only be there if somebody let me know beforehand. Nobody did, and I bailed on doing open mat. Luckily, my friend Koko is back from university for the holiday, and wanted to get together to train. We met on the mat at 4pm, and drilled a huge range of technique. We were at it for two solid hours.

Sunday is a day of complete shut down at the school, and this weekend was no different.

Monday isn't even normally part of the weekend, but it is this time around. Usually, I head into the city to train at Marc Marins' school, but they are closed for the holiday. This doesn't matter, as Shawn wants to get together again to work on his third-level test stuff. No reason not to jump right in on this task again.

So in summation, my three usual sessions on Friday, Saturday, and Monday, have all been cancelled. Each has been replaced with other training that is at just as good, and all of it just dropped into my lap.

Cross Match

There is a weird fight coming up at the end of August.

It is between perhaps the best boxer of all time, and a UFC fighter.

It has a lot of people all abuzz, but it is nothing but a freak show. The two types of fighting are totally incompatible.

It has been proven on numerous occasions that even a very good boxer cannot win under UFC rules against a decent MMA fighter. This won't be a factor, as the fight will be with boxing rules.

So what does that mean for the match-up? It means that the MMA guy is under an insurmountable disadvantage.

Let's say you have two equally skilled fighters from these two styles. Why can't the MMA guy win under boxing rules; they do a lot of boxing in their training?

Let's divide everything that an MMA fighter does into two areas; standing and ground. Boxers focus all of their efforts into strictly standing. That means that they will have put far more time and effort into the standing game compared to the MMA fighter. As they are fighting under boxing rules, there will be no ground fighting of any kind.

Even the standing training isn't equally focused. MMA people spend a lot of their standing training around how to get an opponent down, and defending against getting taken down.

Even the striking portion isn't the same. MMA people have to deal with and deliver kicks, and elbow strikes. Boxers focus strictly on hands.

Even with everything else eliminated other than hands, the two fighter types don't train the same.

For example; the MMA fighter is used to competing at a longer range than the boxer. It is normal to stay just at outer kick range, which is far outside of the zone that boxers inhabit. They are used to zipping into and out of range rapidly to avoid and deliver strikes, and to perform other attacks and to close for grappling. Boxers need concern themselves with none of this.

They also strike differently. Boxers have to train for their fists to perform both offensive and defensive roles. In offence, they can strike harder due to the larger, hand-protecting gloves they wear. MMA gloves afford nothing like the same level of hand protection, limiting the damage it is prudent to take in delivering power blows.

The gloves also provide boxers with a defensive-cushion form of blocking. It is quite normal to block an incoming gloved fist with one's own gloved fist. It is also possible to prevent punches from getting through a defensive posture just by merit of the incoming fist's bulk. The smaller MMA gloves mean that this style of defence is that style of combat.

So the contest is not an equal one by any means. They will be fighting under exactly the rules that the boxer is used to, and that he has trained for his entire life. A lion's share of the MMA fighter's training is irrelevant to this contest, and even his striking work has all been done under a paradigm where different tactics are the norm. He will be striking and defending strikes in a manner different than is what he is used to.

In this contest, the only hope that the MMA gentleman has is that he might be such a vastly superior athlete that he will win anyway. It doesn't look like this is the case.

The boxer has faced the elite of boxing, and currently has a record of 49-0. The MMA fighter's record is 24-3. About the only area that the MMA guy has in his favour is age. He will be 29 years old on fight night, as opposed to the boxer, who will be 40, and who will have not fought for almost 2 years.

Taken all together, how do I see it all going.

I assume that the pace will be dictated by the MMA fighter if he uses his brain at all. He will be more used to distance changes, and should be able to keep well outside of punching range should he chose to. About his only advantage will be that he should be able to zip in quickly, and then retreat out again. In comparison, the boxer will seem plodding.

In a very real way, this will be meaningless. The boxer has by far the better punching ability, and hand speed, and should be able to win every exchange that the MMA guy allows to happen.

It could also well be that the MMA guy, whose ego knows no bounds, will come out trying to beat the boxer by using traditional boxing methods. If he does this, the fight will be very one-sided indeed, and likely quite short.

The Girl was Back

It was a normal Monday for me at first.

On the road by 7:15am to catch the 8:25 ferry, followed by a string of buses, coffee at Starbucks, and training at North Vancouver Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu's noon class.

The way home is where it strayed. In a way it remained perfectly ordinary, full of buses and ferries, but in another manner it was not. My friend Elizabeth trains at North Van BJJ, but today she was coming home to visit her folks after class. Really, her home is in Vancouver now, but she started here on the Coast, and it's where her family still lives.

That meant I had company for the trip home, which was a very pleasant change. Somehow the travel time seemed less harsh. The boat was running quite late, but even so Elizabeth went strolling up her parents' driveway at a little after 5pm.

Her plan was to spend the following morning and afternoon at home, and to train at our Jiu-Jitsu school's advanced class later in the evening. It's where she started her martial arts journey, and she rarely gets to see the old gang.

Everybody was glad to see her, and several said they would figure out a way to get to a few Vancouver classes, and Elizabeth was also making plans to get back on our mat again as soon as she could. It was really nice. I tried to take a back seat, as I get to see her in the city almost every Monday.

Getting back to a hometown can be nice.

Nope

Cruising is fun, but I think the assorted lines are under-exploiting one of the most profitable segments of the market.

Several cruise lines run around-the-world voyages. They are always the most expensive trips for guests on a fee-per-day basis. The list price is fairly comparable to shorter sailings, but this is an illusion.

World cruises always completely sell out far in advance, and always at full price. On shorter cruises, the lines are forced to have a very flexible pricing system to prevent vacant cabins. It is normal to get rate reductions of 25% as a matter of course, and 50% off is not unusual. Sometimes even better bargains can be had. This never happens on world cruises.

With all of this in mind, you'd think cruise lines would want to run more world voyages than they currently do.

In fact, they don't.

Right now it is impossible to do better than to be wait-listed for any of a number of world cruises departing in January of 2018. They are all completely full, and at full price.

The lines don't even utilize large ships. They tend to send out small ones, which further limits the number of cabins. These days a small-to-medium sized cruise vessel is around 75,000 tons and carries about 2000 passengers. The usual vessel that Princess uses for their round-the-world voyages is under 20,000 tons, with room for only 750 passengers. It's also almost 50 years old. Holland America uses bigger vessels, but still nothing like the industry standard.

There are people who swear by small ships, but they are crazy. On the bigger vessel I already mentioned there is 50% more space onboard per person than on a littler ship. That means more comfort, amenities, and things to do. They are also vastly more modern, efficient, and less prone to breakdown.

Of course, if the lines flood the market, the prices would have to come down which would defeat the appeal to the corporations involved, but there is clearly room for more added capacity before that happens. By increasing service conservatively, they would still sell out at full price, but perhaps only 6 months ahead of the sailings.

Four years ago when we retired, Helen and I considered doing a world cruise, but rejected it on the basis of the outrageous price-per-day, and less than attractive vessels. Spending 105 to 120 days on a cramped, old ship just wasn't appealing, especially at a premium price.

Ever since, I've kept an eye on such trips. Most such sailings are done by super high-priced luxury lines, but Holland America and Princess do them in a price range that we could swing if we wanted to.

Of these, some are instantly rejected if the ship is too tiny, or old. Of the few still in the running, most get themselves scrapped due to unattractive itineraries. Holland America has one in January (sold out) on a 63,000 ton ship built in the year 2000. That's new enough, and just barely big enough for our tastes.

It starts out in Florida, which is really good, but other than that single city the route misses North America altogether. It also totally skips South America, and Europe, although to be fair it does do a lot of stops in Africa if that is your thing. This itinerary failed for us.

A year off in June of 2018, Princess has a ship sailing from Sydney, Australia (not great for us to start and end in), in a newish, ship of sufficient size (77,000 tons). It has a lovely route, if a bit skimpy on Asia, that covers Australia, Europe, and both Americas nicely. It also manages a stop in Iceland, and two in Greenland of all places. The only missed continent is Africa (and misses Antarctica, which none of these trips ever visits). It is a bit rushed as world cruises go, being only 106 days.

The deal breaker is the price-per-day, and the price in total. We could easily piece together an equally long holiday consisting of a number of cruises, with land segments, and lots of flights in between, and do so at a substantially lower cost, and actually see more places.

But I do enjoy looking at them.

Longshot Bet

You can never, ever know.

Our advanced class currently has 6 regular members. There have been no injuries at all in quite a while.

The other night, we had a lovely lesson. The moves were simple, and easy to perform safely. No problem.

After that, we all rolled around for about half an hour. This is always safe enough, but even more so that time around. The instructions were to not worry about submitting each other, but rather to try different things, and also to allow them to happen when our partner tried theirs. We defended, but not to shut things down.

It was fun, and we changed partners every so often. All was well.

I was rolling with our instructor when the final round ended. Mere seconds after we stopped, his knee went boing. He was OK; it does that sometimes to him.

As we were gathering together at the time, everybody noticed, and both Tawha and Cosme said that their knees went out in the last roll, too. Worst of all was Rob, whose bum knee is of a different magnitude.

His went right out, and he could barely put any weight on it at all. Within a period of only a couple of minutes, 4 out of the 6 of us were hit with knee issues. There was no common cause; no similar movements, and nobody felt particularly tired. Seems like a fluke.

All were pretty much fine again by the next evening, even Rob. He wisely did everything carefully, and was still able to roll, although with some extra caution.

Four had been hurt, within minutes of one another, and all the injuries were to knees.

What are the odds of that?