In what is surely a sign of a deeply diseased mind, one of my first thoughts upon reading the opening chapter of ‘Walden’ was to compare Henry David Thoreau (unfavorably) with Ultimate Fighting Championship heavyweight Roy Nelson. Roy Nelson is what MMA fans call an “ambassador for the sport.” He may be fat and (at least as far as professional fighters go) pretty bad at fighting. But people root for him b/c he comes across in interviews as intelligent and humble, and he spends a lot of his time helping underprivileged kids in Las Vegas. Contrast w/ Henry David Thoreau, who is widely regarded as one of the great American writers. Yet in Economy, the first chapter of Walden, he delivers blanket insults to anyone who didn’t choose his style of deliberate living, and frankly (imho) comes off as kind of a dick. Maybe the reason so many people still lead “lives of quiet desperation” is that there have been too few ambassadors for the “sport” of alternative, examined, deliberate lifestyles. I am sure that there are better ways to live than the regular [go to college -> get a job w/ two weeks off /year -> get married -> retire] template that so many take for granted. But surely we don’t need to insult the people who are living that life in order to demonstrate that there are better (or at least different) ways to do things.
Additional thoughts on the UFC, not wrt anything else: The Ultimate Fighting Championship is in a strange place right now. Its marquee divisions (welterweight, middleweight, and light heavy) all seem like competitions for second place. Georges St-Pierre has cleaned out the 170 lb. division to such an extent that challengers are being ported in from Strikeforce (his fight w/ Shields wasn’t particularly close, and I don’t see any reason to think Diaz will fare any better.) Anderson Silva has had exactly one close fight since he won the Middleweight belt in 2006, and he has looked like a monster* in his last two fights. It might be too early to say that Jon Jones will be as dominant as GSP or Silva, but after the way he destroyed Rua, I predict that he will be wearing that belt for a good long time. Full disclosure: I have been on this bandwagon since I watched him suplex Stephan Bonnar at UFC 94. But even when I try to think objectively about it, I just don’t see anyone in the division with the tools to beat this guy with his 85” reach and his varied (and ridiculously unorthodox) skill set.
*Here is a great clip of Forrest Griffin talking about their 2009 fight at light heavyweight: “Every fight I go into, no matter what happens- it couldn’t be worse than Anderson Silva.”