I am always interested in what goes on that makes people fans of some athlete or team or another. Obviously, a lot of people will support the team representing the place where they live or where they grew up. With individual sports its different. Who should you root for in Formula 1? You could pick the guy from your country, if Scott Speed were still driving, but rooting for Americans in F1 is pretty boring (there's like one guy every decade, and they haven't done well since the 70's).

I end up rooting for guys for several reasons. I like people who are decent sportsmen - a guy is rude or does things he shouldn't, I'm likely to root against him. I like guys who have personalities, in interviews and so on. I'll also often find myself rooting for a guy who has had bad luck in the past (mechanical breakdowns, etc.) - hence my joy at Kimi Raikonnen winning this year's world championship.

What about MMA fighters? I like certain styles. I prefer standup, so I root for strikers. I like guys with aggressive styles. I remember really liking the way, for example, George St. Pierre went after people in his fights - very active, always attacking. I like unorthordox styles because it's fun to try to figure out why they work or how I'd counter them, which is why I really like Chuck Lidell. And I'll root for a guy with cool tattoos, if I've got nothing else to go on, because I like tattoos. If I wasn't deathly afraid of needles I'd be covered in them.

I wanted to dislike Quinton "Rampage" Jackson from the first interview I saw with him. He made some off the cuff joke about needing a win so he could pay for all of his kids - with no mention of a wife, so presumably these kids are from different women and not from a nuclear family. I'm an inner city high school teacher and I'm very much against the children out of wedlock, multiple partner thing, I mean REALLY against it, so I didn't want to like him. Then he beat my hero Chuck and took the title away, and I was sad.

But...

In the leadup to his fight with Dan Henderson Rampage said something very cool. When these guys are interviewed about upcoming opponents they always say the same stupid crap - I'm going to knock him out, I hate the guy, it's going to be a war, etc. Not Rampage. He said, "I don't like the guy - I love the guy." (Actually, he might have said "I love him," so don't sue me if the quote is slightly off). Apparently they're friends. Rampage said nothing but respectful things about Dan, but also said that in the ring he'd be all business - which he was. I mean, I get that he was trying to hurt Dan in the ring, that's the job, but he didn't act like an a$$hole before the fight.

I've listened to quite a few Rampage interviews and quotes and I can't help but liking the guy. When he's being serious he's all class, all respect, and you can't deny his fighting ability. And his jokes are usually at his own expense, not the other guy's, which shows someone who's pretty comfortable with himself. He really comes across as a decent guy, to the extent that I doubt he could be faking it.

I sometimes wonder what I'd say in those interviews (not that I'd ever make it in MMA). I'd love to see a guy get interviewed and have it go something like this:

Interviewer: "How do you think your next fight will go?"

Fighter: "Against (fill in name)? Oh, I just hope I don't get knocked out in the first minute or so. Have you seen that guy fight? He's awesome."

Or this:

Interviewer: "Who do you want to fight next?"

Fighter: "I want the easiest fight they'll pay me for. None of these top guys - they hit hard and hurt people. I want the title, but I really hope that the current titleholder fails a drug test or something so I can get it without fighting him."

It won't happen, but I'd enjoy listening to something like that.

Think about what you're a fan of and what it says about you. It's kind of interesting.

Happy Halloween. Don't wear your gi as a costume. Don't let your kids wear gis as a costume. If you see the neighbor's kids wearing a gi as a costume, beat the crap out of them (no, not really).

Osu.

So Otakon is this big convention where 22,000 people get together to watch cartoons, talk about cartoons, buy cartoons, and dress like cartoons.  It's more fun than it should be, and I've been going for 8 years.  Wouldn't miss one.  

The Good:  we get to see some nice training footage of and get some insight into some completely unknown fighters.  The crew visited The Pit, where Chuck Lidell trains, and Greg Jackson's gym, and some other famous places.  The Bad:  we get to watch these guys shoot bottle rockets at each other, commit very minor acts of vandalism and hooliganism, all in the name of fun.  

I have to admit I thought these guys were tremendous schmucks when I started watching.  They go by codenames - Mask, Punkass, and SkySkrape (sp?).  Mask wears facepaint at all times.  SkySkrape tends to wear his underwear outside his outerwear, making me wonder if he has a prepositional deficiency.  I am predisposed to thinking that anybody who wears facepaint regularly or a jockstrap outside their shorts is an a$$hole.

But they do seem to genuinely care about their business and about their fighters.  In the third episode they put off the guy they're going to sponsor, but pull back the crazy a little and seem to really get to know him.  After three episodes they come across as pretty decent people who act weird - and I have nothing against acting weird.

The second show is far better, because it stars mostly women.  It's Fight Girls on Oxygen (yes, I now have a series recording on the Oxygen network.  I'm secure enough to admit it.)  It's a reality show kind of like Ultimate Fighter.  They got 10 girls who want to fight for Muay Thai championships in Thailand.  A pair fights each week.  Loser goes home, winner goes to Thailand, they all train at Master Toddy's gym in Vegas. 

And it has Gina Carano.

Let me say it again - it has Gina Carano.

(sigh)

I would watch a show that just had Gina Carano sitting around reading a magazine.  I would tape it and watch it again later.  Let me stop there.

The Good:  Did I mention Gina Carano?  Oh, yeah, and good training sequences, all Muay Thai.  The Bad:  Master Toddy's psychological gamesmanship is annoying.  Does he know what he's doing?  I guess - I mean, the guy's trained a hell of a lot more champion fighters than, for example, me (50-0).  But he plays tricks on the girls that strike me as being kind of condescending to keep them motivated and so forth.  They don't seem to mind, but I find it annoying.

I used to read a lot of bodybuilding magazines (there's a point to this, I promise).  I was a fan of the sport as well as someone who wanted to gain muscle - this is back in the 80's, early 90's, and I thought that the competitors then looked really good.  The magazines were interesting.  The Weider magazines, Flex and Muscle & Fitness, were obviously published to help Joe Weider sell his bodybuilding products, but they had lots of articles and information that had nothing to do with anything that he sold.  The magazines were more about selling the lifestyle, the sport, and about generic health information, and not about Weider products in particular.  Sure, there were ads, but there was plenty of information about the health value of things in which Joe Weider had no financial interest.  And there were other magazines, notably Ironman and Musclemag International, that had no particular relationship to any supplement company, so you could sort of trust the stuff you read - it might have been wrong, but it was honestly wrong, not an attempt to get you to buy something that you didn't need.

Creatine markedly changed the industry.  For the first time there was a supplement that really worked, and a company, EAS, to sell it.  Bill Phillips created a magazine (or maybe he bought it - I don't remember) MuscleMedia 2000 and turned it into a catalog for his company.  Every other article was about his supplements, his company, and the bodybuilders he had on contract.  It was really just an EAS vehicle with a few articles thrown in that you had to pay for.  Musclemag and Ironman soon hooked up with their own companies and soon every major magazine on the market was a catalog for someone or other and it was very hard for a while to find information that felt objective. 

I haven't read any of the magazines regularly for a long time now, so there might have been changes since then, but by the early 1990's the magazines devoted to just providing information about training and the sport were all gone.

What's my point?  Martial arts magazines are starting to go the same route.  This might have been true in the past as well, and maybe I'm just now noticing it. 

Take a magazine like Black Belt, for example.  Say what you want about the content, it's pretty much just an attempt to put out articles that people will want to read.  A lot of their content has nothing to do with any Black Belt products - they're not just trying to get you to buy their DVD's or t-shirts or equipment or whatever, they're trying to sell magazines and advertising space to other businesses.

But there are a growing number of magazines that I'm finding that are really glorified (or not so glorified) catalogs for various publishers.  Budo International has very little content that isn't related to one of their own products.  Classical Fighting Arts has lots of varied content but only like two different advertisers, which makes it seem like their videos are the only worthwhile ones around.  Another magazine I just picked up, Masters magazine, is the same thing - a catalog for a line of videos and books put out by one particular publisher.

Now I happen to love Classical Fighting Arts magazine, and I liked Masters Magazine quite a bit (though I haven't watched the free DVD yet).  But I have to wonder if Classical Fighting Arts editors are going to publish worthwhile material brought by a martial artist who sells his videos or books through an unaffiliated publisher.  Maybe they would, but it is something to keep in mind when you read it. 

The thing to think about is what you're looking for in a martial arts magazine.  I doubt any of us learn any actual martial arts out of any of them.  At best I'll pick up a training method or a refinement of a technique once every few months out of all the things that I read.  But I like learning about other arts, even if I have no intention of studying them.  I'm interested in that stuff, and I would be even if I didn't train myself.  And I'm interested in the history of martial arts.

Does learning about the roots of karate make my own technique better?  I don't think so.  I now understand a lot more about the evolution of the karate dojo as I know it, much more than I knew fifteen years ago, but I don't think it has much impact on my learning or in how I act in the school.  At best it might have something to do with my motivation.  I get a little juiced by learning about old masters or how things worked in the old days or about the history of my own style and its techniques and kata.  It makes me eager to train, even if it doesn't actually affect the content of my training.  So I read the magazines and books. 

I will conclude by saying that lots of great martial artists could care less about the history of their art or about the cultures of other arts - they just care about techniques, what works and what doesn't work.  I can't fault them for that.  For them, most of the magazines would be a waste of time and money.  For me, I still enjoy my quarterly doses of Journal of Asian Fighting Arts, Classical Fighting Arts, Fightsport (the best MMA related magazine I've run across), and my monthly dose of Black Belt. 

Let me know if I've missed any good publications.

Good training.