News
HGH Testing
The names on the lips of those interested in the science of MMA in the last month were not Penn and Diaz, but Issa and Newton. Darryl Issa is one of the Congressmen demanding the National Football League initiate testing for Human Growth Hormone this season. Terry Newton is the British rugby player who, in November 2009, became the first professional athlete ever to test positive for illegal use of HGH.
The Early Stoppage
Marquardt and Testosterone
The Zach Kirk Saga Part 2
Zach Kirk knew he would be facing a dangerous opponent at his May 2009 fight at the National Guard Armory in Shenandoah, Iowa. He did not know that he would be facing the entire Iowa legislature. The Zach Kirk Saga Part 1
Zach Kirk got hooked on mixed martial arts in March 2009. A longtime UFC fan, he picked up a promoter’s flyer at a local gas station, made a call, got briefed on the rules and strapped on the gloves. Insuring Fighters
Health insurers do their thinking with a calculator, summing risks and costs. Until UFC Chairman and CEO Lorenzo Fertitta’s breathtaking announcement of the UFC’s commitment to provide training-related health insurance to its fighters, the math has been solidly against mixed martial artists. The many positive attributes fighters have as potential insures -- young, generally male, fit -- have been wholly overshadowed by their massive career-dependent health liability. Fighting for a living is a health insurance deal breaker. Hematomas
Bruises are as much a part of mixed martial arts as tattoos and cauliflower ears, but the bruise endured by Mark Hominick at UFC 129's featherweight title bout with Jose Aldo was of another degree entirely. Mechanics of the Armbar
The well-executed armbar is like the well-executed checkmate: a position in which no harm is experienced but from which escape is impossible. Executing this -- gaining total advantage over an opponent -- involves a little more in MMA. Fistic Medicine: Roxy's Case
It was the chills that let Roxanne Modafferi know she had a problem. Most fighters have abdominal cramping and loose, irregular stools in the first few hours after their post weigh-in meal, but the chills were something new for her. Cauliflower Ear
One figure in particular stands out among the beautiful sculptures of the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek museum’s Greek antiquities wing. Amidst the marble beasts, eternally pouting graceful maidens and delicate youths, a hard faced man stares balefully at visitors. A hostile, unpretty face, he could be a soldier, a slave, a god. But by his deformed ears, we know him for what he truly is: a fighter. |
There may be a no more certain trigger for fan outrage than an early stoppage. It includes the classic elements of high drama: injustice, theft and insoluble controversy. Referee Herb Dean’s decision in the Strikeforce/M-1 Global “Fedor vs. Henderson” main event is that rarest of early-stoppage species: the virtually indisputable correct call. Dan Henderson landed his vaunted right hand, Fedor Emelianenko’s lights flickered out as he went down, and Dean moved in to save a venerated veteran from unneeded damage heaped upon growing ignominy. 
Another elite mixed martial artist has fallen to the Catch-22 of steroid use.
