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The earliest upright human males a few million years ago very likely grappled with each other to compete for meat, fish, berries, and hot cave women in their perpetual fight for survival, sex, and social status. The behavior is referred to as “agonistic” fighting. How can we know what prehistoric humans did without the visual proof? Just take a quick field trip to your local zoo, and if you’re lucky enough to spot gorillas wrestling you’ll recognize it immediately. What starts off as loud and wild posturing between apes sometimes leads to a direct face off. That’s when things get spooky. The mannerisms and gesticulations are uncannily similar to modern human wrestlers “hand fighting” at the initiation of a match. An ape will stand up on his legs, then lean forward, pawing at his opponent’s head in an attempt to pull him off balance to the ground. They will try to circle around their opponents, darting back and forth to cut off each other’s advances. Keep in mind that humans are a branch of the great apes making up the Hominidae family. This fighting behavior is typical among hominid species, and was probably also shared by our common apelike ancestors many millions of years ago. Sorry Egypt and Greece, you get credited for innovating the fight game, but not inventing the fight itself. Humans are smart and learned enough to make amazing things at will like iron, bronze, and bourbon, but for millions of years we were just a brainier version of our ape cousins. We like to think our superiority to other apes has everything to do with our brains. But there’s another important difference between humans and other apes: humans can make fists. The amount of force that can be delivered with a hand strike approximately doubles when we curl our fingers. Other hominids could do this too, but only humans are able to then curl fingers further downward buttressing our fingers on the palm of our hand in the compact and sturdy form that we know as a fist. That simple maneuver doubles again the amount of force we can deliver with a hand strike over the simple curled fingers approach (that’s now four times what a slap or knifehand strike can do). Of all the evolutionary traits that were being selected as humans split off onto their own branch of the ape family tree, the ability throw a punch was one of them. When it comes to our ability to use our bodies forcefully, our weapon of choice in fighting was not teeth or claws, but our hands.
[...]... simulate dominance, not enact it They fight to gain the upper hand in position where they could do real harm to their opponent, without actually doing it They’re playing “King of the Mountain” and relying on posturing and simulated violence much like a theatrical “pro” wrestler Their gaping jaws will cover the back of their opponent’s neck without ever clenching The sensation of this move is akin to how... of the observer The fight game is the pinnacle of one-on-one competition, the ultimate test of any athlete, of any person And before the pain of the damage they have caused each other overwhelms the endorphins summoned by the fight, the competitors stop to acknowledge their appreciation of the other’s performance The rest of the night plays out to the mixed roars and occasional indifference of the. .. clinch position, or even while on the ground, in addition to the standard boxing stance where fighters are standing and separated According to the FightMetric system “Distance” means that two fighters are standing at a distance appropriate for striking, but not so close as to be holding onto each other as in the Clinch position Once one of the fighters is on the ground, they are both technically in the. .. of the Night bonus winning performance, and arguably the fight of the year for 2011, Maynard once again tasted the confusion of a fight with no winner After dominating Edgar early on and winning one round 10-8, Edgar rallied to win a few of the later rounds The judges were split Two judges scored the fight 48-45, but for different winners The tiebreaking judge scored the fight an even 47-47, resulting... each other and spread their elongated eyes apart in order to see who has the larger body The puffing of chests, bristling of body hair, standing up on hind legs, and the spreading of arms seen in so many animals are all attempts to convince their counterparts that they are physically superior The “bring it bitch!” posturing serves to decide the fight, without any fighting at all, saving both participants... with the overwhelming amount of information we now confront daily Mastering the mechanics of sound analysis enables discovery of new truths, but understanding how our minds deceive us helps us understand and believe what we’ve discovered By stamping out cognitive and psychological biases and enabling intellectual integrity, science elucidates small and large, germs and gravitation, and everything in. .. fans and edgy fashion The in- house DJ has a party on his hands, and people are drinking like they can’t possibly have an early client meeting tomorrow Together we are all watching two fighters locked inside a cage engaged in hand-to-hand combat And there in the second row, close enough to hear every collision of leather on skin and see every resultant cloud of sweat explode in the air, trickles of my... stoppage result in a judges’ decision where there can be a winner and loser These “technical decisions” are rare, but notably several have occurred in recent history In fact, at UFC 159 there were two technical decisions in the same night resulting from eye poke injuries in the final rounds of each fight In both cases the fighter who received the injury ended up losing the decision Many other times, however,... mainstream sport through analytics The objective of this book is simple: to gain a better understanding of the sport of mixed martial arts through quantitative analysis We’re interested in identifying and quantifying the underlying drivers of the fight game We want to know, not just believe that something is true So we will attack the common ideas we have about combat sports, put them to the test, and. .. challenge, and now ask you to accept my invitation to sit back and ride along while I prove it But before we start deconstructing the fight game with science and numbers, we’ll walk before we run Let’s briefly examine how humans ended up fighting in cages in the first place Food for Thought If you take four street corners, and on one they are playing baseball, on another they are playing basketball and on the . sponsor. After witty banter and channel surfing, sushi and beers with the cornermen, and then more candid discussions about fighting and life, they have become friends. And one of them is being. shocked everyone and defeated Coleman at UFC 17. While Coleman’s takedown attempts and accuracy were high and his time in a dominant position was even higher, his cardio endurance and head-strike. arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually