At an unregulated amateur fight in Michigan, Alan Grays squared up with Jose Johnston. The bout was stopped, but it was for reasons that had never previously been a part of MMA records keeping. Part of Grays’ anatomy rolled away – his eye.
The eye was – THANK HEAVENS – prosthetic, as can be seen in the fact that it rolled in a circle, rather than a straight line. Human eyes are circular, and thus would tend to roll straight; prosthetic eyes are more oblong, and would roll as seen.
And it must be said that Grays fighting without an eye shows a notable degree of c courage, as depth perception is compromised with one eye. Many years later, the gallant Michael Bisping would go on to compete at the highest levels of MMA, with just one functioning eye.
Why HOLY F@$%ING $#!* is The Heart of MMA
Lorenzo Fertitta, at the time the co-owner of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), was once asked by The Atlantic magazine to explain what makes mixed martial arts so compelling. He said it came down to three words, two of which aren’t fit for print.
“… there’s the holy s*** factor. Actually, they said ‘the holy f***ing s*** factor.’ It happens at every fight, explained Fertitta. At least one or two times in every UFC show, whether you say it out loud or you say it to yourself, you go, ‘holy shit did that just happen?’ I mean, you might see somebody do a flip, get kicked in the head, get knocked out with a punch. At some point, you’re going ‘whoah, did that just happen? Did I really just see that?’ That’s the nucleus of what our product is.
MixedMartialArts.com scours the sport to find those HOLY F@$%ING S#!* moments from across the globe, and bring them to you.
Content re-published with permission from the copyright holder.
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About The UnderGround at MixedMartialArts.com
The UnderGround was launched in August of 1998, when mixed martial arts was so new it didn’t have a name, by Kirik Jenness, David Roy, and Gabriel Smallman. In the beginning, it was primarily a vehicle to market The Fighter’s Notebook, the first book on MMA, authored by Jenness and Roy. A message board was added as an afterthought, but it quickly became the centerpiece of the site.
The UG became a place for fighters, coaches, fans, all of us, to virtually hang out, and the site grew and grew into an online community. Ultimate Athlete magazine named it the 8th most important thing in the history of MMA, saying, if not for The Underground … the sport might have died, as PPV buys had sunk to such abysmal levels.
The url changed from SubmissionFighting.com, to MixedMartialArts.com, to MMA.tv, and finally back to MixedMartialArts.com. The site expanded in a number of directions. It offered for a time the second-largest instructional DVD effort, with titles by Tito Ortiz and Chuck Liddell, among dozens of others. A full line of UnderGround fight gear thrived for years. In 2008, it was selected by the Association of Boxing (and Combative Sports) Commissions as the official records and suspension keeper for the sport, a role that continues to this day, and has expanded into administering the rankings for the UFC, Bellator MMA, and BKFC.
Eventually, the social network arose, an easier way for fighters to connect with fans. Luckily, we know jiu-jitsu – how a smaller entity can use leverage to survive against a larger adversary. We built up a robust social network, over 5,000,000 followers on the social network, so site traffic remains robust. That’s likely how you found this.
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About ACSLive
A pioneering effort in the live streaming of combat sports, the Michigan, USA-based ACS Live (it stands for Amateur Combat Sports) is the forerunner of efforts like UFC Fight Pass, Fite.tv, DAZN, and other streaming services. It is now known as Fight.TV.
Check them out at fight.tv
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