incrucible.net is an almanac of pop-cultural criticism that mines familiar turf with a keen eye. It is unapologetically dedicated to W.D.M. the mercurial wordsmith who wrote with a pen dipped in liquid fire. In our own time it is dedicated to Renata Adler who, according to Time’s Roger Rosenblatt, is “a scrupulous, usefully unsettling critic …, ” a woman who … “eviscerates so elegantly that her corpses remain standing.” (Time, Jan 24, 2000)
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Conor McGregor’ Little Shop of Horrors, The Reality Behind the Conjured Facade May be Depressingly Simple. Behind the unmitigated fuckery, aided and abetted by Dana White and Joseph James Rogan, Conor McGregor’s “Little Shop of Horrors” was on full display at UFC 264 for those who had not seen it before. Pencils Sketch Copyright, iLikeWallPaper.Com Artist, iPhone Wallpapers 1125×2436 PIX.
UFC 264 revealed nothing that people with sight and insight didn’t already know about a pretender named Conor Anthony McGregor. Truth of the matter is that he was a genuine fake from day one, from the nickname “The Notorious” which belonged to Biggie Smalls through the tattoo (which appears to have been a blatant rip-off of John Mario John, a Canadian model’s tattoo design) to the Ali-esque penchant for predicting knock-out rounds. The bravado was false and the rhodomontade pure high school juvenilia. McGregor’s antics never appealed to men with a more steely reserve or classic form of machismo; never! What the off-kilter McGregor persona fed on from day one were minds hatched in a social media/WWE hothouse.
The “Feed Me” composite that simplifies what may be at the heart of the Conor McGregor Roscharch. Graphic Composite: 900×900 PIX
But beyond the unmitigated fuckery, what UFC 264 proved (once again) was that a string of dubious early wins were a set up for a monetized con – and arguably the worst thing to ever happen to fans who unfortunately flit between MMA and WWE. It was also the worst thing to happen to Conor McGregor. (Read stories of why this was so below and why McGregor’s early wins were all sus.)
And if you wanna save yourself a little time and energy, look at what happened to Ronda Rousey and you’d “Cliff Note” the entire story because the twain are peas in a pod, …… or salt-encrusted nuts in a shell.
POINT: Both were brittle one trick ponies who crackED spectacularly under middling pressure. (Did we say crack!)
Middling you say? Yes, middling because the likes of Holly Holm, Chad Mendes, Nate Diaz and even the recently resurgent Dustin Poirier were not certified killers in the mould of say a Chuck Liddell, Anderson Silva, Cris Cyborg or even Amanda Nunes.
Conor McGregor and Ronda Rousey were WWE-style action figurines collusively promoted by Dana White and Joseph James Rogan. Nothing more. The lack of substance applied as much to their fighting skills as to their personas and, by extension, their storied public relations faux pas. Ronda’s mean-mugging schtick for a walk in was pure WWE from day one and so was Conor’s octagonal strut – another thing he stole from WWE Honcho, Vince McMahon. Can’t make this stuff up. (Google Conor McGregor and “the Billi strut” and see what comes up.)
Think high risk and high reward on a 50/50 split, which basically defaults to gambling odds – and ya know what they say about the house and betting against it, right?
In Conor McGregor’s case, his marketing antics, camouflaged a relatively talentless blowhard who was just as unbalanced as Ronda Rousey in stressful situations. Both were fine as long as they were winning and absolute train-wrecks as soon as the facade began to crack. (Oooh, there’s that “CRACK” thingie again!) Their final days mirror each other to a “T” for this very reason. The twain were as incapable of confronting adversity as they were of facing real challengers in non-scripted or insulated situations .
Challenges and defeats (no matter how momentary) were oft cues to start unravelling and UFC 264 was an emphatic case in point in Conor McGregor’s case, replete with Trump-like denial of reality. The stream of garbled invective coming out McGregor’s mouth from the mat (after the leg break) was revelatory only to people who had not been paying attention – former opponent Khabib Normadomedov notably excepted. For McGregor, the desperate hour returned with neck-snapping whiplash and along with it, the collapse of any pretense of decency.
Khabib Numagomedov (God bless his heart) gets a bit stumped when it comes to trying to describe Conor McGregor. Consequently he often defaults to Gothic/religio descriptors which are as odious as Papakhas on an Irish thug’s head.
The redacted truth may be that, like Donald Trump, Conor McGregor is not really evil in the Mephistophelian sense of the word but just a vacuous homunculus who engages in awfully hellish things. Yes, like Donald Trump, Mcgregor engages in acts devoid of recognizable humanity.
Both do horrible things because of the homunculus proportions of their manhood, hence the trademark bellicosity and constant need for reassurance and d*ck noodle strokin’. Both get really riled up when their inner midget is in danger of being exposed. These are grown men with temperaments of a chihuahua – certified ankle biters who unfortunately have the capability of inflicting real pain on people at the receiving end of their fuckery. But that said, their other threat is the demands they place on people around them. The Mephistophelian evil in their case is the effect rather than the cause, if that makes sense.
Case in point, the little monster born inside McGregor with his first “win” (or a semblance of it) had to be fed and fed, and fed often. The problem was that the wins, ever since Jose Aldo, had been few and far in between when not fighting relative midgets or dudes he knew he could physically bully and beat. For the longest time McGregor fought relative nobodies or smaller dudes he knew he could physically bully after cutting weight to Skeletor proportions – but that said, McGregor nearly miscalculated with Chad Mendes.
What may be ailing McGregor lately is that the one hundred mill he made sham-boxing Mayweather may perhaps be running low due to documented Ibiza habits, scandals and lawsuits that seem to be snapping at his heels like (yes) a vengeful chihuahua. Karma never loses.
The “evil” that Khabib Nomagomedov sees in Conor may not be the cause of what he decries, but the effect of McGregor’s patented lack of real manhood multiplied by the aforementioned little-shop-of-horrors aspect.
Jon Jones vs Francis Nganou Post UFC 260: The Pesky Return of Jones’ Nightmare
Francis Nganou’s crushing win over Stipe Miocic last night brought Jon Jones to the precarious place he was back in 2015 with a freight train named Rumble Johnson coming straight at him. For the youngest UFC Light Heavyweight Champion who had (with the exception of Gustaffson) handily beat every challenger in his path some seven times over, this was not a familiar or particularly comfy place to be in. Reason?
Just when Jon Jones thought it was safe to come out from under his safe blanket, out pops Francis Ngannou to set up Jon Jones vs Francis Ngannou: The Pesky Return of Jones’ Nightmare Post UFC 260. Francis Ngannou is is Rumble Johnson on Yohimbe boost. No picograms here; no picograms. Pic – Getty Images
Jones understands the language of violence and dominance at an elemental level. And with Rumble Johnson, he knew that he was no longer the alpha dog in the yard given Rumble’s instinctual grasp of the language of dominance and proven predilection for crushing crania and turning guys’ lights out. (EXHIBIT 10: The slugger had cracked Gustaffson’s cranium in front of horrified Swedish blondes). Given that instinctive reckoning, Jones had been deferential to Rumble when he was not and hiding his dis-ease behind the clowning and awkward on-camera punking of Dana.
Jones may not be as instinctively unsettled by Nganou as he was by Rumble due to personal and sub-cultural code idiosyncracies, but he is a realist. Francis is indubitably the more physically dominant of the two, and there is a distinct pheromonal odor that goes with that ish. Given unforced choices, Jones would have nothing to do with Rumble or Nganou in this lifetime. And my sense is that he will find a convenient financial pretext for NOT fighting Francis Nganou and sit out out as long as he can while hoping that a Derrick Lewis, Stipe Miocic or some other heavyweight dude not named Jones scrapes by the new champion to afford him safer place from which contend. That is how Floyd Mayweather curated his “undefeated” record into fake “undefeated” territory. Besides, Jon Jones grew up with two NFL Ngannous, so he intimately knows what the deal of being mounted and dominated is.
“Out of mouths of babes, out of the mouths of babes indeed …..” Youtube Truth, Uncut and Unmoderated.
If the teasing gets to him and he decides to risk it all and fight the African nightmare named Francis, it may very well be the end of his undefeated but asterisked record. In the interim, he will have to put up with Israel Adesanya who will probably troll him to death with the opening salvo coming from non other than the Shaven Head of the UFC himself:
“If I’m Jon Jones and I’m home watching this fight, I start moving to 185,” (Dana White at UFC 260 Post Fight Press Conference, Las Vegas, NV)
But equally weak and telling was Jones initial response to Francis Ngannou’s victory and intimations of a match-up between the two. “Show me the money,” Jones tellingly responded which translates into, “I really don’t wanna fight this dude, but if I really had to I need a good pretext to back out.” A dude who was really dying (pun fully intended) to prove “his self” would have said, “It’s on! – pending the working out of financial details!” That is the sound of a guy who wants to fight, not the hedgey, “Show me the money!” which sounds like a guy who wants to live a “loooong life ….. (coz) longevity has its place.”(MLK) This ain’t the sound of a man who “has been to the mountain and seeeen the promised land.” (Again MLK)
Another reason which points to Jon’s fear is that, “Show me the money” would have sounded strange had he said it of fighting Stipe, Derrick Lewis, Israel Adesanya or any man not named Francis “The Predator” Ngannou. But come to think of it, ducking Ngannou makes a lot of survival sense; fuck all that legacy B.S. which is for true believers without an ounce of Mayweather street sense. In this sense, Jon Jones and Israel Adesanya have something very much in common: they take on opponents they think they can beat. The only time Adesanya diverged from this tried and true stratagem to fight Yoel Romero, he nearly paid for it with one of his nine lives. He gamely survived by choosing not to engage the Cuban nightmare after his orbital got crushed in front of UFC ring girls. For both Jones and Adesanya respectively, Gustafsson and Reyes for Jones and Kevin Gastellum for Adesanya, were gross miscalculations which nearly cost them their then undefeated records, which is one of the reasons Jon Jones will come in as a dog should he decide (against street sense) to fight Francis Ngannou. And early moneyline is already showing Jones as a dog at +160 versus Ngannou’s -180.
My bet is that this fight does not happen ….. at least not anytime soon. Inspite of his instagram protestations, Jones doesn’t want it and he is gonna push the money pretext as hard as he can and Dana will push back even harder. Perfect partners in this bizarre dance.The likelihood of Jones relenting (in the name of legacy) is infinitely zero. So there you have it.
It’s a Saturday afternoon on the left coast on day 25 of the national coronavirus lockdown and CNN is running low on new news and guests, so they call on hot air specialist Stephen A. Smith to comment on “The Future of Sports Amid the (Coronavirus) Pandemic”. Slow news day? Ya think?
For The Record: CNN, “The Most Trusted Name in News” calling on Stephen A. Smith to weigh in on the future of sports … Hmm, OK – but ya know there is a distinct difference between news and hot air, right?
Right.
In calling on the Stephen A. Muppet Maximus and the Pontifex Maximus of Bloviation, CNN must have known exactly knew what they were Grub-Hub-ordering – and so did Stephen A. – but for some unknown reason he demurred on delivering on this occasion. Stephen A., who is by now super familiar with what is expected of him, did not put on his storied top hat and tails and Bo-jangle his way into the network’s coffers and ratings.
HUGE surprise! And decidedly not the reason Stephen A. (who is to sports what Puff Diddy is to rap music) is laughing all the way to the ESPN bank. Complimentary forays into citadels of mainstream acceptability like CNN, are just the proverbial cherry on his Stephen A’s cheesecake. Like “extra, extra!”, they enlarge his territory beyond the fabled “40 acres and a mule”. In operative terms it pushes Stephen’s sandbox beyond the agon of sports as an uncut form of entertainment. (Selah).
It’s nigh impossible to caricature Stephen A. Smith because how does one caricature a caricature; a grotesque animation in which he is Stephen A. Muppet Maximus, the Pontifex of Bloviation which is OK as long as Stephen A. sticks to sports and entertainment in that order because he quickly gets into trouble when he tries to venture off the sports/entertainment reservation by bitin’ off on sinuous social issues for sheer self-aggrandizement. Bill Cosby, Jason Whitlock, anyone? Absolutely no kiddin’ . This twirp who talks out of both cheeks of his “bar-hind”, oft gets into trouble when he tries to riff off on social issues for kicks. Long and short of this? Stephen A. is the Lindsey Graham of sports. Keep him in that cage for the good of Black People. He is a man who sold out before he was born. Pic: USA Today. Caption: Incrucible.Net, Trim Ire to a Flame, A Blue Flame. _________________________________________________________________________________
The persona of Stephen A. Smith, Muppet Maximus of Bloviation is the reason he is laughing all the way to the bank with ESPN’s 10 mill. It’s all built on buffoonery and entertainment to the nth exponent and outre self caricatures which leave zero room for comedians and cartoonists and caricaturists to make a buck …. which is kind of like Donald Trump; to wit what The Orange One did to comedy and Saturday Night Live; the blow-torching of fat that would normally make (comedic) roasting possible.
In terms of type, Stephen A. is Jim Rome with the camp meter overclocked and kinkier get-up. Both perform in quasi-cartoon get ups, but Stephen A. virtually takes it a notch further by wearing his B-boy cap sideways.
The schtick works for him as long as he sticks with sports entertainment and entertainment only. Venturing off that reservation gets Stephen A. in quick trouble like when he tried to bite off sinuous social issues that bit back ….. teetering on the edge of the same kind of speechfying that ultimately got Cosby in trouble after a national tour of rebuke and censure of the black community. (You listenin’ Jason?)
Why? Well it’s because Stephen A. and his brother from another mother, Jason “Pork Chop” Whitlock, are a few crispy fries short of a Republican Happy Meal. Yes, crispy comes in many forms indeed …. and need I say it — complexions?
But beneath all that Stepin Fetchit, chitlin cuttin’ mackin’ is a cowardly twerp who huffs and puffs and blows out of both sides of his backside cheeks for fear of being called to the carpet in real time. (Dang maang!)
Watch Stephen A. closely whenever he confronts “the real”; his reflexive coat grooming and tail tucking in the is cringe-inducing if not nauseating register. (And we is not talkin’ ’bout Kellerman ….. yet.) It would be laughable if it weren’t a well known survival tactic in broadcasting booths as on Cell Block C where oiled cons flex more than pecs.
The Long Term Liability That Stephen A. Smith Has Become to ESPN:
Start with this simple proposition: If ESPN values Stephen A. Smith and the social and political world view that informs his takes on sports and sports personalities, then they really should just hire Jason Whitlock who comes in with no condom over his noggin – or better still hire them for good measure. The more, the merrier, right? (Can’t have Tweedle Dee without Tweedle Dum, if the latter is available.)
Now if ESPN demurs on this, then my question to them is why? Because if they figure out why, they will not need a multi-million dollar consultant like me to tell them that what they have on their payroll is a clown and a muppet who represents nothing but his own cafe au lait “bar-hind”. At this point in time, anyone with two brain cells to rub together should realize that Stephen A. Smith has the draw of a shaved freak. People come to watch not for the skill but the macabre oddity of a man who sounds like a muppet, socially engineered by Louie Gohmert.
The demographic representation the network saw at the outset, no longer exists. Blacks who lionize Stephen A. Smith cannot be found during the light of day. Think about this. (And we are not talking about asterisked blacks like Candace Owens or Kanye West. Be serious of go home.)
What ESPN is getting for the 8 to 12 mill they signed this fool for is basically a freak show of obsequious bloviation and squirelly equivocation when Stephen A. gets squeezed into a corner as in the case of Jon Gruden.
Stay tuned; we are just clearing our throats on this mumper. So bookmark this page and keep checkin’ for updates.
The Youtube Clip Stephen A. & Company Are Trying to Bury Beneath a Deluge of Clips with the Follow-up Takes:
Restatement: Stephen A. Smith & Company are trying to bury the the Monday clip he did with Michael Irving below for reasons that have to do with media and social media spin.
This video again showcases Stephen A. Smith again speaking out of both sides of his butt-cheeks on the Jon Gruden’s racist meltdown. His “not a damn thing” pronouncement about what the NFL should do about Gruden’s racist digs did not age well over a span of less than 24 hours. And when Gruden got axed, Stephen A. or those connected to him tried their darndest to bury the First Take take where he shamelessly tried to save Gruden from paying the ultimate price. This is what Stephen A. has been known to do for a long time now. This is a man with no backbone except to prop up his muppet head; no mettle, no shame, or credibility within the demographic he is supposed to imagistically represent – the infernal rub being that the “whiteness” Stephen A. promotes has no respect for him beyond the transactional. Fact.
Stephen A. Smith on the Future of First Take at the Breakfast Club (Youtube) Pop a big bag of popcorn; read the comments. Sample: “Terrell Owen signed Max Kellerman’s pink slip when he said ‘Max is blacker than you.’ All Facts. Ceo Ceo (YouTube Comments Section to Stephen A. at the Breakfast Club).
And very, very recently Stephen A. flipped his usual script (of supporting white team owners) when he went all in on the Ime Udoka affaire (a black man) to blast the New England Celtics for publicizing his indiscretions with the wife of a team associate. While this could have been a tactic, to reduce the heat he had been getting from woke black folk, it also pegs Stephen A. as the Lindsey Graham of the sports world. Stephen A. is a man who sold out before he was born.
And here is Mr. Marcellus Wiley telling it like it has never been told on these YouTube streets. I challenge you to find anyone who breaks it down like Mr. Wiley breaks it down here:
Seriously. Social distance was an established signifier of the virtual spaces between people of different standings in society, so how on earth did we end up slapping that label in the need to keep 6ft away from each other during this COVID-19 pandemic?
The cunning linguist, in me wants to know. I want to know how we got from a nasty little bug to a shabbily assigned public health tag without intervening stages of reflection or formulation?
Short Answer? Think “the internets”, and the warp speed of response messaging on “shoshial media”; the so-called viral response, no pun intended.)
OK, OK, in case you think I am splitting conceptual and semantic hairs, hear me out, starting with what we learnt in school in terms of academic social distance.
We learnt that “social distance” is what separates the nouveau riche from the vieux riche. (The new money vs. old money thingy.) In phenomenological terms, social distance is the whiff that the nouveau riche can’t scrub off their backs no matter how hard they try. And “social distancing” is the recoil the Kardashians experience when they try to hobnob with the true blue bloods in New York and the Hamptons. (“Can’t Buy Me Love”!, and no Paris Hilton doesn’t count.) Social distance or distancing is what Queens scrappers experience when they try to pass for the Upper East Side in Manhattan. Doesn’t happen. Won’t happen. And the reason it doesn’t happen is because social distance denotes walled cities rigged with lots of trip wires that pull up draw bridges so barbarians and “short fingered vulgarians” can’t get in – the destination being sanctums where people’s pedigree is measured by what they don’t do. Think Kardashians again and the vulgar displays of kitschy bling. The things they do vs the things they don’t do.
In the beginning was Emory Borgadus, who begat the concept of “social distance” back in the 1920s to denote the not-so physical distance between people and social groupings. And the world saw that this concept was good and useful. That was the first day. Incrucible.Net, Trim Ire to a Flame, A Blue Flame
If you wonder why vulgarians rail at gates of walled social cities, look no further than the hair triggers that pull gates up on folks, even after lifetimes of striving. Acceptance is neither guaranteed nor promised. Kinda heartbreaking if ya ask us, but nobody ever said the playbook was built on egalite, liberte and fraternite.
THE PLAGUE & Left Brained Honchos: When the plague hit, the language police must have been on vacation – otherwise how does one explain the slipping into usage of something as lazily and crudely formulated as “social distancing” to denote what health departments across the country were pushing?
Then in the Winter of 2020 came the plague named Covid-19 and the instant re-purposing of the phrase Emory Bergodus begat about a hundred years earlier; the same the world had thought was good and beautiful and useful for the cause that it was begat. Incrucible.Net, Trim Ire to a Flame, A Blue Flame
The warp speed of these intrusions is attributable to the internet. Intervening stages of reflection have, in the millennial argot of the realm, been “canceled’ – which explains why sensible alternatives like “social or personal spacing” never made it out the gate. (The idea of “personal spacing” builds upon the well worn concept of personal space or bubble, but that is just making too much sense.) “Safe spacing” or “health spacing” come to mind too but WTF?
The flash mob’s rush to name that thing or the social herd plummeting over the linguistic cliff like there was no tomorrow? You can flip a coin. The shabby recycling or cannibalization of “social distance” as conceived by Emory Bogardus in the 20s is just that, shabby and darn lazy. Damn, I need a beer.
Professor Emeritus BNSG, the cunning linguist, on shabby usage patrol.
What happened last night between Yoel Romero and Israel Adesanya is enough to sour hard-core MMA heads who used to clutch the edge of sweat-drenched couches as David Tank Abbott, Frank Shamrock, Don Frye and Dan Severn barreled down ‘pon opponents in no-holds barred contests that left hearts aflutter and jaws on floors – the effect being the same whether one caught the fight live or off dog-eared VHS copies passed from fan to fervid van. This, damas y caballeros, was the primal effect of cage fighting as an adrenaline drug at near 100% proof.
UFC 248 twixt Yoel Romero and Israel Adesanya (March 7, 2020, Dateline Las Vegas, NV) was anything but – but not because of Romero, not because of Romero, because Romero was not the talker for starters and besides, Romero will be Romero, just like Anderson Silva will be Anderson Silva, stage antics, boos and all. (REASONING: OGs who have crafted certain fight personas have the street and stage creds to be themselves, maintenance-man butt-cracks and all. Why? Because they have earned it, that’s why.)
Notice how this exception excludes new noobs like Israel Adesanya who ostensibly volunteer to fight flesh-n-blood monsters like Yoel and talk up a big game about slaying monsters and building unimpeachable creds and legacies and then fail to deliver promptly.
Fear of Being Street Mugged: Mark me words and bookmark this post; Israel Adesanya, or his pro and PR credibility rather, will never be the same after this fight. His image and machinations will, from now on, have an atavistic whiff of contrivance, artifice and disingenuousness – not exactly a headline making revelation in a sport which, like its sibling (boxing), thrives on asshollery, cant, sophistry, deception and marketing legerdemain, but it does bear mentioning in passing.
Yoel Romero is feared and renowned for having broken Weidman, Rockhold and Whittaker’s bodies. Israel pretended like this didn’t matter to him until his time came and he ran like a bladerunner, but not fast enough to not have his reputation and street creds broken – the same which on the street are valued more than blingy belts because “respeck” matters more.
Meal Tickets, Monster Blows and Monster Fears: The Israel Adesanya/Yoel Romero story at UFC 248 – This shot captures the Romero smoke that Adesanya wanted none of after that ominous exchange in the first round. But even before that Israel was as jumpy as a cat on a hot tin roof. He just wouldn’t advance or engage and when Romero advanced, Adesanya was seen to retreat and circle. In some ways, being challenged and buckling on a well lighted stage was worse for Adesanya than being knocked out for Adesanya, especially after all that trash talk. Bottomline is Israel became very, very afraid of being street mugged. Pic Copyright: Getty Images
UFC 248 and the Unblinking Eye of Twitter: UFC Super Fan cutting through the crap and telling it like is reference the fight between Israle Adesanya and Yoel Romero.
From Last Style Bender to Blade Runner: After the first blow that had a sub-orbital bruised, Israel Adesanya fought scarred, circling and circling like his life depended on it ….. because it actually did. Soon after the monster blow from Romero, Israel Adesanya figuratively swapped out his mouthpiece for his meal ticket, cheeked it like chew and never spat it out as he intently contemplated on not losing what he already had; a darn good meal ticket. Fuck that legacy shit! Boy needs to eat!
Last night (October 5, 2019) Israel Adesanya emerged as Anderson Silva 2.0 ….. or Jon Jones without the blems or conspicuous expiry date. If you squint your eyes, he is the young Cassius Clay/Mohammad Ali with a twist; a saucily self-absorbed ham, given to mirror-gazing-and-smoochin’, when he is not muggin’ n’ winking at secrets he dares not keep.
There is something profound going on here; the story of a slugger scaling the heights of Olympus while boxing shadows more real than goblins of his childhood imagination. In this un-fable, Israel is Icarus, looking for a soft landing. Time stamp and bookmark this one; you are gonna need it. (Incrucible.Net)
But for the record, Israel is probably the best thing to happen to the UFC, post-Fertitta brothers and the heyday of Anderson “The Spiderman” Silva. No hater-ade here; just straight-ade … no chaser.
After the initial hype, dash ‘n flash; and after UFC 236 and 243 it’s beyond dispute: Adesanya is a wily tactician who could probably kickbox his way out of an angry bar while dropping Ali-esque one-liners to floor jaws and make his competitors look like dodo birds.
From Louiville to Auckland, The Lip Rides Again: (Adesanya’s precocious patter ‘n chatter makes one look up and take immediate notice. But therein within that extra dash and flash; that extra sauce may be Adesanya’s weakness; his Achilles heel if you will; the need for a high wire act that projects grounded tone and tonality. This is actually harder than most people realize. People on the street call it keepin’ it real, and those in the rarefied environs of academe call it (in the argot cultural criticism) “projecting authenticity.”
Put another way, Adesanya’s pufferies and bloviations can come across as a bit over the top … and cloyingly so at times. Cue UFC 243 post-fight press conference as case in point and suss out unhealthy doses of Henry Cejudo and Conor McGregor within that saccharine mix …. rarely good associations, rarely a good associations.
And Now Concerning a Language, Not His Father’s Own (Read That English): On this topic, Israel really needs to reflect deeper than he has to date on his reflexive tendency to rib others for not being as fluent in a language, which, the last time I checked, was not his own, or his father’s and mother’s for that matter. I’ve witnessed two instances of this tendency, and I have cringed …. FOR HIM.
Historical Fact: Nigeria was colonized by Britain in the 19th Century which ushered in English’s as the official language. So the next time Adesanya blithely chides people for not speaking proper English or ribs Romero for being “so slow” in publicity pressers, he needs to remind himself where the language he confidently mimes came from. Ditto the uses it has been put to, including the laceration of the colonized which includes his father …. and himself by generational imprinting. Cue Frantz Fanon on metropolitan languages and natives’ inferiority complexes.
But That Said, Let Izzy Dance His Tight Arse Off, ROTFLM#AO!: Yep, the vogueing is A-OK – drawing, as it does, from a fount of “Roots and Culture” that is as deep as it is wide. Adesanya was born in Nigeria. And Nigerians are up there when it comes to novel forms of cultural fusion, appropriation and innovation cross-polinated to the nth degree. Yes, Nigerians are a wily and innovative bunch.
If (up to now) you still have no clue what I’m talking about, despair not; you are probably not alone. This micro-critique is infinitesimally calibrated for the sighted; moles and astigmatics need not apply.
Israel Adesanya: Too Much of a Good Thing or Lizzo of the Octagon? The over-the-top Adesanya appeals to the raucous WWE set of the post-McGregor/Ronda Rousy wasteland. But there is a downside to untrammeled exuberance as we have seen before. There is something profound going on here; the story of a slugger scaling the heights of Olympus while boxing shadows more real than goblins of his childhood imagination. In this un-fable, Israel is Icarus, looking for a soft landing. Time stamp and bookmark this one; you are gonna need it. Caption Copyright, Incrucible.Net, Photo Copyright, Steven Ryann Getty Images
Tone, Tonality: The Hardest Schtick of All. Hint, Hint: Usman Has A Better Handle on It – Those with sight and insight may have already intuited: Israel’s pronouncements have, among other things, elements of self-consciousness that hamper their penetrative quotient. They oft come across as studied or a bit over the top, and the residual effect is less than salutary.
The studied self-consciousness undermines Adesanya’s sense of unscripted authenticity while his exuberance gives off whiffs of contrivance. (Quoth: “I say a lot of things.” ) The exuberance comes across as slightly off kilter and overwrought. Conor Mcgregor, Henry Cejudo anyone? See UFC 243 post-fight presser.
Again as an off-handed comparo, put Usman side by side with Adesanya, and you will have a form of a measuring stick with which to measure apples with apples. One of them comes across as more grounded than the other. Guess which one and you’ll be up for honorary
Separate personalities? Well, yes, but that does not totally explain why one is exponentially that self-conscious, that fluffy. If you are not zeroing in on this, then you are missing out on vital clues, cues and tells.
Usman’s post fight presser is equally a good jumping-off point for a comparo of the twain.
The over-the-top Adesanya persona appeals to the raucous WWE-set of the post-McGregor/post-Honda Housey wasteland. (Colby Covington need not apply because he is a cartoon at the intersection of mockery and fakery masquerading as entertainment.
If she wins, we’ll give glory to God, The Beautiful Black Woman in the Sky, and if she doesn’t (the way Vegas is sayin’), we’ll at least feel better for having whispered a wish and a prayer 🙂
UFC 239 is upon us! (07/06/19) Please pray for Holly. LOL!
Holly!, Oh Holly! Please pray for Holly Holm tomorrow at UFC 239. Why? Well, because it’s the right thing to do, ROTFLOL! But seriously, she has been through a lot and is, in her heart of hearts, as nooice a lady as you will find this or that side of the octagon. Jon “Dese Nuts” Jones wanted some o’ dis but prolly di’n’t get any ‘coz Holly got good nose. LOL!
OK, OK, kidding aside, what’s there not to like? AB-solutely no haterade for Amanda Nunes, but just looking at what Holly is, in a sport where humility and level-headedness are often lacking. (Member Honda? oh Ronda!? and Jo-Jo-Jo Joanna Jędrzejczyk? No?)
Well for crude comparos check out this full Holly Holm interview with ESPN’s Brett Okamoto:
WEAR & TEAR: The big, big concern in this fight, if you equalize everything, is relative freshness and the wear-and-tear factor. Even though on paper both fighters have the same number of losses (4) Holly has been through way more brutal beatings than Amanda Nunes. Miesha Tate, who choked her out, was the most kindly beatin’ Holly received probably in her entire career. And we are not even talking about a boxing loss in 2011 which, according to one astute fan commentator “took years off Holly’s life.” Then to add to our litany of concerns, Holly’s last four losses against Cris Cyborg, Germaine de Randamie, Valentina Shevchenko and Miesha Tate, have all come in rapid succession in about 1 year 7 months. Compare that with the last four of Nunes’ losses (against Cat Zingano, Sarah D’Alelio, Alexis Davis and Ana Maria) that have been spread out over 6 years and 1 month. The only thing going for Holly is that her losses were against a veritable murderer’s row of fighters, but that does not exempt her from the said “wear-and-tear” factor that is danger of seeing her slide into the category of the Chris Lebens, Diego Sanchezes and Wanderlei Silvas of the world, and that is just not enviable company to be lumped in with for the sake of her health and wealth. Being a Cowboy Cerrone of the women’s MMA comes with a high, high cost – and one that cannot accurately be tabulated until the later stages of life …. which is kinda scary …. and depressing at the same time.
So, boys and girls, ladies and gentlemen, if you have a heart that beats, pray for Holly.
This is neither a jaundiced obloquy nor augury of things to come, but a meditation born of sensing; a sensing of incipient light that has left a man’s face and the serene joy that used to illuminate it like a beatific filament. It’s a meditation on scars made visible by sight and insight, and “(gazes) blank and pitiless as the sun“. (Wordsworth)
Jon Jones: A Midlife Tale of Losing by Winning – A tale etched in not-so-fine lines of face and faith that really never was … Phillipians 04:13. The problem, more than Jones’ mid-career stasis, is his intestinal inability to step outside his constipated sense of self for a single self-redemptive moment. And with each passing moment it’s getting late for the man MMA once hailed as a bright light and most promising heir to Anderson Silva after the thorough drubbing of Shogun Rua in 2011. Incrucible.Net. Graphic Image by Kyu Shim – Dribble.Com
Sadly, after battles lost by winning, it has come to this for one Jon Dwight Jones: the gift (precocious in extremis) is still here, but the joy is long gone; gone with the promise of things that could have been …. beneath windows that opened and closed before the angels could sing.
Parenthesis: Even when Jones swears that he has done well for himself (materially that is), he is palpably unconvincing.
McGregor Myth sell-by-date: October 6, 2018 which coincides with UFC 229 and Conor McGregor’s fight with Khabib Nurmagomedov a.k.a. the Hail Mary of a Headhunter vs the Dagestani Grinder who Wrestled Bears for gym kicks as a child. Last time we checked Conor was no bear. “Conor McGregor is every bit the old Ronda Rousey (before the Holly Holm decapitation) minus the robotic vibes.” (Incrucible.Net) Photo Copyright: Michael Reaves/Getty Images
The Sideshow Must Go On: You are gonna have to pan for them tells ‘coz McGregor ain’t gonna tell ya. Reason? The Conor McGregor Sideshow must go on. Put another way, Conor has few choices but to whistle through this graveyard that has closed in on him like a malodorous fog. He is gonna whistle through the graveyard the same way Chris Weidman did prior to UFC 194. But then, come to think of it, Weidman was telegraphing his own drubbing all over the place and we predicted it right here. McGregor is gonna be no exception.
Strategic Concession: Beyond the sophomoric-cum-high school jinks McGregor puts on, he is perfectly capable of sober risk assessment (which is something that, with the help of Dana White, has served him rather well in the UFC to date.) That side showed up just before his fight with Eddie Alvarez when one could hear McGregor tossing out phrases that could serve him well in case of a loss. It’s possible he might pull the same maneuvers here, cognizant of how his pop-cultural doppleganger, Ronda Rousey fell and did so on stage that was high and lifted up.
Ice-cold Tyron Woodley Throw-down to Conor McGregor: “I walk around at 202lbs. You fought featherweights in your life before.” Tyron Woodley dismissing presumption of a Conor McGregor Challenge, YouTube 6:48“
If you wanna know why MMA journalism (or what passes for it in this echo chamber) rarely rises above WWE jingoism, look no further than the incredulous performance of the ostensibly credentialed crew at the UFC 200 presser in Las Vegas on April 22, 2016. Led by Ariel Helwani, the conflicted but usually level-headed parser of all things MMA, they performed more like the cheer-leading squad of the Brother Conor Travelin’ Salvation Show than impartial analyzers of the realm. (Cue Neil Diamond if ya dare.) If Ariel Helwani wants to become the Baba Wawa of MMA-wood, it won’t take him much longer to metamorphose. To wit, far from being an impartial journalist, Helwani sounded like a man who suffers pubescent palpitations every time Conor’s name enters the c̶o̶n̶v̶e̶r̶s̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶a̶l̶ room. (And to be fair, Joe Rogan sidekick, Brendan Schaub, suffered from the same affliction for the longest time down parting his slicked back hair like Conor in the lead-up to the Mayweather fight. Go back and at footage of the pressers if you doubt this.) Listen to the entire presser from the time Ariel arrives about 7 minutes late, to the time an exasperated Dana shuts him down:
The fixation displayed by Ariel and the motley crew of wanna-be journalists (sans a countervailing sense of how McGregor and the UFC got to this point) was astounding to say the least. And no less astounding was Dana White’s sufferance of Ariel & The McGregor Nut-Huggers ….. The latter being a great name, BTW, for an itinerant band of sycophantic inksters. The Dana of old would have, after the second or third wave of perseverative badgering, told them to go f*ck themselves, or better still get a room in Iceland ….. with lots of rubber, lube and gas-station-dick-pills.
incrucible.net 
