Here's the debut of QB's Editorial content, QBE's. The topic? Machida. Comments are appreciated.
Sometime in 2005, an interesting phenomenon was taking place in the online MMA community. Logging on to your favorite popular MMA message board inevitably meant you were going to stumble upon a recurring theme. Seemingly every three or four days, a forum member would start a thread with some variation of the same question:
"Who is this Lyoto Machida guy?"
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Browsing the respective records of UFC stars like BJ Penn, Rich Franklin, and Stephan Bonnar, fight fans began to collectively recognize the comparatively obscure name of Lyoto Machida as the man who had beaten them all, and had himself remained unbeaten in his young career. Having not yet fought for a major promotion and having no high-profile camp or pedigree with which to be associated, the question as to his identity and potential talent became pervasive.
Four years and seemingly a lifetime of changes in the MMA world later, few questions such as these remain. In a strange way, many of those changes in MMA brought us to the figurative end of Lyoto's anonymity, his devastating championship victory at UFC 98 last Saturday. The success of The Ultimate Fighter reality show and the talent it developed help us to arrive at this moment, with the UFC soaring in popularity and profitability, and a young and skilled Rashad Evans as its undefeated upstart light-heavyweight champion. In the years prior, future UFC champion Quinton "Rampage" Jackson's failure to be re-signed by the Pride organization meant his defection to the fledgling World Fighting Alliance, or WFA, which also featured a mysterious unbeaten Karate practitioner on its roster. The blossoming marketability of the UFC meant more money in its coffers to spend toward gobbling up smaller organizations like the WFA, and Jackson's previous win over longtime UFC champion Chuck Liddell essentially ensured the WFA's acquisition by Zuffa (the parent company of the UFC and WEC, for those unaware), and thereby Machida's spot on the UFC roster.
Seven wins and millions of dropped jaws further into the present, Machida is a fascinating enigma atop the 205lb division in the biggest show in Mixed Martial-Arts. Seemingly as if by some collective psychic intuition, talking heads, analysts, and competitors in and around the sport are buzzing about his potential reign as champion, and what his future opponents could possibly concoct in order to topple him. They aren't coming up with much on the latter subject, but Machida's likelihood of supremacy as a long-time champion seems far closer to a consensus.
"Welcome to the Lyoto Machida era", proclaims UFC color analyst Joe Rogan, only mere moments after Machida's dazzling final display of offensive precision. All of this seemingly without the consultation of UFC President Dana White, who likely wouldn't have endorsed any UFC employee's de facto declaration that Machida's next opponent essentially was already beaten. But Rogan sees some inevitability of it. At 3:45 in the final of White's video blogs for the event;
"..it's the Machida era, man. No one's gonna beat that guy for a long f***ing time."
White's expression is mildly frozen. But in a terrible irony, the first few minutes of White's own blog lay testament to the wisdom of Rogan's words. The electric reaction captured at cage-side as Machida worked his masterpiece was simply incredible. The "oohs" and "ahhs" of routinely dramatic NBA and NHL playoff games simply pale in comparison to the bombshell of shock and awe that overswept the fans at the MGM Grand Garden Arena that night, the crowd appearing as if a strange mixture of elation and panic is experienced through witnessing how strikingly effective of a weapon that a human being can become.
Hyperbole? Certainly, but somehow not "less true" for it. Rogan again tactfully recognizes the undercurrent of stimulation from the fans. On Machida and Karate in MMA;
"And you know how excited people are gonna be? ..people, they want that s**t, they want Karate..they want that- *bows in Dana's direction*..people love that. It's back. Martial Arts is back."
It's back. Of course it never really left, in truth, but the acknowledgment and respect for the traditional arts is certainly seeing a resurgence, and Machida is now the poster boy for this movement. The future, to whatever degree, will inevitably be influenced by this development, and certainly to a degree beyond the glimmers we've seen from other champions like Fedor Emelianenko (essentially a hyper-skilled, Sambo-trained Judoka), and Georges St Pierre (also a Karate practitioner, albeit of a different flavor than Machida).
Karate has traditionally been the most acknowledged and commonly referenced of all the traditional arts, or at least prior to the explosion of interest in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (in the US, anyway) that was, somewhat now ironically, facilitated by its exposure through the early UFC's. Now Machida has brought us full circle, and again Karate has a right to its claim as the premier of the martial arts, and as a palatable core discipline through which to construct a high-level MMA fighter.
In truth, the "era" is up for Machida to determine, and for his opponents to seek to re-write in their days of preparation ahead. Whether "The Dragon" can continue to expand and justify his mystique remains to be seen, but the path he's on could not appear any more convincing. Plenty of footage has been gained, but few flaws can still be perceived in his style. In fact, he seems to appear more dynamic in every contest, and somehow even more equipped to deal with each aspect of the mixed disciplines, all at the most elite level of competition.
An "era" it may be. But if super-talents like Rampage, Shogun, and the rest of the elite UFC light-heavyweights fall victim to him, an "era" could be an "understatement". It may take a superfight (or two..), determine Lyoto's legacy as both a fighter and as a milestone in MMA's ever expanding future, but his myth, much like that of the dragon itself, is seemingly ever-growing.
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