Mopping the Mats is a weekly Monday feature meant to recap the weekend that was in mixed martial arts. The weekend was packed with action, starting Friday evening with MFC 32, continuing with a star studded It's Showtime kickboxing event on Saturday morning (for us west coasters) and finishing with the big UFC on FOX card on Saturday afternoon/evening. Where to begin?

THE EVENTS: MFC 32: Bitter Rivals, It's Showtime Leeuwarden, UFC on FOX

The MFC 32 card was held in the promotions home base of Edmonton and there were four former UFC fighters on the card: Wilson Gouveia, Antonio Mckee, Ryan McGillivray and Bryan Cobb. In terms of up and coming talent, Dheigo Lima, brother to Bellator stand out and former MFC welterweight champion Douglas Lima was on the card as well.

Kickboxing has fallen on hard times recently, forced to cancel the 2011 World Grand Prix for the first time since it's inception in 1993. The earthquake in Japan has certainly contributed to these hard times but it was more of a death blow, as seemingly poor financial management has plagued K-1 for years. 12 of the best heavyweights in the world competed in Leeuwarden, so this show was likely as good as it's going to get for awhile for top level heavyweight kickboxing.

Aside from the much anticipated matches on the FOX card, the UFC had a few relevant matches on the under card, including Evan Dunham vs Nik Lentz in a lightweight battle and Mike Russow vs Jon Olav Einemo in a heavyweight test. I know some people might roll their eyes at my assertion that Russow/Einemo was relevant but like it or not, Russow entered the bout on a three fight win streak, joining Frank Mir and JDS as the only UFC heavyweights who could make that claim. A win for Russow would surely ensure a big step up in competition.

The results and takeaways after the jump.

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As the UFC plans to visit Brazil again this weekend I thought it would be interesting to examine some of Brazil's rich history involving mixed martial arts. Kid Nate has already chronicled the feuds of Brazil and losses of luta livre, T.P. Grant has examined the rise of Vale Tudo and the luta livre-BJJ rivalries, while I myself have looked at Helio's matches in the 30s. Now we investigate how it all came to be...

On the first day of May, in the year 1909, a large crowd filed into the International Pavilion Paschoal Segreton in Rio de Janeiro to witness another demonstration given by the "Professor of Jiu-Jitsu" Sada Miyako. Miyako was one of two Japanese nationals recruited by the Brazilian Navy to instruct their sailors in the art of hand-to-hand defense, and, as so many of his countrymen had done before him in North America and Europe, had taken to giving jujutsu exhibitions before a paying audience. [EN1]

"For some days a terrible player has haunted the amusement hall audience with his indescribable agility, a jumping Machiavellian. Every night the Japanese champion challenges the audience to test themselves against him..."
"JIU-JITZU" A Pacotilha, June 14, 1909

And every night the outcome had been the same for any man that dared climb onto the stage to accept the challenge: a quick and embarrassing defeat. But the large crowd that filled the theater that night had not come to see the usual line of local strongmen trying their hand against the invincible "Jiu-Jitsu champion". Intermixed amongst the usual spectators were contingencies of Japanese nationals, Navy officers, government officials, journalists, members of high society, and students from the Faculdade de Medicina. With that last group sat Cyriac Francisco da Silva, a 38-year-old former street fighter from the Municipality of Campos dos Goytacazes who now worked carrying sacks of coffee from the docks to downtown Rio. He was better known as "Macaco" ("Old Monkey"), one of the best, if not the best, capoeirista of the era. He had been brought here by his pupils, the medical students, to challenge Miyako and defend Brazil's national honor from the foreign import. His presence was responsible for the night's considerable attendance, as both fight aficionados and the merely curious crowded in to the theater to witness this confrontation between two masters of jujutsu and capoeira.

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It is time for us here at HKL to pass out the awards for the best and worst of 2011.

First up on the list of awards is the 2011 Leonard Garcia Memorial Award for Robbery Of The Year. Strangely enough, the man who's name appears on this award has not been chosen. So let's go to the results to see who got the nods from the HKL staff:

MDH - Diego Sanchez’s "victory" over Martin Kampmann, hands down. How does a man win a fight in which he is successful on 1 of 15 takedown attempts, gets outstruck clearly in the first two rounds and has the appearance of someone who’s face got assaulted by a wolverine? We would have to ask Chris Lee, Sal D’Amato and Mattingly William who scored this fight 29-28 Sanchez across the cards. Perhaps it was his Leonard Garcia-esque style of ambling forward, windmilling haymakers ala Lisa Simpson all while getting absolutely busted apart by crisp counters. Perhaps they though it was all blood transfer from Kampmann that occurred while Martin was shaking off 93% of Diego’s takedowns. Who knows. Hopefully the massive $160,000 FOTN bonus Dana handed out to each fighter took away some of the pain for Martin. Surely rolling around in a huge pile of money helped heal Kampmann’s non-existent wounds.

I keep trying to think of a good comparison for UFC 139 and a horror movie. There aren't many times where you can expect raw untamed violence on a card, but this is certainly one of them. Will it be a classy, slow burn like Halloween? The raw, campy, and visceral run of Friday the 13th? Will we get a surrealist portrait of violence like Nightmare on Elm Street (if Cung Le's spinning back kick connects on Wand's chin...)?

Maybe we'll get something wet and sloppy like Braindead, but without the kung fu priests and zombie infants? After much deliberation, I decided the best comparison of this card to a horror movie is Predator. Yes, this article is an excuse to talk about movies, but it's an even worse excuse to talk about science. So bear with me.

Predator is a classic in every sense of the word. Much like the fighters on this card, they don't pretend to be what they are not. Wand has a real nasty habit, but that nasty habit has worked. Stephan Bonnar never was that smart in a fight, but that recklessness has turned a C+ level fighter into a modest star in the LHW division: such that he has earned himself a catchy nickname and is adored by Dana.

I feel like the cast is all there: Somebody will get lit up like Pancho (looking at you Shogun and Hendo). Somebody will make one fatally wrong move like Mac. And still others will be forgettable fodder like Hawkins.

Like all good horror films (and like this card), the stories tap into our fears about injury, and loss. Hardcore fans are excited for this card because the night will not end well for someone's health this weekend. Just how that happens is the question, but everyone is interested to find out. As Brent Brookhouse explains, this card promises violence, and hey, we should embrace that.

There's nothing savage, or silly about being attracted to these feelings: they are cathartic. In a similar vein, it's part of why we watch horror movies. They simulate and create situations that force us to reflect on what we fear. Tim Smith, a psychologist from the University of London explains how our brains process this state of horror, or shock (Focus, 234).

Within the brain, fearful experiences are the result of an interplay between fear driven centers (amygdala), and centers specific to conscious appraisal (a part of the brain called the medial prefrontal cortex, or MPFC). According to some studies, what you feel and what you think you feel is often the same as cells in both of the aforementioned regions fire in unison. Thus, the MPFC is said to be an intriguing source (though what is bound to be one among many) for our sense of empathy. It also helps explain why horror movies are so scary for some: the act of consciously constructing a fearful situation creates the same physiological state of actually experiencing a fearful situation.

It also explains why a horror movie that reveals less, and leaves more to the imagination is likely to be scarier than one that doesn't (because I don't want to look like a pansy, I won't admit what movies have scared me besides Twilight). So I'll leave you guys with a fun fact: if Shogun is brutally knocked unconscious by Dan Henderson it will take your brain 30 milliseconds to generate an emotional response, but it will take 100 milliseconds for your brain to consciously recognize that image.

As MMA fans, we kind of take the sport's growth for granted. We're on FOX, and with the latest news that the UFC on FOX peaked at 8.8 million viewers, and therefore was a success, what more could we ask for? Well, if you're a fighter living in Alaska, or Wyoming: a lot. In fact, it would be nice just to have an athletic commission, as both states lack such governing bodies.

For the past several years, the UFC has been lobbying for legalization in New York, at least in part, for these reasons. If you legalize it, you can avoid underground spectacles like 'Club Boxing': a name for Alaska's unregulated boxing scene. However, even with athletic commissions, nothing is guaranteed. At least without formal MMA regulations. With such ambiguity present, cases like that of Kyle Maynard (with no arms and legs), became possible in Alabama (it's also probably where they filmed this unholy mess).

Along with regulation, much has been made of the economic benefits the UFC would bring into the state of New York. But if there's a reason even good looking numbers aren't a concern for New York it's because the state has more pressing matters, like dealing with its deficit.

However, the call for legalization is not simply bound by economic benefits. There are constitutional reasons New York has no obligation to legalize New York. Thanks, of course, goes to the Amendment that allows Joe Rogan and Eddie Bravo to smoke large amounts of weed before every podcast. But can a case be made for the federal regulation of MMA without violating the 10th Amendment?

It turns out there is: Michael Daum presents a very interesting case for the federal regulation of MMA, which is that MMA is considered Interstate Commerce. "Congress could presumably derive authority to regulate MMA within the states from its Interstate Commerce Clause power, granted by Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution. Under United States vs. Lopez, Congress has the authority to regulate intrastate activities that substantially affect interstate commerce. If MMA is determined to constitute interstate commerce, the procedures under which MMA bouts are conducted consequently substantially affect interstate commerce and any regulation of those procedures is permissible."

In other words, so long as MMA can validate its use of interstate commerce, through leasing arenas, selling tickets, and creating revenue through radio, television, and motion picture rights (although Warrior was good enough, I'm not sure Never Back Down part 7 will bring home the interstate bacon), then there's certainly nothing unconstitutional about the push for federal legislation.

In fact, you might surmise that the current ban on MMA, on the principle of interstate commerce, creates a unique conflict of commerce. Jim Genia over at MMA Convert explains (citing one of the causes of action in Zuffa's current lawsuit):

First, by banning live professional MMA but allowing amateur MMA, the law fosters local participation at the expense of national businesses stuck on the outside looking in. Second, "the Ban's broad language prevents the numerous interstate products and services required for a live professional MMA event from entering New York's borders." Third, while MMA is legal and sanctioned in neighboring states, New York's ban could be affecting advertiser's exposure to New York markets - which in turn could be affecting their exposure in those neighboring states.

Moreover, Daum outlines the benefit of a fighter license and registry that could give commissions access to a fighter's medical history: as was seen with West Virgina, it's very easy to stand before a panel and lie about, well, everything. Daum continues, "By itself, this system would not conflict with the Tenth Amendment because it regulates the conduct of private individuals and not that of the states."

In short, MMA doesn't just deserve to be legal. It needs to be legal.

Perhaps that's why Zuffa has brought the Federal Judicial System in on New York's head with an incredibly curious argument: that MMA constitutes free speech, and is therefore protected by the first Amendment.

While that might sound like a stretch, the argument has weight precisely because of the language invoked for its ban in the first place: namely of MMA as a "message of violence". It's a relatively clever way to attack the ban, and one that seems valid on the surface. 

In addition, an irrationality claim has joined in on the litigation fun. As Barry Friedman points out in Jonathan Snowden's piece at MMA Nation, there's considerable weight to this claim: if safety is one reason why the sport was banned in the first place, why are amateur bouts legal? And what evidence is there to suggest that MMA is actually safer than big league sports, like hockey, boxing, and football (contrary to the language invoked in the current ban)?

A lot. I believe I've worked as hard as anyone to illuminate the concussion crisis in sports, but the fact of the matter is, no matter how much Dana White simplifies the issue, he's right. MMA can turn into a glorified wrestling match, and unlike equestrian activities, and drunken golf cart driving, there's no shockingly high concussion rate for wrestling, in high school or anywhere else (and certainly not in jiu jitsu).

Mixed martial arts is one of the few true and thorough contact sports that walks just around the edges of the concussion crisis. However, when we do hear tragic cases, it's restricted to the non sanctioned local circuits. I don't know what to expect from here on out, but it's an interesting bit of history that looks to be our best shot at watching our favorite fighters like Jose Aldo, Anderson Silva, or Jon Jones compete in the Garden sooner rather than later. 

While the spotlight no longer looms over the former Tower of Power band member, nor does his name fill the pages of books like Game of Shadows, Victor Conte is still alive and well. And he's still in the sports nutrition business.

For readers marginally familiar with his name, this may raise some flags. 'Isn't Conte the former president of BALCO, which was implicated in the big baseball steroid scandal?' Well yea. But time's have changed, and according to Conte himself, he's no longer a part of the "slippery slope" enhancement of sports training. 

A couple of days ago he spoke with Sherdog's Jack Encarnacao, and was incredibly candid. Their conversation started out innocuously enough: Conte is helping Kyle Kingsbury train for Stephan Bonnar at UFC 139 this weekend. And he had some interesting things to say about MMA training. 

"I’ve introduced him to other types of performance enhancing methods, and training methods…one of the thigns I’ve learned in working with elite boxers and Kyle specifically as an MMA fighter is that there is a history of overtraining.

This will be the fifth fight I’ve helped Kyle prepare for, and the first fight he really had immune suppression and right before the fight he got sick with the flu. Over the course of the last couple of years I’ve been working with him, he’s beginning to understand that not everyday of training can be a green light day.

You have to get adequate recovery after you have these very intense training days. He’s also doing something called I-H-T, which is Intermittent Hypoxic Training, which is simulated high altitude training. We’re doing it differently. Traditionally it was in four stages. First it was live high, train high where they would live and train at high altitudes. Then the second generation was live high, train low where they would sleep at elevation and drive down three thousand meter runners in the late 80’s who had significant improvement at 3000 meters would train at a lower level.  And then of course you have these hypoxic tents that cyclists and other athletes sleep in and my opinion, specifically regarding MMA fighters and boxers is that this a horrible idea."

Why should MMA fighters, and boxers avoid simulating different types of training, as cyclists do? According to Conte, this kitchen sink approach to training is unscientific. "I know that Tito Ortiz, Shane Mosley, and Oscar De La Hoya have trained at Big Bear. The reason I think this is bad is because you don’t get a deep and restful sleep.

Your heart rate will be 10, 15, 20 beats a minute higher sleeping at elevation because of the low oxygen. This is when you really heal, regenerate, repair and grow which is when you sleep. This is when the anabolic hormones are produced about 90 minutes after you go to sleep in a single burst in about 70 percent of your daily output of growth hormones is produced I a single mass..the second four hours of sleep is when testosterone is produced. So I just think it’s a bad idea. It may be ok for endurance athletes and that’s the benefit that MMA athletes and boxers are trying to achieve, which is to enhance oxygen intake and utilization capacity. But at the same time you sacrifice size and speed and power by doing so."

Conte expands on the problem with overtraining, which is that training too hard can put stress on the immune system leading to reactions like creatine kinase (which can signal muscle damage), or lactic dehydrogenase (which attacks red blood cells and can signal heart damage).

But perhaps more interestingly for MMA fans, Conte discusses PED's, notably, the PED use Nate Marquardt and Chael Sonnen have familiarized the MMA world with: TRT. Are testosterone tests adequate given the current drugs being offered? Not really, and Victor elaborates on why it's useless to measure only testosterone ratios.

"Testosterone to epitestosterone used to be 6:1, and now they reduced it down to 4:1 but athletes can still use fast acting testosterone with creams, gels, and water based testosterone and you can do micro-dosing and keep it below the 4:1 ratio so it’s relatively easy for an MMA figher or any other athlete to circumvent the testing if all they’re doing is the T/E ratio test. Let me put this into perspective. There is a complete panel of steroids that they do that  includes the T/E ratio test and back in the BALCO days I used to pay 80 dollars for this. I’m sure in volume organizations pay as little as 50 dollars for this.

But there’s another test called the C-I-R or carbon-isotope ratio test that can differentiate between natural testosterone that’s produced in the body and synthetic testosterone. And there are cases…Justin Gatlin who won the Olympic gold medal in the 100 meters in 2004 is a specific example. They got a tip that he was using testosterone, so they tested him at a meet. And even though his epitestosterone was higher than his testosterone level, and it came out that he had an injection two weeks previous to when the sample was collected, they still found that he was positive for testosterone based on this carbon isotope ratio test and they banned him. What I’m saying is that they need to incorporate this test which from my understanding is much more effective."

Conte offers his own recommendations about how to deal with the issue of PED use in MMA. While it's not the 'biological passport' that cycling uses, there are still ways to test beyond looking at urine, and they're not expensive.

"Establish a limit of hematocrit which is 50%. If it’s at that level you are suspended for health concerns, meaning your blood is too thick. Don Catlin finds it of great interest that a lot of these athletes come back with hematocrits at 49.5%. In the old days, during the BALCO period I used to pay 4 dollars and fifty cents, so it’s not an expensive test but would reduce the competitive edge".

What makes for a good story? What is it about a story well told that taps into our desires, and understanding? Why do we seem so metaphysically attracted to narrative? I posed this question to everyone's favorite underground historian: SB Nation's 'nottheface'. Who better to ask then someone that has managed to find a narrative for MMA within the the Belle Epoque and the adventures of Sherlock Holmes?

"The short and simple answer is be entertained, but there is obviously more to it than that, otherwise narrative wouldn't be necessary for our entertainment, movies could literally be nothing but a roller coaster ride. What narrative does for us is offer causation and causation offers us meaning. Meaning in the real world can seem impossible to discern, fate capricious. Why do people get cancer, end up marrying their spouse, get robbed, have a loved one die, find themselves attracted to either gender? Stories tell us that it isn't due to the whims of fate, there is a reason. Even the most fantastical stories have to offer this otherwise we instinctively turn from them.

What they also offer is experience: with people we never met; with situations we've never been in; emotions we've never felt; places we've never been; events we've never taken part of. And since are minds are so flexible we can take these people, places, things we know we'll never meet, never visit, and never experience and project greater meaning on them via metaphor. Thus stories offer us experiences and meaning from which insidiously we can draw lessons. That what we've learned can easily be false seems to be of no import.

Our love of story and the meaning they supply leads us to find it where none exists and no where is this easier to do than in single combat. In the ancient world great importance was attached to single combat: it was customary for both the saravans of the Sassanians and the cataphracts of the Byzantines to send out a single rider to challenge a champion of an opposing army to single combat before the battle was joined.

To the Romans single combat held such a important place in their imagination that the greatest prize awarded by the Republic or Empire was the spolia opima - the claiming of the armor and weapons of an enemy leader a Roman general had killed in single combat. These individuals served as symbolic representatives of their armies, boiling down a mass conflict into something as comprehensible as a simple struggle between two men. The Romans tried to recreate this with their games. The Thracians, Samnites, Gallus were not only the names of conquered peoples but also types of gladiators. These gladiators represented the people whose name they bore in symbolic recreations of past battles.

This has been carried over to modern times. Jack Johnson vs Jim Jeffries wasn't just a fight between two boxers but between the White Race and Black Race. Louis and Schmeling's fight was between the democratic United States and Nazi Germany; Ali and Frazier was part of the American culture wars; even Gracie and Sakuraba took on greater meaning: Japanese professional wrestling vs the upstart Brazilian Jiu Jitsu . Just as the ancients wanted their conflicts to mean more than two men fighting, we do the same."

So what does this have to do with the UFC on FOX? I think it helps explain the chorus of virgin eyes and casual fans who shouted "that's it?!" What story were Cain Velasquez and Junior dos Santos representing? You'd be hard pressed to find one within the fight itself, regardless of your love of MMA. For Dana, the problem with Cain Velasquez vs. Junior dos Santos was that the fight failed to tell a story.

This criticism isn't as abstract as it sounds. We are creatures of narrative seeking continuity to make sense of the world. Ideas are often powerful when they're constructed as stories (see the photo above for an especially bad one). Religion is the obvious example, but I think even scientific principles have the same form: for Charles Darwin, he was seeking continuity in the natural world. The grand narrative for life he discovered in evolution was that we are creatures whose habits are chained to the landscape of the natural world. Not the landscape of religious dictum.

For Alasdair MacIntyre, even moral philosophy, and our responsibilities as moral agents is best seen through the lens of the story. "I can only answer the question 'What am I to do?' if I can answer the prior question 'Of what story or stories do I find myself a part"

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Several months back I wrote about an interesting new technology for boxing that would allow gloves to be implanted with smart strips containing an algorithm to more accurately tally punches in conjunction with a smart vest that would communicate with these receivers. If you didn't read it, it's probably because of run on sentences like the above, but nevermind my discontent.

Under Armor, the same company UFC WW champ Georges St. Pierre has advertised himself for, recently partnered with Zephyr Technology to create something very similar: a smart shirt called the E39, which contains a "bug" holding 2GB's of storage that measures acceleration and change of direction. However, it doesn't stop there. While the video detailing what the E39 does is vague, and light on details, it's worth transcribing:

Heart rate, breathing rate, skin surface temperature, and accelerometry in three different directions....a trainer can actually look at these g'force's and say 'hey yea, you're moving the right way, you're moving exactly the way you moved last week.

I think it's really cool to say, 'we can measure your potential. We can show you where you could be'...they'll be able to track it. Their trainers will be able to track it. Even recruiters and colleges will be able to track it. People will be able to communicate to each other, and compare it to each other, and have a new world around social interaction around their athletic performance.

No word on whether or not it can measure sodium content in an athlete's sweat the way yet another type of 'smart vest' has been able to do. But we're seeing a wealth of new technologies primed to have a veritable impact on sports in the near future. Performance can now literally be measured, and I don't mean "literally" in the way Joe Rogan means that Cain Velasquez "literally has no weaknesses". No, I mean 'literally'.

Ever the luddite, I'm not sure I like the idea of recruiters taking the reductionist route, and measuring performance according to raw data. If raw data were truly meaningful in the context of athletic performance, the Wonderlic scores might actually be worth a damn (Alex Smith and Matt Leinart, I'm looking at you).  

But alas, Moore's law continues chugging along. Shirts aren't the only thing getting "smart": so is paint (a technology relying on protocells: if you want an idea of what protocells are, think back to this scene, and no that's not a joke). It's also a sign of ubiquitous computing and the concept of 'everyware'. If our shirts are becoming iPads, how much longer until the octagon floor protests "I'm afraid I can't do that"?