Mixed martial art fans can be unforgiving. A potential GOAT one year is next season’s bust. A wannabe, an also-ran.
Steve Garcia knows what that feels like after his initially stellar Bellator career was tarnished by a couple of losses that saw him toil in the smaller promotions for a couple of years before finally getting his UFC call-up in 2020.
He’s 1-2 in the UFC and will look to get back to his winning ways on October 29 when he faces Chase Hooper, a much-hyped prospect who has had mixed results in the UFC.
Hooper joined the promotion in 2019 at 19 years of age, at the time becoming just the third teenager to earn a UFC contract after Sage Northcutt and Paige Van Zant. ‘The Dream’ is 3-2 in the UFC and, if he’s under any pressure to perform, Garcia can relate.
It’s all too easy for MMA fans to discount all of a fighter’s previous achievements in the immediate aftermath of a single loss, the 30-year-old told The AllStar in a recent interview.
“You lose. You suck,” Garcia said. “That’s how it is. In this sport, that’s how spectators view. Like, ‘Ah he’s so good. Ah, he’s overrated [after a loss]. Oh, he’s not as good as we thought.”
“You know, athletes are so judged off of certain things. We are humans, we make mistakes. We’re just like people. The difference is that we were brave enough to chase dreams, brave enough to step in front of hundreds and thousands and millions of people, being watched over the world and get to do it.”
Stories of fighters like Garcia and Hooper being counted out after a loss are rampant in the sport of MMA. Even legends of the sport like Jose Aldo have been fodder for memes after suffering a sensational KO loss. Even though Aldo went on to make another title run in another weight class, the Conor McGregor knockout will continue to be a blot on his career.
Another example is Ben Askren being remembered as the victim of Jorge Masvidal’s legendary five-seconds flying knee knockout. Askren’s dominant runs as the Bellator and ONE Championship welterweight titleholder combined with his NCAA Division 1 championship record failed to erase the image of him lying prostrate after diving into Masvidal’s knee.
However, such is not the case with most sports: Lionel Messi‘s penalty kick misses in the 2015 and 2016 Copa America finals can hardly be described as the most defining moments of his career. Likewise, people don’t remember Kobe Bryant for chucking up 10 misses against the Utah Jazz in his rookie season.
MMA as a team sport?
MMA fighters are more exposed to failure because of the individual nature of the sport. The only man present in the Octagon besides the two trained opponents is there to determine if and when the fight should be stopped.
“I used to play baseball, I used to play football,” Garcia said. “I used to play first base. If I ever miss like a grounder or I kinda messed up, I had an outfielder behind me and he could back me up. And there [in the Octagon], if I fall down because I got hit, no one’s gonna back me up.”
What about if MMA could be a team sport? Garcia floated a vision of gyms or states vying against each other across varying weight classes in a night of fights.
“You have like a fight every month but you’re facing like gyms,” he said. “Or even like, states that are backing these fighters. But you have every weight class. So let’s say you have 12 fights, you have one person from each weight class. And it’s like New Mexico vs. Florida.”
The idea is reminiscent of the short-lived International Fight League that was billed as the world’s first MMA league. If there are backers, anything is possible. Especially in a world of combat sports, where slap fighting could become the next big thing.
