Could you imagine a love story between classical musicians being any other way?

And before you condemn the novel for a plot which seems rather generic, try boiling Shakespearean plays down to brass tacks and see how interesting they become. One truth is that other authors had attempted to dramatize The Merchant of Venice since the basic story had been floating around Europe for years before Shakespeare came around. The bigger truth is that no one did the story better than Shakespeare.

There are two things that raise An Equal Music above similar novels. One can only be described as class. Whole courses can be dedicated to this idea and pretty much get nowhere. What is class? My opinion:  two or more characters who: are believable because they are like us, are surprising because they are truly individuals and therefore NOT like us, undergo meaningful change, and live in the same world we live in. Note that these characters don’t always have to be likable. For example, who actually likes Humbert Humbert? Heck, Gollum was my favorite character in the Lord of the Rings, and I found him loathsome.

Anyway, Seth finds his class when he puts his characters nicely in our comfort zone and then slowly breaks them out of it when we slowly realize what they are capable of. Passion, you see, can take us places we don’t always want to go.

The second thing that makes An Equal Music such a prodigious novel is the music. Of course, getting it third hand from me wouldn’t be very useful. If writing about music is considered futile by many, then what about writing about writing about music? At some point, it gets a little, erm, self-referential, if you know what I mean. Suffice to say Seth’s descriptions of the music and the people playing it reach moments of breathtaking clarity. Indeed, I have not read anything approaching them. It is enough to make one fall in love with the music again.

This alone is almost enough for me to forgive Seth for his total cop out of an ending. The story basically stops rather than concludes. It seems that the art of plotting was lost on Seth. Either that or his editor insisted he keep his tome within a certain word count and something had to go.

Still. An Equal Music. Wow.

And it’s even accompanied by a double CD of classical music from the story. Now there’s a marketing idea. The author selected the pieces himself, several of which were specially recorded for the occasion of this CD. One piece, Beethoven’s String Quartet in C minor opus 104, had never been recorded before. It has since been recorded a half dozen times. And like the novel, the music of An Equal Music is gorgeous.

Kasparov arguing for chess in schools

Here is Kasparov (a hero of mine for almost two decades) on a Brazilian talk show talking about a whole host of chess-related topics. He gets to the chess-as-education issue at around the 9 minute mark and begins extolling the benefits of chess at 9:54.

Among his list of chess benefits is that the game promotes discipline, self-esteem, confidence. It also increases one’s ability to deal with problems and succeed, and not just on the chess board. Kasparov ties chess into computer education as well. He is most convincing, however, when he cites a study in which two similar math classes were given additional lessons, one in chess, the other in mathematics. At the end of the year the chess class outperformed the math class in mathematics.

I believe the study to which Kasparov refers is this one from 2008 by Markus Scholz and others. Read here and here for more information on scientific studies that demonstrate the benefits of chess in education.

While I agree with Kasparov and would never dare contradict him on chess matters, I do believe he omitted one very important benefit of playing chess. And since I have never seen it mentioned anywhere else, I will mention it here.

Humility.

The most important thing chess has given me is humility.

When I tell people that I used to play chess, they often ask, “How good were you?” My answer is always, “Good enough to know how bad I really am.” Since I have not played a tournament game since 1985 when I was in eighth grade, I really have no exact record of my skill level. I can estimate however, given my rate of success in the late 1990s against tournament players in casual games, that my highest skill level was between a 1600 and 1650 in United States Chess Federation rating points. So 15 years ago, when I would study chess for at least an hour every night, I was little more than what the USCF called a Class B player. To put things in perspective, you’d need a rating of 2000 to be an expert, 2200 to be a national master, and 2400 to be a senior or international master. So I was, in chess parlance, a fish, a wood-pusher, alas, a patzer.

In some weird way it was something to be proud of.

Another story goes thusly: A friend and I were having at it over the board one evening, hurling our armies at each other amid a riot of kibbitzing, as usual. We were in the Skylight Exchange, our favorite chess hangout in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. I don’t remember the games, except that they were always sloppy, fast and thrilling. Out of the blue, this college kid came in and challenged me. I duly accepted and after a few moves, it was evident the kid really didn’t understand the basic tenets of the game. I crushed him easily. Two times. I could have played five opponents of his caliber at once with the black pieces and still had my way.

Anyway, the kid could barely contain his frustration and said he wanted to analyze the games to figure out where he went wrong. When we were done, he got up and declared through clenched teeth that, “Every time I lose, I get better!” He even included a dramatic pause in the middle.

“Every time I lose…(beat)…(beat)…I get better!”

His intensity was so precious, I had to choke back a laugh not to be rude. But I couldn’t resist leaning over and asking my friend if he gets better every time he loses. My friend smiled, shook his head, and said, “Nope. If did I’d be a grandmaster by now!” By then I had about lost it, laughing at this poor kid’s expense. He didn’t stick around, and I never saw him again.

I really hope the little thrashing I gave him made him realize how rare it is to have real talent at chess, and how wrong it is for one to presume they have such talent when they really don’t. When I was 25, I started playing chess again after a 12-year layoff. I had heard about the chess club at the Skylight Exchange. I thought I could do well against the players there. I didn’t. I thought I was something special, someone who could re-learn the game and start winning. I wasn’t.

It doesn’t mean I didn’t try like hell.

Back then I didn’t have a career, didn’t have a girlfriend, didn’t have much of a life. All I had was my “poetry to protect me”, to quote Paul Simon. That, and piles of student debt, which, I am pretty sure, Paul Simon didn’t sing about.

Paul Simon probably not Rhymin' about Fannie Mae

So with little to lose, I bought every chess book I could find and studied. Sure enough, I got better. It was a long, painful process, but I managed increase my standing among the players there. Among the lower half, I started to go about 50-50, maybe even a little better than that. Among the stronger players I graduated from being busted within the first 7 moves to being able to achieve perfectly playable middle games before eventually blundering and going down in yet another ignominious ball of fire.

And it hurt. It hurt.

See this picture? This is of me as a division I college wrestler getting my ass kicked by Michael Stokes of NC State in 1989. I’m the guy on the bottom. I remember that match very well. Stokes pretty much threw me around like a rag doll. Did whatever the hell he wanted. It was all I could do to keep him off of me. He tech-falled me in the second period, meaning he obtained a 15 point advantage, after which the match was stopped. State was awarded 6 points in the dual meet, and my team got nothing. It was as if he had just pinned me.

And who is Michael Stokes? He was the 126 lb. runner-up in the NCAA wrestling tournament that year. He succumbed 5-2 to a wrestler named Kendall Cross from Oklahoma State in the finals. And who is Kendall Cross? Gold medal winner in the 57 kg weight class at the summer Olympic games in Atlanta, Georgia, 1996. Watch the match here.

That is the gulf between me and greatness.

I never had any pretentions of being a tough guy, because I knew what tough was. That doesn’t mean I was a wimp, of course. I had the ligaments torn in my left knee during one match (which I won). Re-sprained my right ankle in another (which I also won). I had been slammed so hard against the mat that I saw stars and didn’t know where I was for a few moments (That one I didn’t win). I had completed matches so exhausted that all I could do was fall on my back and writhe. Wrestling is a hard sport. If you don’t give it your soul it will abuse you. And it hurts. It hurts.

But I assure you, it never hurt more than when I lost a game of chess I should have won.

I don’t know why, but physical beatings were nothing compared to the stabbing pangs of hate that would riot in my mind for days whenever I had to concede a wholly unnecessary defeat to someone who didn’t deserve to win. The contempt. The disgust. The regret. The bile. The effort to keep all these volatile emotions bottled up was almost more than I could handle sometimes. I realized that from a broken heart there is nowhere to hide.

I’m reminded of how General Winfield Scott in 1846 played two casual games against 9-year old child prodigy and future unofficial world champion Paul Morphy. The general fancied himself a formidable player, you see. When he was in Morphy’s hometown of New Orleans, he demanded he face strong local talent. He was shocked when this came in the form an unassuming little boy and was even more shocked when this unassuming little boy crushed him like a bug, twice.

General Winfield Scott: Ooooh, Ah hate losin'.

With his enormous ego capsizing like the Titanic, Scott sent the boy home and refused to play him again.

Paul Morphy: So, who was this person I just beat again?

I didn’t want to be like Winfield Scott. We were both sore losers, yes. But I wanted to get my ass kicked honest, like a man. And it hurt. It hurt. But I kept coming back for more. I wanted to get better, and one only gets better by playing his betters. Especially in chess where you can objectively measure a player’s worth. There is little room for subjectivity or opinion or luck in chess. Either you win, lose, or draw.

Anyway, the Chapel Hill players gradually accepted me, and with a group of friends to hang out with a couple times a week my life got a little more interesting. But I always knew that there were at least a couple guys in the group I could never beat on a regular basis. They were just better than I was, and there was nothing I could do about it. Sure, I could work hard and gain experience. But I felt I could study three hours a day for months on end while they could sit around and do nothing and they still would have beaten me. Or, given my disastrous tendency to blunder in endgames, they’d have a hell of a chance.

How could I be so certain? Because what they could do without effort required much effort from me. For example, there were a couple guys who could watch a game being played and then afterwards effortlessly reconstruct a position on the board from almost any point in the game. I couldn’t dream of doing such a thing without tremendous sweat and effort, and still I would probably get something wrong. There are no books that teach you how to do this. This is not something you learn how to do. This is something you know how to do. Either your brain has the machinery to do this, or it doesn’t. Mine doesn’t.

This I just got used to. Over time, as I became a better player, I also became a better loser. I began to forget the losses and cherish my victories. I learned how to enjoy the spirit and elegance of the game. I learned how not to take myself so seriously. I also learned to take pride in whatever improvement I could muster. This is the humility I was discussing earlier. Note the lack of arrogance. Note the more balanced and reasonable perspective on things. Note the accurate assessment of oneself, that one quality lacking in our hapless college kid as well as in the great Winfield Scott and many others, I would imagine.

As Kasparov points out, the benefits you get from chess translate well to life too. I became a more humble person because of chess, not just a more humble player. And if the testimony of my Chapel Hill friends is worth anything, I became more likeable as well.

But don’t get me wrong, if you take chess seriously (like I did) but lack real talent (also like I did), chess will break your heart. And it hurts. It hurts. But everything I did, I would do again without question, without hesitation. Because what I got out of chess in the end was totally worth it.

As a postscript, I’d like to share one of the sweetest moments I’ve had as a class B chess player. In our little coterie of guys, the alpha male was without question an international master from Germany. I believe his international rating at the time was something like 2250, which was astronomically high compared to mine. Anyway, he was a genuinely nice guy who never minded wasting his time with us patzers. The way he would so effortlessly crush us all was breathtaking to behold. He also never took it hard on the rare occasions in which we managed to beat him.

I must have played him 80 to 100 times over the course of 3 years in the late 1990s. In all those games, I believe I earned maybe 3 draws and only 2 wins. The rest were just dreadful beatings. Of the wins, the first really shouldn’t count because he and I were playing at a restaurant while he had his arm around his girlfriend. He was consuming his second beer of the evening and ordering dinner when the game started. He simply misjudged an opening sequence, and I won a piece for nothing. He could have played on (and probably would have won), but, like a gentleman, he resigned.

The other time was a legitimate win for me. I forced him to capitulate in the endgame. Later analysis proved that he had played very badly, missing a few key positional moves, while I was in unusually sharp form. Regardless, he never let me come close to a win against him after that.

But this isn’t the sweet part. The sweet part occurred when we taught him how to play bughouse. And what is bughouse? Only the funnest, most awesomest, most bodacious chess variant known to Man.

Bughouse!

It’s basically team chess. Two on two. Two boards. Two clocks. One team member is white, the other is black. If a player captures a piece, he can hand it to his teammate who can then place it on his board pretty much wherever he wants. Time limits are always low, like 5 minutes or less. And kibbitzing is not only allowed, but encouraged. The louder the better. Click here to see what a bughouse game looks and sounds like.

Bughouse also has its own set of strategies and tactics separate from chess. There are certain things in chess, like fianchettoing a bishop, which one would never do in bughouse, for it would be plain suicide. This was something I neglected to inform our IM from Germany when I sat him down and taught him the game. You see, I had revenge in mind. Sweet, sweet revenge.

And, boy, did I get it.

For about 4 or 5 games, I beat the stuffing out of an international chess master over a chessboard. It was a slaughter, a beat down, a blitzkrieg. And I loved every single moment of it. My esteemed opponent was just too classy and could not adapt quickly enough to the cruder barroom tactics of bughouse. Still, he had fun. And he never once grudged me my time in the sun.

So, that’s another thing that Kasparov can add to his list of chess benefits. Great memories.

This post will compare the two sports in terms of overall excitement.

I will start with two premises. One, that a great boxing match is potentially every bit as exciting as a great MMA bout, although not always in the same way. In the ideal world, one sport is as good as the other. From this, I posit that in the real world, MMA has a greater likelihood for excitement for reasons that are both essential and incidental to both sports. Further, I believe that much of the disadvantages boxing has vis-à-vis MMA can be rectified.

First, a little autobiographical note. I started as a big boxing fan growing up because my dad was also a big fight fan. My earliest memory of boxing was in 1974 watching Muhammad Ali using the rope-a-dope tactic to knock out George Foreman. I was five. I also remember Ali getting knocked down by Chuck Wepner (the man who inspired all those Rocky movies), although my dad swears Wepner simply stepped on Ali’s foot and pushed him. Look at the photo and judge for yourself.

That's Chuck on the right in case you were wondering.

I remember Ali’s antics with Howard Cosell, his showing up to one interview wielding a hammer, his brawling in the studio with Joe Frazier, both Spinks fights. I also remember Mike Weaver’s incredible come-from-behind knockout of Big John Tate, Roberto Duran’s ‘no mas’ episode with Sugar Ray Leonard, Larry Holmes stopping Renaldo Snipes and Gerry Cooney, and other fights from the seventies and early eighties as well.

By the time I graduated college in 1990 I had seen hundreds of fights and remembered just about all of them. I read The Ring and other boxing magazines religiously. I made a student film about boxing. I studied any boxing history book I could find. At one point I could honestly and with some pride call myself an amateur boxing historian.

But I had always known that there was always something about boxing – or several somethings, really – that prevented it from being all that it could be. Of course, we could always point to the rampant corruption in the sport, its ties to organized crime and long history of fixed fights. This is well-documented. There’s also the horrific judging, the shameful mismatches, the dreadful officiating, the post-fight tantrums, and the outright cheating, not to mention all the rioting and ear-biting that has taken place in the ring. And in case you may think that such transgressions are an artifact of a bygone age, these last seven examples all occurred since the mid-1990s. And there is many more to choose from.

But even when all is on the up-and-up with good judging, officiating, matchmaking, and talented, motivated combatants, boxing always has a real potential to fail. That is, to invite tedium or to not end conclusively, to not bring us to the state of breathtaking awareness we enter when we see a great fight or a great knockout. Mike Weaver brought us there, so did Hagler-Hearns, Pryor-Arguello I, and a young Mike Tyson against any number of opponents.

Lesser known examples from that era might also include Evander Holyfield against Michael Dokes, Michael Moorer against Bert Cooper, James Toney against Michael Nunn, Julio Cesar Chavez against Edwin Rosario, and many others. These fights were either blistering donnybrooks or stunning displays of violence and power, or both. They all contained drama, a very high-level of skill, and a brutally conclusive ending. It’s fights like these that leave one breathless and craving replays.

Only a fight fan can understand the terrible yet addictive exhilaration that comes with witnessing one man brutalize another man to a state of near-death under fair rules. Perhaps it’s the atavistic violence, the physical domination of one man over another that reminds us of our own carnal, mortal existence. Who knows? Many writers have pondered these ideas. My point however is that this is more like the holy grail of boxing rather than a common occurrence. Most top-level boxing matches don’t reach such heights and never even threaten to.

Good examples of boxing failure from the last 25 years include be Lennox Lewis against David Tua (2000), Oscar De La Hoya against Felix Sturm (2004), Floyd Mayweather against Carlos Baldomir (2006), and Pernell Whitaker against any number of guys: Greg Haugen (1989), Jose Luis Ramirez II (1989), Azumah Nelson (1990), Rafael Pineda (1992). I recognize Whitaker’s brilliance as a boxer, but to me he always seemed more of a performer than a fighter. In his matches, I always waited for a fight to break out, and instead I’d get something more like a dance, with Whitaker almost always one step ahead of his opponents.

Sweet Pea gets no love from RC.

In the cases mentioned above you have a consummately skilled fighter against a tough but less skilled opponent. The results were pure tedium since the fighter with the greater skill, despite his best efforts, could not hurt his man, and in turn was too good to get hurt by him. By the second round the outcome was a foregone conclusion: unanimous decision. Fight fans call this “pitching a shutout.” Some praise these kinds of bouts, pointing to the brilliance and artistry of the superior fighter. I point to the lack of competition and drama and feel like I’ve been ripped off.

This is why I refused to watch Andre Ward fight Carl Froch in the final round of Super-6 tournament in 2011. The fight fit this mold perfectly and as such had turkey written all over it. And I was right. Ward easily outpointed Froch and was never really in danger. Why go see a fight when you know in advance who is going to win?

Yeah, I saw that one coming.

Another example would be the fighters who fight not to lose rather than to win. Two classic examples would be Sugar Ray Leonard’s controversial points win over Marvin Hagler (1987), and Oscar De La Hoya’s controversial points loss to Felix Trinidad (1999). In both cases you had guys moving a lot (often backwards) and throwing a volume of flashy punches aimed more to impress judges rather than hurt their opponents. 25 years later, the Hagler-Leonard fight still generates controversy.

The great Roy Jones, Jr. also emulated this style against Mike McCallum in 1996. Virgil Hill, Corey Spinks, Chop-Chop Corely, Nikolai Valuev, and Chris Byrd, all world champions, have been accused of this behavior as well. They rarely go for the knockout or engage in the intense exchanges fans crave. Instead they were content to walk away with their ‘W’s at the fans’ expense.

A subset of this would be those talented fighters who do try to hurt their man, but lack real power. Winky Wright, Clarence “Bones” Adams, Paulie Malignaggi, and Yuri Foreman fit into this category quite nicely, and thus rarely are in good fights unless on they’re on the losing end.

Another subset of this group would be boxers who, knowing they are overmatched, fight simply not to get knocked out. Or, really, not fight at all. James “Bonecrusher” Smith and Jesse Ferguson famously turned in such a performance against a young Mike Tyson in the mid-1980s. Audley Harrison did the same against David Haye in 2010. Shane Mosely’s tepid effort against Manny Pacquaio in 2011 is perhaps the most high profile of the recent examples.

Another way in which boxers can stink up joints would be to emulate the “jab and grab” or “mug and maul” style of John Ruiz who left a turbid trail of flatulence through the heavyweight ranks in the late 1990s and early 2000s. His main strategy often seemed to wrangle his man onto the ropes and wing punches in the clinch. And he was good at it, which made his fights extremely hard to watch and harder to score.

Yeah, these fights were as ugly as they seem.

Naseem Hamed, an otherwise exciting fighter, laid a similar egg in 1999 during his wrestling match against Cesar Soto. He threw his man to the canvas numerous times and won a sloppy, ugly unanimous decision. You can read about his dreadful performance here.

On the other hand, sometimes two tough, talented, and motivated boxers cannot turn in an exciting scrap no matter how many kitchen sinks they throw at each other. It must be something about the styles of some boxers that sucks the air out of their matches like a bad soufflé. The first fight that comes to mind is Evander Holyfield-Lennox Lewis I from 1999, a lackluster affair best described as a waltz on four left feet. These are two hall of fame heavyweights, so it’s not so much a knock on them. But according to Wikipedia, the pair landed 478 punches over 12 less-than-scintillating rounds (130 for Holyfield, 348 for Lewis). This averages out to a dismal 40 punches landed per round for both of them, only around 10 of which coming from Holyfield. It was a forgettable night, made sadly unforgettable by the scandalous draw that was awarded afterwards. And this was no fluke since the rematch later that year wasn’t exactly a barnstormer either.

Boxing fights call such fights “snoozers”. De La Hoya-Whitaker from 1997 qualifies. Recent examples include Fres Oquendo against Elieser Castillo from 2007 and Nonito Donaire against Omar Narvaez from 2011.

Often such awkward results occur when a lefty faces a righty, and it’s hard for either fighter to establish a rhythm. The first Kostya Tszyu-Sharmba Mitchell fight from 2001 comes to mind here. How about when one fighter is dead set on fouling, such as Agapito Sanchez was in his 2001 technical draw against Manny Pacquaio? What an ugly fight that was. Then there’s the constant risk of fighters accidentally clashing heads and getting their faces cut open. Does anyone remember Vernon Forrest’s first fight against Raul Frank in 2000? Micky Ward against Jesse James Lejia in 2002? Both fights were stopped early, and fans went home disappointed. But probably not as disappointed as fans were in 2010 when they watched Kermit Cintron trip and fall out of the ring in the 4th round while wrangling with his opponent Paul Williams. It had been a pretty slow fight to begin with, and when Cintron was injured by his fall and couldn’t continue, he was inexplicably declared the loser.

Keep in mind that every fight I’ve mentioned was a high profile bout that featured at least one past or current world champion or contender still in his prime facing a legitimate world-ranked opponent. Paying customers should be treated with high theater as much as possible when seeing bouts like this. Obviously, the various forms of corruption threaten to ruin boxing for everyone. But when things fizzle even when no one is to blame, then perhaps something should be done about the sport itself.

And here is where is where we should look to MMA.

After watching MMA seriously for 8 years now, I can honestly say that that breathless elation, that intense, addictive buzz one feels after one of those great yet all-too-rare rare boxing matches happens all the time in MMA. If the list of great boxing matches I mentioned before seemed long, here is a list of truly great, truly mesmerizing MMA bouts only from the past three years. Every single one of these brings all the drama and thrill and action of the very best boxing matches (and I provide video links where I can).

Anthony Pettis-Ben Henderson, 2010 – A classic topped off by a super-human kick.

Melvin Manhoef-Robbie Lawlor, 2010 – A brutal, one-punch, come-from-behind KO.

Anderson Silva-Chael Sonnen, 2010 – Joe Louis-Billy Conn I all over again – but with twice the trash talk.

Brock Lesnar-Shane Carwin, 2010 – Truly from the brink of defeat.

Jorge Santiago-Kazuo Misaki II, 2010 – Gut-wrenching fight, exhausting, relentless.

Frankie Edgar-Gray Maynard II, 2011 – Sickening 1st round and an edge-of-your-seat comeback.

Frankie Edgar-Grey Maynard III, 2011 – Deja vu, but with a better ending.

Nick Diaz-Paul Daley, 2011 – Two bad dudes. You knew this wouldn’t last long.

Cheick Congo-Pat Barry, 2011 – Foremna-Lyle, distilled into two and a half beautiful minutes.

Dan Henderson-Shogun Rua, 2011 – MMA’s Thrilla in Manila.

Frank Mir-Antonio Rodrigo Noguiera 2, 2011 – Oh, snap!

Some MMA fans may quibble about fights left off this list (there are quite a few I still have not seen), but very few will deny that the fights on this list are classics. And do you clamor for jaw-dropping exhibitions of skill and brutality? The sickening submission, the highlight reel knockout? Again, from the past three years alone we have:

Paulo Thiago-Mike Swick, 2010 – There’s nothing like watching a man go to sleep.

Chris Lytle-Matt Brown, 2010 – The most artful submission I have ever seen.

(Unfortunately, I cannot find video or good photos of these matches.)

Jon Jones-Lyoto Machida, 2011 – Wicked. The fans had to tell Big John McCarthy that Machida was out.

Anderson Silva-Vitor Belfort, 2011 – Remember, this was Vitor Belfort this happened to.

Marius Zaromskis-Bruno Carvalho, 2011 – Somersalt heel kick straight from a Jackie Chan movie.

Cairo Rocha vs. Francisco Neves, 2011 – Where do these guys come up with these kicks?

Nick Diaz-Evangelista Santos, 2011 – I never considered how an armbar could be beautiful until I saw it executed here.

Edson-Barbosa-Terry Etim, 2012 – Perfect spinning wheel kick.

Jose Aldo-Chad Mendes, 2012 – If a cobra had knees, he’d be Jose Aldo.

And there’s more. With MMA, there’s always more. Keep in mind that this is only since 2010, a small subset of the fights I could have selected. It bears repeating that these fights are every bit as good as the best boxing matches. You would just have to watch top level boxing for 5-6 years to compile an equally long list.

The best analogy I can think of is the old video game Galaga. Remember how you could get your space ship captured in a tractor beam? And if you shoot just right, you could get that ship back? Then you could fire two shots at a time and really take it to the aliens. Boxing is like that single shooter. You’re deadly, to be sure, but your kill rate is only half as good as the double shooter. MMA is like that double shooter. You get about twice as much bang from the same amount of buck.

Ever hang around old-time fight fans? You know, the guys of Bert Sugar’s generation, born before or during the Depression, who didn’t give Cassius Clay a chance against Sonny Liston and who still look to Floyd Patterson as the kind of champion to which all boxers should aspire. Don’t they get a little tiresome when they praise old fighters at expense of current ones? Ever get sick of hearing about how Sugar Ray Robinson would have knocked out Roy Jones, about how Henry Armstrong would have crushed Pernell Whitaker, and about how Joe Louis would have stopped Muhammad Ali? Don’t they realize how much they sound like stuck up blowhards when they praise to no end the Herculean toughness of Jake La Motta, the iron will of Tony Zale, the slickness of Kid Gavilan, the brilliance of Ezzard Charles, the ferocity of Jack Dempsey, the guile of Wilie Pep, the courage of Jimmy Braddock, the power of Sandy Saddler and then sneer in undisguised disdain at the modern stars? Arturo Gatti-Mickey Ward I? Feh. That’s not a fight. Carmen Basilio-Tony DeMarco II at the Boston Garden. 1955. Now there was a fight.

Bert Sugar: Sure, Primo Carnera would have licked Vladimir Klitschko! What of it?

Well, kids, listen up. You see Bert Sugar’s ugly mug up there? Don’t laugh, because that’s going to be us in forty years. You heard it here first. Today’s MMA fans are going to become the most obnoxious, insufferable, overbearing gasbags when it comes to the MMA of the future, and our grandkids are going to hate us for it. I assure you, we will not shut up for one second about what Chuck Liddell or Jon Jones would have done to some punk champion in 2052 who calls himself a mixed martial artist. Anderson Silva, Georges St. Pierre, Jose Aldo, our opinions of these and probably a dozen other fighters will swell over time until these men become ensconced in some heroic pantheon that you really have to be part of our generation to understand and appreciate.

And why? Because, like Bert Sugar and other old-time fight fans, we are extremely fortunate to live during a combat sport’s golden age. It may not seem so obvious now, but what the UFC, Strikeforce, PRIDE, and other organizations have been serving up on a regular basis for the past decade is a rare and wondrous thing. When it goes away (and one day, sadly, it will) we are going to realize that the first two or three decades of the 21st century produced some of the greatest fights and some of the greatest fighters the world has ever seen.

Bert Sugar describes today’s boxing as an “echo of years gone by.” In a sense, he’s right. Boxing 60-70 years ago did reach heights it will probably never reach again. And in some ways I wouldn’t want it to. I wouldn’t want to invite the kind of harrowing conditions that gave rise to boxing’s greatest era 60-70 years ago: grinding poverty, the Great Depression, World War II, bigotry and racism, institutionalized oppression, and other things, I’m sure. Who would want to go through all that again? But for some reason, today is different. We can achieve great MMA without paying such a price. Today’s MMA is still on the upward climb towards the same heights boxing inhabited long ago. I know this sport, and I know its value. With MMA we are living in an age from which echoes are made.

We will delve into why in my next post.

On August 28th, 2010, boxing hall of famer James “Lights Out” Toney stepped into the UFC’s Octagon to take on MMA’s aging hero Randy Couture. The two athletes could not be more dissimilar. Toney, a phenomenally talented tough guy from Grand Rapids, Michigan, won the IBF middleweight title in 1991 and, when active, dominated the light heavyweight and cruiserweight divisions for over a decade. By 2003 he was competing successfully at heavyweight. He’s a bad dude with old-school skills and uncanny power. Outside the ring however, there’s little sophistication to him other than a thuggish, warlord’s charisma that commands respect and perhaps not a small amount of fear. That’s how it seems to me in his interviews at least.

On the other hand, Couture was a college wrestling standout, army veteran, and an Olympic alternate in Greco-Roman wrestling. Nicknamed Captain America, he’s articulate, outgoing, charming and loved the world over for helping to cement wrestling as one of the cornerstones of MMA. Plus, he never grows old. By the time of the Toney fight, he was 47. Toney was no spring chicken either at 42.

James Toney Vs. Randy Couture

Here is YouTube video of the prefight hype to give you a taste of what this altercation was all about.

So pride was on the line. And bragging rights. Boxers and boxing writers have long held MMA with disdain, claiming that a good mixed martial artist will be no match for a good boxer in any arena.

So how did the hall of fame boxer do? The fight ended in the first round when Couture took Toney down with a low single leg, mounted him, and submitted him with a textbook arm triangle choke.

Couture Submitting Toney

So that settles the debate. In the Octagon at least, mixed martial artists are superior to boxers, right?

Well, not really. Watch this.

This is a 48-year old “Merciless” Ray Mercer, retired former WBO heavyweight boxing champion stretching 33 year-old Tim Sylvia, former UFC heavyweight champion in 9 seconds. Sylvia was a mere 6 years removed from his UFC title holding days whereas Mercer was a good 18-20 years past his prime. Recently, the writers at Sherdog.com posted Sylvia as the number 7 all-time MMA heavyweight.

So if mixed martial artists reign supreme in the cage, what is Tim Sylvia doing getting knocked cold by a retired boxer?

The answer is that a boxer can transfer 100% of his skill set into the cage whereas a mixed martial artist can only transfer 10%-15% of his skill set into a boxing ring. I like to think of MMA fighters as Swiss army knives: multifaceted, but perhaps not the very best in any one single facet (with the possible exception of Brazilian Ju-Jitsu, which is very closely tied to MMA). Boxers are more like bowie knives, long and deadly, but comparatively one dimensional. And since MMA fights start on the feet just like in boxing, this one dimension could very well be all you need. As they say, power is the great equalizer, and anyone with a good punch has a puncher’s chance, even in the cage.

A statistical analysis will show that boxers actually transition better into mixed-martial arts than the other way around. Presented here are a list of notable mixed-martial artists and professional boxers who made the switch. These athletes must either be champions, contenders, or notable in some way in either boxing or MMA, or they must compete seriously in both sports simultaneously.

Notable Boxers Who Have Fought in MMA (Click to enlarge):

 Notable Mixed Martial Artists Fought as Professional Boxers (Click to enlarge):

Before we begin to analyze this data, we need to discuss briefly some important names left off these lists and why. There’s always going to be some subjectivity and exclusivity in studies like these, but I hope you find my reasons for limiting it to these 22 fighters reasonable, if not compelling.

Don Frye: Frye began his MMA career in 1996 and went on to become a two-time UFC tournament champion. His lone boxing match in 1989 cannot be considered a switch to the sweet science since he hadn’t begun his MMA career yet. And the 7-year gap prevents it from being considered a switch in the other direction.

Jerome Le Banner: Le Banner began his boxing career in 1998 went undefeated against nondescript opposition. He began his MMA career in 2002 and went 5-2 decent opposition. However, Le Banner is first and foremost a world champion kick boxer, compiling a record of 58-20-1 since 1992. He’s excluded here because he is at heart neither a boxer nor a mixed martial artist as the term is currently defined.

Carter Williams: Another champion kick boxer who began in the 1990s, Williams had a very brief boxing career in 2002 and tallied a 4-4 record in MMA since then. He’s excluded here for the same reason Le Banner is.

Matt Skelton: Skelton was also a champion kick boxer in the 1990s and transitioned into a highly successful boxing career in 2002. He challenged for the WBA Heavyweight title in 2008. He had one MMA bout in 2001, a loss. Technically, this was a switch from kick boxing to MMA. Since he hadn’t started boxing yet the dynamics are different enough to exclude him here.

Alexander Ustinov: Like Le Banner, Williams, and Skelton, Ustinov started as a kick boxer. He fought 64 times from 2002 to 2007. He started boxing in 2006 and is currently ranked in the top 10 by the WBA, the WBO, and the IBF as a heavyweight. During his time as a kick boxer, he competed in events that may or may not be considered MMA bouts since they didn’t adhere entirely to the UFC/Pride model of fighting. For example, fighters wore boxing gloves and didn’t grapple. Thus, Ustinov is mostly a kick boxer turned boxer with dubious experience in MMA.

Art Jimmerson: Jimmerson was an accomplished boxer by the time he famously competed in the very first UFC competition in 1993. He had contended for the NABF Light-Heavyweight title in 1990 and won the IBC Americas light heavyweight title in 1991. His boxing record stood at 29-5 on the day he entered the Octagon against Royce Gracie, perhaps the greatest mixed martial artist of the day (although few outside his home country of Brazil knew it back then). Gracie mounted Jimmerson and submitted him in little over two minutes. Jimmerson is excluded here because although he was fighting in MMA, I’ll argue that he really didn’t know what he was getting into. He showed up wearing one boxing glove, an unheard of practice which put him at an absurd disadvantage, and he tapped out despite not being struck with a significant blow.

My hunch is that Jimmerson didn’t want to get injured and jeopardize his upcoming bout with WBA Cruiserweight champion Orlin Norris (which took place two months later) and decided too late that his little foray into MMA was perhaps ill-advised. Had he trained in MMA for several months and demonstrated some familiarity with it against Gracie he would be included here. But because he hadn’t, it’s hard to take his stab at MMA seriously.

Watch the video here and judge for yourself.

Perhaps we should first compare the combined records of both groups. That would be: 47-35-1 for the boxers (a winning percentage of 56.6%) and 42-5-4 for the mixed martial artists (a winning percentage of 82.4%). So this seems the support the argument that mixed martial artists have the edge over boxers. Indeed, when athletes cross over there is a statistically better chance the a mixed martial artist will be successful than a boxer.

But let’s consider two other things: 1) The age at the time of switching from one combat sport to another, and 2) the quality of opposition each group faced in their second sport.

For the first, boxers tend to transition later than mixed martial artists. On average, they make the switch at 35.0 years of age, whereas the average age for mixed martial artists is 27.6. Considering that a man is in his physical prime during his twenties and early thirties, this is a meaningful statistic. It seems that boxers tend to wait until their career is over or on the downside before trying MMA. This is certainly the case with Botha, Butterbean, Davis, Mercer, Nishijima, Nortje, Toney, Warring, and Jeremy Williams. Only Rubin Williams fought as a mixed martial artist while still in the midst of his boxing career. With the MMA group, on the other hand, you get a lot of guys who will compete in both sports simultaneously or who will dabble for a fight or two in boxing, perhaps as a way to keep their striking sharp between MMA fights. This usually happens in their twenties. Only Kimbo Slice bucks this trend, turning his back on a respectable MMA career in his late thirties to give boxing a try.

For the second, it’s nearly impossible to obtain an objective measure of the quality of opposition a fighter has faced in his second sport. The best we can do is compare the winning and losing percentages of the opposition and then look at their accomplishments. The combined record of opposition faced by boxers in MMA is 932-690-36. This is a winning percentage of 56.2% and a losing percentage of 41.6%. On the other hand, the combined record of opposition faced by mixed martial artists in the boxing ring is 417-944-51. This is a winning percentage of 29.5% and a losing percentage of 66.8%. Clearly, boxers faced the stiffer competition in their second sport, which would explain why their win-loss percentages are not as stellar as those coming from MMA.

One will quickly notice that of the 1412 bouts taken from the records of the opposition facing mixed martial artists in boxing, 1048 came from Chris Lytle, who seems to be a bit of an outlier. As a boxer, Lytle took on a bunch of guys with big losing records including Reggie Strickland, who famously lost 256 boxing matches from 1987 to 2005 while winning only 66. Another Lytle opponent tallied a dismal 13-166-6 record. So removing Lytle from the mix brings us to 151-200-13. This is still only a winning percentage of 41.4% and a losing percentage of 54.9%. Not as impressive as the competition faced by boxers in MMA.

Another way to judge quality of opposition is to determine what champions, former champions, or title challengers the fighters faced in their second sport. As of December 2011, boxers have faced 11 (or 12 since Jan Nortje faced UFC 8 Heavyweight finalist Gary Goodridge twice) whereas mixed martial artists have only faced 7:

MMA world champions or challengers faced by boxers in MMA:

Boxing world champions or challengers faced by mixed martial artists in boxing:

So, again, Chris Lytle is the outlier having faced 6 of the 7 boxing champions and challengers listed above.

Also, keep in mind that none of the boxing titles mentioned here are recognized by the Boxing Hall of Fame, and only one (the WBO title) is a true world championship belt, albeit a minor one at that. The other titles are considered minor or regional. To be fair, the titles achieved or contended for by the 11 MMA fighters listed in the previous table may claim to be a world championship, but some really aren’t. In some cases these represent tournament victories or minor belts. The Pride and UFC titles at different points in the 1990s and 2000s (and perhaps the WEC and Strikeforce titles in the last 5 or so years) are probably the most prestigious of the bunch and lay the best claim to the term “world champion”.

We should also consider that there are more boxers in the world than mixed martial artists, so the ascent to the championship level is likely to be longer in boxing.

Still, the MMA champions and challengers faced by boxers in the cage are far more elite than the boxing champions and challengers faced by mixed martial artists in the ring. Couture and Sakuraba are legendary fighters and have easy claims to greatness in MMA. Gracie is a Brazilian Ju-Jitsu black belt, who, in the 1990s, defeated two UFC champions. Nate Diaz is a highly rated and respected fighter currently competing as a lightweight in the UFC. Tim Sylvia is a former UFC champion with 2 title defenses. And both Manhoef and Akiyama hold a KO victories over Sakuraba (although Akiyama’s was changed later to a no contest). Any casual MMA fan will have heard of most of these guys.

In comparison, the boxing champions and contenders faced by Lytle and Noons wouldn’t be household names even in their own households, to borrow a quip from boxing writer Bert Sugar. In fact, of the 7 mentioned above, only 2 actually won a title. And one of these is Reggie Strickland. Yes, the same guy who went 66-256-14 in his boxing career.

This all supports the claim that boxers compete better in MMA than the other way around. Despite that MMA fighters have the better win-loss record in their second sport, boxers as a whole still have a win percentage well over 50%, are taken more seriously, and compete on a higher level in MMA despite their much more advanced age. The fact that one boxer actually holds a KO victory over a former undisputed MMA world champion seals the deal in my opinion.

But if there is still some doubt, consider this. Anderson Silva has been considered the pound for pound best MMA fighter in the world for the last 6 years at least. Here is a quote from Wikipedia attesting to his greatness.

Anderson Silva is a beautiful fighter who, now in his late thirties, is still ruling the MMA roost at 185 pounds. Here is a good YouTube collection of Anderson Silva’s greatest moments (if you don’t mind excessive profanity in the soundtrack). Really, he is breathtaking to watch.

This is the same person who in 1998 was knocked out in the second round by someone named Osmar Luiz Teixeira, an 11-2 fighter from Brazil. Silva was 23 at the time, not old, but certainly not young by boxing standards. So the Sugar Ray Robinson of MMA gets stopped in two by a boxer who as of December 2011 has compiled a record of 32-22 and never even contended for a belt, minor or otherwise. This certainly does throw a wet blanket on any argument regarding the superiority of MMA fighters over boxers.

To be fair, there is some controversy as to whether this bout even took place and whether it really was Anderson Silva who got knocked out. You can read about it here. But Silva’s demographic information on boxrec.com (a boxing reference site which lists the Teixeira fight) matches that on sherdog.com (a MMA reference site). Same nickname (“The Spider”), same birth date, same city of residence. The only difference is that Boxrec lists Silva as “Da Silva” and has him at 6′ 2.5″ whereas Sherdog drops the “Da” and has him at 6′ 2″ even. In my opinion, it’s the same guy.

Another example would be Jens Pulver. Pulver may not be considered a great MMA fighter, but he was a legitimate UFC lightweight champion in the early 2000s. In 2002 at UFC 35 he defeated the amazing BJ Penn, who is considered one of the greatest MMA fighters ever.

In 2004 at the age of 29 he embarked on a boxing career, winning 4 straight. In his second fight, he got in a kick-down drag-out war with a 3-0 fighter named Steve Vincent and won a close 4-round split decision. Vincent knocked Pulver down, got knocked down twice, and lost by a single point on two of three judges cards. Vincent ended his boxing career 2 years later with a 10-5 record. His biggest fight ended in a 5th round TKO loss to Gilbert Venegas. And who is Venegas? A 10-7 fighter who drew for the WBC Continental Americas welterweight title in 2007 and was shut out in a unanimous decision by a rising Mike Jones a year later. And who is Mike Jones? A currently undefeated welterweight contender ranked in the top 3 in the world by the WBA, the IBF, and the WBO.

This should illustrate the chasm between the level at which MMA fighters compete in boxing and the true championship level. Based on the evidence, it would be unthinkable for a top notch MMA fighter to walk in the ring and take out a champion boxer. If it is thinkable, it would have happened already. Pulver would be losing close fights against people like Mike Jones, not winning close ones against the Steve Vincents of the world. MMA fighters would be facing stiffer boxing competition in general. But they are not, probably because they, as a group, cannot. But in MMA, boxers can, and so they do. And in at least one instance, came out on top.

After his bout with James Toney, Randy Couture faced a challenge from Toney’s boxing promoter to fight Toney in the boxing ring. Couture was frank in his reply. “I would respectfully decline such an offer,” he said. Later he added, “James would probably knock me out in the first round.”

That just about settles it, doesn’t it?

See the entire clip here.

Sources for this article include Sherdog.com, boxrec.com, fightnews.com, and Wikipedia.

In part 3 of this series, I will move from comparing the fighters to comparing the sports of boxing and MMA themselves.

Felix was a Jew. His grandfather, Moses Mendelssohn, who was a noted philosopher and disciple of Leibniz, promoted the humanistic idea that Jews can assimilate into Western culture and still maintain their identities. Ideas such as this led to the great Jewish Emancipation of Europe and helped establish 19th century Germany as the world leader in the arts and sciences.

By converting to Christianity and spending much of his career championing Christian music, Felix Mendelssohn embodied his grandfather’s ideas of assimilation and emancipation. This led the famous German-Jewish poet Heinrich Heine to quip, “the most Jewish thing Felix Mendelssohn ever did was to become a Christian.”

Born in 1809 to a family that was as prosperous as it was cultured and respected, young Felix displayed astoundingly prodigious musical talent. He gave his first piano concert when he was nine. At twelve he dazzled the poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who compared him favorably to a young Mozart in terms of his ability to sight-read and improvise on the piano. Goethe was speaking from experience. Old as he was in 1821, he had witnessed young Mozart play in 1763!

Mendelssohn had always admired the choral music and texts of Johann Sebastian Bach. Such music was hardly fashionable in the early years of the Romantic era, when enlightened Germans looked down upon such unabashed religiosity, and when leading composers such as Chopin, Liszt, Schumann, and Wagner were focusing on rebelling against classical traditions. Nonetheless, in 1829, when he was a mere twenty years old, Mendelssohn arranged and conducted Bach’s St. Matthew’s Passion. It was a tremendous success, and the young composer was credited for almost single-handedly reviving Bach’s music in Germany. Significantly, 1829 marked not only the 100th anniversary of St. Matthew’s Passion but also the 100th anniversary of the birth of Moses Mendelssohn.

Mendelssohn took new inspiration from traditional forms of music. He wrote many works for the church, such as his Elijah Oratorio, which were instantly popular and grew to be cherished in Germany and beyond. His Midsummer Night’s Dream Overture recalled the majestic sweep of Beethoven’s Leonoren Overtures. And the choral Lobgesang, his second symphony, took up where Beethoven’s Ninth left off in merging the classic symphony with the spiritual cantata.

With the symphonic poem, however, Mendelssohn was at his most Romantic and in many cases a step ahead of his contemporaries. The famous conductor Hans von Bulow once stated that Mendelssohn’s symphonic poem Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage “would live when other symphonic poems had ceased to be played.” And this came from the son in-law of Franz Liszt who coined the term “symphonic poem” and did the most to popularize the form. Around the time of his primeval and terrifying Walpurgis Night cantata in the early 1830s, he began calling himself “Richard Wagner’s elder brother.” Indeed, his elemental Hebrides Overture, a work that captures the raw violence and beauty of the sea, is considered a Wagernian work before Wagner!

What can never be forgotten about Felix Mendelssohn was how he was almost deliberately forgotten nearly a century after his death. The Nazis struggled to efface this towering and much beloved figure from the very core of the German psyche. They could not prevent Germans from singing the songs they loved, but they could suppress the name of the Jew who wrote them. They could not pull him off the small stage where he shared a place with the other great German composers of the past, but they could pull down the statue of Mendelssohn that stood in Leipzig. That these cruel and clumsy efforts came frighteningly close to success can drag one either into the depths of cynicism regarding man’s inherent selfishness and ingratitude or into euphoric heights regarding the victory of Truth over oppression.

As the saying goes, all roads lead to Rome. But in the case of the rather stormy and contentious Romantic period of classical music, all roads seemed to stem from Felix Mendelssohn. Chopin may have disregarded Schumann. Schumann may have railed against Wagner. Wagner may have stood apart from Brahms. Brahms may have condemned Liszt. But to a man, they all revered and took inspiration from Felix Mendelssohn. His dear friend Robert Schumann was said to have begun dying the day Mendelssohn passed away tragically in 1847 at the age of thirty-eight. Upon hearing Mendelssohn himself play his gorgeous Songs Without Words, with its adroit and mesmerizing variations simple themes, Robert’s wife Clara Schumann called him “the dearest pianist of all.” And why? Throughout his charmed but short life, he was brilliant, kind, generous, honest, erudite. But most of all, he wrote beautiful music.

Like boxing a century and a half before it, MMA was born into obscurity and possessed with such atavistic violence and brutality that many couldn’t believe that such a thing could exist in the modern age. In fact, shortly after the Ultimate Fighting Championship debuted in the early 1990s, there were calls across the country to ban it. The UFC began as an experiment of sorts to discover which martial art was the most effective. As such, you had wrestlers, Ju-Jitsu and Muay Thai practitioners, karate black belts, boxers, kick boxers, and men from other martial disciplines all competing in a cage called the Octagon. The fighters at first were a hodgepodge, arriving in differing kinds of attire, from Speedos to full gis. Further, the rules of the sport were lax enough to allow tactics that (for people accustomed to boxing at least) seemed truly barbaric. It was perfectly legal to not just to hit a man when he was down, but also to deliver kicks to the head and groin to keep him there. Add to that witches brew elbows, knees, kidney punches, hair pulling, foot stomping, arm locks, leg locks, creative choke holds, and, in one instance at least, strangling an opponent with his T-shirt, and you had something that even the most hardened American sports fans found difficult to swallow.

Of course, amid the 400-pound freak shows, beer-gutted street brawlers, pretentious martial arts dilettantes, wannabe pro-wrestlers, and out-of-work tough guys who appeared in the early UFC tournaments, you had serious athletes dedicated to making MMA a legitimate form of competition. Royce Gracie, the Shamrock brothers, Marco Ruas, Guy Metzger, Vitor Belfort, Randy Couture were leading examples. As time went on in the 1990s, this pretty much became the norm in the UFC as it slowly shed its “bloodsport” in search of mainstream recognition.

Regardless, boxing remained the premier combat sport in America, and not just because MMA took about a decade to find its legs. The 1990s and early 2000s were a golden age for boxing. Superstars such as Mike Tyson, Roy Jones, Julio Cesar Chavez, Lennox Lewis, Evander Holyfield, Marco Antonio Barerra, Felix Trinidad, Ricardo Lopez, and Oscar De La Hoya revitalized interest in the sport. Later stars like the Klitschko brothers, Ricky Hatton, Arturo Gatti, Kostya Tszu, Floyd Mayweather, and Manny Pacquaio got their start in the 1990s as well. Further, competing cable networks such as HBO, Showtime, and ESPN limited some of the corruption in boxing by pressuring promoters to put on competitive fights, not just ones that were most expedient to their profit margins. The talent level was also very, very high, and many weight divisions were loaded with great matchups just waiting to happen, especially heavyweight.

As opposed to MMA, boxing around the turn of the century was considered by most Americans to be a legitimate sport. It could boast of time-honored rules, loads of tradition, Olympic pedigrees, phenomenal athletes, and bigger-than-life personalities while the UFC was still trying to convince state athletic commissions to keep MMA legal. In 2001, the very idea that MMA would eclipse boxing as America’s top combat sport was fairly ridiculous. Now, ten years later, not so much. In fact, it has pretty much already happened.

The UFC changed owners and management in 2001, and as a result better regulated the rules, banned some of the more brutal fighting tactics, introduced more weight classes, earned approval from sanctioning bodies, greatly improved advertizing, made forays into reality television, and spread their appeal across the world. MMA has also developed a distinct personality with its own share of characters, heels, heroes, and rivalries that will soon be part of legend. Bottom line however is that, in the UFC at least, the matchmaking has been excellent, the fighters compete at a very high level, and the fights more often than not are exciting. By 2005, the UFC had turned a corner and has grown in popularity and stature ever since.

Boxing, on the other hand, while still going strong, hasn’t exactly matched the dizzying heights it had reached 10-20 years ago when super-fights were being staged nearly every month. Many of the fighters mentioned above have retired, should retire, or will in the next year or two. And they have not exactly been replaced by athletes of equal magnitude or charisma. The Klitschkos continue to dominate a lackluster heavyweight division. Sergio Martinez, Chad Dawson and Andre Ward are excellent fighters, but Roy Jones, James Toney, and Bernard Hopkins they ain’t. There are a lot of talented guys in the lighter weights, such as Saul Alvarez, Nonito Donaire, Amir Kahn, Marcos Maidana, and Andre Berto. But none as of yet has the box office cache or charisma of a prime Julio Cesar Chavez or Oscar de la Hoya. And has anyone created a rivalry that can match Barerra-Morales, Ward-Gatti, or Corrales-Castillo? Further, the two most recognizable men in the sport, Manny Pacquaio and Floyd Mayweather, share not only the same weight division but also the number 1 and 2 spots on all pound-for-pound lists. Yet they refuse to fight each other.

Of course, boxing isn’t doing badly in 2011. It’s just that compared to how things were 10-20 years ago, it’s in a bit of a slump. Also, it appears to Americans a little worse than it really is since much of boxing’s appeal has shifted overseas with its stars. If you look at the Ring or Fightnews.com rankings per weight class you will only find a smattering of American fighters in the top ten in each division above welterweight. This reminds me of how things were in 1975 when the only American world champion was Muhammad Ali. The talented Olympic classes of 1976 and 1984 changed all that.

I have no doubt that things will improve for boxing, partly because MMA has emerged as a competitor and real threat to its business.

So now that the two sports compete head-to-head we can ask the following questions: which one is better? Which is more thrilling? Who is the more dangerous combat athlete? What can one learn from the other?

These questions I will tackle in an upcoming post.

A Clockwork Orange

In Part 1 I argued that A Clockwork Orange is a cruel, nasty film in which Stanley Kubrick uses “satire” and other intellectual ruses as an excuse for his near-pornographic interest in violence. My evidence thus far has been mathematical. I’ve added up the minutes spent on violence and sex, and on satire. There are more than twice as many minutes dedicated to the former than to the latter.

For convenience sake, I split the film into the following chapters.

1) Ultra-violence (43.5 minutes)
2) Prison (24 minutes)
3) Ludovico Technique (where the satirical elements are introduced) (20 minutes)
4) Freedom and Fall (more ultra-violence) (33.5 minutes)
5) Hospital and Rebirth (more satire) (13 minutes)

For more detail, please see my previous post Against Kubrick 5.

The second part of my argument is subjective: I argue that Stanley Kubrick is more inspired when someone is either doing harm to another or is about to do harm to another than he is when he is trying to be satirical. Further, in the satirical parts, he more often resorts to cheap tricks and shocking images. If I can prove this, then I think I can reasonably help strip away any notion that Kubrick is acting as some kind of humanist in A Clockwork Orange.

So to continue…

The first shot of the film is unforgettable. Alex, our anti-hero, staring into the camera at the Karova milk bar. Eerie synthesizer music. Then Kubrick slowly tracks back, revealing the futuristic setting. Everything here is laden with meaning, foreboding. You can’t take your eyes off it.

This is what I mean when I say profound cinematic idea. I’ll wager Kubrick didn’t consult any rules of direction or cinematography when devising this scene. Rather, he just knew. He knew that it would work because he saw it crystal clear in his mind’s eye before he shot a centimeter of film. This is talent. And odds are you can close your eyes and throw a marble at any scene prior to Alex’s incarceration and come up with something just as good. This is genius.

Here’s a presentation of a half dozen of these images, most from the first chapter of the film:

I love this image. The wide angle. The long shadows. The truncheon resting comfortably on Alex’s shoulders. It’s urban. It’s subterranean. You know something bad is about to happen, but the setting is so…inviting you can’t pull yourself away from it.

I can’t pull myself away from this scene either, but for entirely different reasons.

Now, we all should know what Alex is about to do with those scissors. He’s about to expose his victim’s breasts prior to gang-raping her. It’s horrifying partially because it’s entirely unnecessary. He uses the same pair of scissors to remove all of the woman’s clothes a few seconds later. What does he need to expose her breasts for? He does it because he can, you see. And because she’s a woman and has breasts that Alex the psychopath simply wants to take a gander at. All this and “Singin’ in the Rain”. Chilling cinema.

And who can forget the slow-motion bashing by the lake. Rossini’s “Thieving Magpie” playing on the soundtrack. A real feast for the eyes. Notice also how Kubrick frames these last three examples in wide angle, with the boots of Alex and his droogs figuring prominently. For me, this brings to mind storm troopers and documentaries about Nazi Germany. I’m sure it would bring to mind something else for you, but whatever it brings, I’m sure it won’t be comforting. I would be shocked if this wasn’t Stanley Kubrick’s intent from the very beginning.

Then of course there’s this:

And this:

Hmm, I wonder Kubrick is up to here? And I mean that in a positive way. There is so much meaning in both of these screenshots that I’ll leave it up to the viewer to come to their own conclusions. Keep in mind that Kubrick filmed it so you could do exactly that.

By the way, the woman in this last screenshot is attacking Alex with a bust of Beethoven. Beethoven is Alex’s favorite composer, and Beethoven’s “Ode To Joy” (Symphony #9) is Alex’s favorite composition. Of course, Alex’s self-serving hooliganism has no place in the peace and brotherhood promoted by Beethoven’s 9th, yet he loves Beethoven anyway. Beethoven also plays a very important role during the satirical scenes coming up in the film. So the levels of cinematic and narrative irony just keep piling on.

Perhaps my favorite shot in the entire film is this one, from chapter 4…

…which tracks back into this one:

So what’s going on here? After the Ludovico Technique, Alex is not only conditioned against violence, he is also conditioned against Beethoven’s 9th. That man in the middle is a writer known only as Mr. Alexander. He can be seen in the third screenshot above, about to watch Alex and his droogs gang rape his wife, the lady soon-not-to-be in red. Well, Alex stumbles into his home after being released from prison. To get revenge, Alexander locks him in a room and plays Beethoven’s 9th at full blast from the floor below, attempting to drive him mad. Alex screams in agony, but to Alexander it’s all sweet music.

But why is this sequence so mesmerizing, from the exaggerated schadenfreude on Alexander’s face to the apparent indifference of his co-conspirators? I don’t know. But I do know that it generates an emotional response in me that I cannot name. I also love the guy idly rolling billiard balls across the table.

So, I will ask you then, what do these all these scenes have in common? Well, yes, they are products of Kubrick’s stunning cinematic vision. But what else, my dear brother and only friends? What else do they have in common?

Answer: cruelty and violence. In all cases except the first, someone is in the process of getting beaten, raped, murdered, or tortured. And in the first, Alex reveals that whatever he and droogs decide to do that evening, it will involve “a bit of the old ultra-violence.” So if the violence ain’t happening, it’s certainly about to.

So, let’s compare all this great stuff with some of the conceits Kubrick comes up with during the other chapters in the film, namely 2, 3, and 5.

First, we have the chief guard of the prison.

With all his foot-stomping, order-barking, and anal retentive military etiquette, I never quite understood what Kubrick was going for here. And he must have been going for something since so much time is dedicated to this man. Is Kubrick lampooning the military? The British stiff upper lip? Not that it has anything to do with the story or anything, of course. I guess the prison chief is kind of amusing the first time you see him. After that, you’ll realize that Benny Hill did the schtick much better. So did Monty Python.

Then there are the moments that are just disgusting or placed in the movie for shock value. These are what I call cheap tricks, unworthy of their director. They command a person’s attention the same way a car wreck on the side of the road would. They require no sophistication to appreciate. They carry no meaning, present no vision. Here are some examples. See if you disagree.

So you have someone spitting in Malcolm McDowell’s face (Geez, I wonder how many takes it took to hit the lips like that), Michael Bates looking directly into Malcolm McDowell’s arse (Geez, I wonder if he really is pulling apart those arse cheeks), a close-up of Godfrey Quigley’s impossibly bad teeth (Geez, did Kubrick make him chew through a box of Oreos before shooting?), and a close up of Malcolm McDowell licking the sole of a shoe (Geez, I wonder if that’s a new shoe).

I use the actors’ names here and not their characters’ because what’s happening here is real. That’s not fake spit. That’s not a fake arse. That’s not a fake tongue. And if those are fake teeth, they’re real enough to convince. And I ask all those inane questions because they all relate to real life, in this case the act of filming, the very thing a director is supposed to hide unless his name is Jean Luc Goddard. Your reaction to these scenes would be almost identical to your reaction to them in real life. This is why I call these images cheap tricks. You can get them anywhere, and any director can come up with them. They require no craft, no art. Just competent lighting, acting, and camera work.

Now, what do these images all have in common? Little to no violence or cruelty, that’s what. The second and third images have none at all, the second being a routine prison inspection, and the latter being nothing more than a fire and brimstone sermon by the prison chaplain.

As for the first image, yes, spitting on someone isn’t nice. But is it cruel or violent? Hardly. And sure, Alex had just been roughed up by a pair of cops, but it was nothing compared to the ultra-violence he had been heaping upon Dystopian Britain throughout chapter 1. And that wound on his nose? Caused by one of his droogs hitting him square in the face with a loaded milk bottle, not the cops.

As for the last image, from chapter 3, it’s true that Alex gets slapped a couple times by a thug presumably paid to antagonize him on stage. The point of the scene is to show the public that Alex, being conditioned against violence by the Ludovico Technique, cannot retaliate. It is to show that he’d been cured and can thus regain his freedom. So when told to lick the thug’s shoe, Alex does it. Is this cruel? Well, if licking a man’s shoe is the price one pays for freedom, I doubt I’d call it cruel at all. Just the opposite, actually.

To be sure, there’s some good stuff in the satirical sections of the film. A straightjacketed Alex being forced to watch ultra-violent movies as part of the Ludovico Technique stands out, obviously.

And yes, that’s real physician, not an actor, making sure Malcolm McDowell’s eyes didn’t dry out during filming.

But as great as this image is, I wonder how much of it came from Anthony Burgess, the author of A Clockwork Orange the novel and how much originated from Kubrick?

Also, what images during chapters 3 and 5 aside from this one are particularly memorable? Maybe the final scene in which the government official feeds Alex while offering him a bribe. But what else? All the dormitory scenes during the Ludovico sequence are brief and used largely for exposition. What about Alex interrupting a hospital-room tryst when he wakes from his coma? Meh. His final rejection of his parents from his hospital bed? Nothing special there. The Rorschach’s test scene with the blue-haired psychiatrist? While it was nice for Kubrick to have another woman in his film who doesn’t either get raped, murdered, or appear topless, this scene doesn’t tell us anything we don’t already know.

Overall, I would say that Kubrick is at his best here when depicting scenes of violence and cruelty. His vision is singular and mesmerizing, just like it is in many of his other films. Further, I think the evidence shows that he is less inspired in the sequences in which people aren’t being particularly cruel and violent to each other.

So what does this amount to? Simply that A Clockwork Orange is a film about violence and cruelty first and a satire second. In fact, I could argue that A Clockwork Orange is almost as much softcore porn as it is a satire considering how many naked breasts it contains. I, umm, counted, actually. There are 62 female breasts in A Clockwork Orange, by my count. 40 are fake or in paintings. The other 22 are unique. That is, eleven different women appear topless in A Clockwork Orange. What this has to do with “satire” is anybody’s guess.

This concludes part 2 of my polemic against A Clockwork Orange. Part 3 will address how the very satire of A Clockwork Orange is problematic, further underscoring the idea that satire takes a backseat to violence in this very un-humanistic film.

But before I close, my dear brothers and only friends, I would like to leave you with this awesome image.

This is the first shot of the film’s prison sequence, chapter 2. Alex has just been betrayed by his droogs after his murder of the Cat Lady. Here he is being stared at by a police detective, who never says a word throughout the scene. I do love this image, but perhaps for reasons other than what Kubrick had intended. I love the boredom and contempt on the man’s face, as if to say, “You think you’re hot stuff, don’t you punk? With all your sex and ultra-violence. You think you’re so clever. But I see through you. I know what you really are, and it’s no big bargain.”

This is exactly how I feel about A Clockwork Orange.

A Clockwork Orange

If you had to pigeonhole 1971′s A Clockwork Orange, you can call it a dark comedy that is far darker than it is funny. In fact, it is a cruel, nasty piece of work that uses satire as a cover for its myriad sins. Kubrick’s usual brilliance and vision is on display here most of the time, and when he runs out of ideas he shamelessly stoops to the lurid and shocking to keep people interested. But the film is a satire, you see. We can overlook such lapses because we’re always trying to fit the film’s scenes, no matter how brutal or crude they are, into some bigger picture.

My big problem is that, after 40 years of overlooking Kubrick’s lapses, it seems that people have actually come to celebrate the horrific crimes that take place in the film and somehow believe the government or the political class are the real villains of the story. This really does seem like the intent of the film (accomplished as much by Malcolm McDowell’s riveting performance as Alex the film’s anti-hero as by anything done by Kubrick).

Forgotten amid grand satire, of course, is the suffering of the story’s many victims. But don’t be surprised. With Kubrick, feeling compassion for your fellow man is usually kind of beside the point, is it not?

And this, my brothers and only friends, cannot possibly be the work of a humanist.

I’d like to begin with a quick discussion on satire, especially the dramatic kind. In most cases, a satire unfolds in a world that is clearly not our own, yet the characters in the satire act as if it is. This can be funny enough, but it gets even better when the immutable laws of this satire universe seem to contrive in a very human way against a fairly obvious target of some kind, often revealing truths about this target that can’t easily be said in real life.

A great example is the old Onion article originally titled Retirees Rise Up Against Gang Violence…All are Killed. In the story the gang members commit horrific acts of rape and torture against a group of plucky seniors who only want to rid their neighborhoods of crime. They want to make a better world for themselves, just like they did when they came to America on boats during the Depression or fought during World War II or what have you. But as fate would have it, the gang members not only massacre the seniors, but become better people because of it. They learn to work together, you see, something they’ve never done before. And that’s a good thing, right?

Why is this funny? Because instead of exonerating gang violence and wanton murder like the article seems to do, it’s really satirizing the hackneyed underdog/good Samaritan stories the media is constantly pushing on us in newspapers, in movies, and on television. Aren’t you just ready to gag on all that syrupy moonshine? I mean, how many times do we have to hear about some disadvantaged girl from the ghetto competing in a national spelling bee, or read about how a retired couple collects and recycles cans to aid a local animal shelter? If you’re as sick of that stuff as I am pretending to be, then this Onion article is for you.

Um, so what does this have to do with A Clockwork Orange?

Well, as you can see, the article is only one page long. Imagine if it had gone on for four pages describing horrific violence not in standard news prose but in virtuosic, almost poetic, language. Imagine the seniors being not a pastiche of ethnic righteousness but a bunch of shallow hypocrites with bad taste. Imagine further the gangbangers being led not by a thug but by a highly literate and charismatic psychopath with a passion for Beethoven. After a while it would occur to you that the article’s point is not satire but to use virtuosic language to describe and, by extension, condone horrific violence.

For the first 45 minutes (about one third of the film), I believe that’s what you get with A Clockwork Orange.

As the story goes, you basically have this:

1) Hoodlum performs “ultra-violence”. That is, he fights, rapes, and murders, as well as has wanton sex. (43.5 minutes)
2) Hoodlum spends time in prison. (24 minutes)
3) Hoodlum receives the experimental, government-sponsored Ludovico Technique to “cure” him of hoodlum-itis. Hoodlum is set free. (20 minutes)
4) Hoodlum is shunned by family and attacked by former droogs and victims. Hoodlum attempts suicide. (33.5 minutes)
5) Government official bribes hoodlum to avoid embarrassment for failure of Ludovico Technique. Hoodlum accepts bribe, realizing that he doesn’t have to act like a hoodlum anymore to reamin a hoodlum at heart. (13 minutes)

The satire manifests mostly in parts 3 and 5. Although we see some residual effects of Alex’s cure in part 4, it’s nothing we haven’t already seen in part 3, and so really doesn’t count. In Kubrick’s own words (from Saturday Review, December 25, 1971, copy-pasted straight from the Clockwork Orange page on Wikipedia) A Clockwork Orange is…

Kubrick also described the film thusly:

Well, isn’t that nice. Kubrick dedicates around thirty-three minutes of a two and a quarter hour film to all the big ideas he throws around in his erudite quotations. But what about the remaining hundred minutes? We don’t even hear about the Ludovico Technique until an hour in. We don’t see it until the hour and eleven minute mark. And then later we take a half-hour break from the satire as Alex is ushered out of prison and forced to take big helpings of the ultraviolence he used to dish out.

So is this film really a satire about “behavioural psychology and psychological conditioning”? Or is Kubrick using “satire” as an excuse to do what he really wants to do, which is to find new and ingenious ways to film acts of ultra-violence?

Well, the numbers support the latter proposition: 77 minutes of violence, cruelty, suffering. 33 minutes of satire. 24 minutes in prison, which is neither violent nor satirical in the spirit of the rest of the film. But let’s look at the direction and vision of these chapters and try to judge where Kubrick’s heart is most at, so to speak.

I would argue that Kubrick is at his best in the first 43.5 minutes, with Alex running amok in Dystopian England. It is here, for the most part, where he has his most profound cinematic ideas, his most memorable scenes, his most daring vision. It is here, also, where he makes best use of music. On the other hand, it is mostly during the satirical phases when Kubrick most often resorts to cheap cinematic tricks and exhibits less of the singular vision found in the violent episodes.

If I am able to successfully argue these points, then I believe I have solid ground to stand on when I say that A Clockwork Orange is really a cruel, soulless film that happens to have satirical elements rather than an important cinematic satire that only uses violence and cruelty to serve some higher purpose.

This argument will be presented in part 6 of my polemic against Stanley Kubrick, which will also be part 2 of my discussion of A Clockwork Orange.

Stay tuned.

Wall-E is a classic too. But it’s one of those frustrating works of art that present a startlingly beautiful vision only to mar it with contemporary didacticism. It’s a story with, among other things, an instructive and very important message that we should all take heed of before it’s too late. The presumption here, of course, is that the filmmakers can actually deign to instruct us on anything. The problem here, of course, is that the filmmakers are wrong. Dead wrong. If anything, they get a little bit evil-minded about it as well. And those of us who realize this (like me) have no choice but to leave the theater with fists clenched, hoping that not too many people will be suckers for this little power play that is Wall-E.

Let’s first discuss what’s good about Wall-E. It’s basically a well-worn love story formula dressed up with such striking and original storylines, imagery, and characters that the formula becomes new again. Please consider this for a moment: taking something old and making it new. It is like being born again. People love it. And they should. It’s one of the magical things about the film-going experience.

So what is this formula? Simple:

It starts with a broken heart. All heroes and heroines of love stories have to have a heart broken in some way or another. We will use two classic examples from American cinema to help illustrate this point and also to show how truly great Wall-E (almost) is.

So, back to the broken hearts. Wall-E is cute and perky and cleaning up an abandoned planet all by himself. It’s a dirty job, but somebody’s got to do it. Our hearts break just thinking about it. Most importantly, however, Wall-E is lonely. Rick Blaine of Casablanca doesn’t stick his neck anymore for nobody. Why? Some dame left him in Paris during the Nazi invasion and didn’t say why. This is why Rick is lonely. Rachel Lapp, the Amish woman in Witness, is lonely too. Her husband just died. That would make anybody lonely.

Then the broken heart stumbles across a something-or-other, a question mark, something that disturbs the melancholy status quo in which the broken heart lives. And it has to be a welcome disturbance from the audience’s point of view. In Wall-E’s case, it’s the finding of the sprouting plant. For Rick, it’s the letters of transit allowing two passengers to board a flight to Lisbon. For Rachel, it’s the fact that her son witnessed a murder in a Philadelphia airport.

After this, enter broken heart number two. Note that this heart shouldn’t be as broken as the first, or vice versa. If they are both equally lonely, two things could happen, both bad. Either they ecstatically fall into each other’s arms, get married, have kids, and that’s the end of the story after twenty-five predictable minutes. Or the lovers will both seem so much like losers that the audience will have a hard time caring about them. In Wall-E’s case, Eve is just doing her job. Sure, she’s far from home and all by herself and probably pretty lonely as a result. But she is certainly in a better place emotionally than Wall-E at the film’s onset. In Casablanca, Rick’s ex-flame Ilsa still loves him and feels awful for dumping him in Paris, but she’s with her husband now, a man of impeccable honor and bravery. As for Witness, it’s the reverse. John Book is more the loser. He’s without a family, and he’s afraid of responsibility but clearly not happy without it. Also, according to his sister, he likes to gripe about his job on the Philadelphia police force whenever he drinks too much beer.

At this point, the two broken hearts, because of this something-or-other, are drawn into some conflict they didn’t expect. They are forced to cooperate out of necessity, to be brave and to grow as characters, and to realize that they meant more to each other than they originally thought. Further, this conflict has to be part of something pretty big. For Wall-E, it’s contending with Auto and his minions on the spaceship Axiom. But what’s really at stake is humans getting a second chance at populating Earth. For Rick Blaine, it’s holding off Nazis until he can get Ilsa and her husband on that plane. The greater struggle is World War II (obviously) as well as whether or not he’ll stick his neck out for anyone again. And for John Book, it’s preventing three crooked cops from killing him and their young witness. But in a deeper sense it’s about resisting the intrusion of modern corruption upon a world that insists on keeping itself pure.

The ending can take many different guises, but has to resolve the conflict in some way. In the two older films, the lovers part, presumably never to see each other again. But the love these people feel for each other helps mend their broken hearts despite their separation. It’s good to be loved, you know?

Wall-E, on the other hand, has the kind of miraculous happy ending you’d expect from a rated-G film. And that’s fine. Due to the snowdrift innocence of the two principals, any other ending would have been inappropriate.

I place Wall-E alongside these two classics because Wall-E is also a classic. Its vision is genius, the plot very tight and believable, and the imagery unforgettable. The ballet sequence in space in which Wall-E dances with Eve with the help of a fire extinguisher is quite simply beautiful cinema. And Wall-E does some truly heroic things, like saving the plant after Auto tries to shoot it into space, and, most importantly, protecting from Auto the machine that will return the Axiom to Earth. Wall-E nearly gets squished as a result. It breaks our hearts after he is fixed but does not recognize Eve. Eve’s kiss, however, which restores the Wall-E we know and love is as wonderful as it is predictable. During such a moment, you’d have to be a cold-hearted monster to not want to cry.

So the instincts of the makers of Wall-E were on the money. It is great cinema. The only problem is that the film promotes propaganda that is anti-human, and dogmatically so, which makes it even worse.

Put bluntly, the treatment of humans as comically lazy, obese buffoons reveals a benign contempt for humanity. There are three elements to this. First, is the obesity. Yes, I have heard (and not bothered to research) that humans would lose bone mass and tend to gain weight after prolonged stays at zero-G. That’s supposedly the basis for the film’s decision to make everyone a fatty. But everyone? Do they mean to tell us that humans just lost all self-respect in space? Wouldn’t that be a sad thing if it were true? Well, no, because the filmmakers obviously think it’s funny.

The second element is the laziness. All the humans on the Axiom never leave their seats while they consume liquid food and watch television all day. Not one person doesn’t do this, you see. So basically, they are telling us that all humans are couch potatoes. Never mind all the athletes, soldiers, and hard-working people we have. No, no, couch potatoes. That’s what we are according to the makers of Wall-E. You know, I would get offended if someone ever accused me of being lazy. I get more offended when someone call all humans lazy and then have the temerity to laugh at them. That’s stereotyping, and stereotyping a whole group of people is supposed to be bad, right?

Finally, there’s the stupidity. The humans are pretty much oblivious to the heroic things that Wall-E and Eve have to do. They also don’t seem to care. Yes, there is the captain. But the captain is so clueless he has to do the most basic research to figure out what Wall-E is up to. For instance, he has to look up the definition of the word “dirt”. Well, of course! He’s fat, you see. And all fat people are stupid. Right? Sure! Like St. Thomas Aquinas.

"Do you think this haircut makes me look fat?"

Then there was the scene in which the captain, with much effort, gets on his feet to turn off Auto. They play Strauss’ “Also Sprach Zarathustra” just to show what a monumental feat this is. The joke is impossible to miss.

I’ll make the point again. If there is something about being in space for 700 years that would cause ALL human beings to become stupid, fat, and lazy, that would be unspeakably tragic. It would be the death of everything good. Everything we’ve ever accomplished and worked for would be for nothing. But the fact that the filmmakers try to make this condition funny tells us that this really isn’t happening they way things are happening with Wall-E and Eve. With the robots, you have a sweet love story that really happens plot point after plot point. With humans on the other hand all we have is a didactic stab at social commentary. The filmmakers are basically telling us that stupidity, laziness, and corpulence are bad things (as if we didn’t already know this).

"Drunk, fat, and stupid is no way to go through life, son."

So, before you think I’m taking all this too seriously, let’s perform a little thought experiment to determine whether or not my response is appropriate. Have you noticed that the humans on the Axiom were comprised of all the major races? That’s well and good, but suppose, on the other hand, there had been only one race of people on the Axiom. Like, say, Asian. Many Asian nations have viable space programs. It’s not out of the question that, when the planet becomes uninhabitable in the distant future, only spaceships from Asian nations would leave Earth successfully. So let’s suppose then that all the human characters in Wall-E are Asian but with their dialog and actions remaining completely unchanged. What would the response to such a film be? How would people react to a bunch of lazy, obese Asians bumbling around in ridiculous sweat suits? How would they react after realizing that the filmmakers wanted us to laugh at these people?

Their first question would be, what the hell do the makers of Wall-E have against Asians?

This would be a just question, and the accusations of racism which would follow would also be just. To imply that every single member of a certain race is stupid, fat, and lazy clearly reveals a low opinion of that race. Hence racism. In fact, there could be no other possible interpretation but racism. Right? Riiiiight?

So my logic follows thusly:

If having all Asians onboard the Axiom reveals anti-Asian racism, then having all humans onboard the Axiom reveals anti-human racism. The human race is a race, after all.

As they say in debate class: Q.E.D.

But before I start running my victory laps, I will add that the filmmakers could have avoided this blunder rather easily and still stayed true to their love story formula. The Earth could have been rendered uninhabitable after being struck by a meteor or attacked by an alien force or, heck, even a nuclear Armageddon if you insist on making the humans the culprits. In any of these scenarios, the stakes would have been high enough to give Wall-E and Eve’s struggles on the Axiom greater meaning. But no, the Earth was made uninhabitable not from an act of God or the evil actions of a few, but because hundreds of millions of earthlings couldn’t be bothered to clean up the mess they made. And did you notice the large corporation that had a hand in this? Buy N Large? A nice little dig at big time capital if there ever was one.

And the bottom line remains: the humans could have been more intelligent and self-respecting and still played a minimal role in the story. Why not? Is there a single reason why not?

Well, there isn’t a good reason why not, that’s for sure. There is a bad reason however: It gives a chance for physical fitness buffs and followers of trendy environmental causes to scold and deride people who aren’t physical fitness buffs or followers of trendy environmental causes. Strip aside the substantial beauty and vision of Wall-E, and this is what you have.

So if you are a physical fitness buff or a follower of trendy environmental causes and like ripping good love stories, then Wall-E is for you. If you’re not one of these people, then please, watch Wall-E anyway. Have your kids watch it too. Just let them know three things after it’s done:

1) That the majority of humans are not lazy, obese buffoons.
2) That there is a lot of scientific controversy about how much pollution is going on and we are nowhere near the state of degradation presented in the film.
3) And that human beings really aren’t that bad.

After all, we make wonderful films like Wall-E.