| A post on a subject I know little about (what's new?) |
[Apr. 5th, 2012|10:49 am] |
Right disclaimer time:
I love boxing. I know far too much about it, particularly on an anorak level. People assume my manic "expertise" must stretch to all combat sports, especially as the UFC is fifty times more popular than boxing due to demographics, being properly run & having snazzier T-shirts:
However, these people are hilariously wrong. I know nothing about wrassling, care little for judo/jujitsu/whatever it's called, laugh at that Brazilian thing that resembles dancing & find kung-fu (the martial art, the films & everything else about it) utterly boring. The combination of all these things in one multidisciplinary thrill-a-thon just means that there's a combat sport out there combining seven or eight different things that I do not want to watch, ta.
I do not wish to give the impression that I'm one of those terrible curmudgeons who sneer when boxing's sister sport is mentioned, those insecure fools who seek to ridicule the brave athletes & knowledgeable fans who engage in it & support it. I am maybe a little jealous, on boxing's behalf, of the reach & impact & respect the UFC engenders in its supporters & sincerely wish for something similar in boxing on a grassroots level, but would never denigrate another sport for cheap laughs, just to mollify my own fears.
On the other hand, there's Alistair Overeem, & the guy's just too fucking funny not to rip the piss out of.
Now, Mr. Overeem used to be a champion at something called Pride. This isn't, funnily enough, an all-comers LGBT deathmatch tournament, but instead a sort of hardcore kickboxing thing that they run in Japan. Imagine an 80s Jean-Claude Van Damme film crossed with Tekken & you're nearly there, mullets & all. Lots of mullets. & also, due to the fact that it was "regulated" by a bunch of morons, lots of steroids as well.
Lots & lots of steroids.
Now, Alistair, a very naturally gifted kickboxer, competed in Pride for years, winning umpteen titles. He also went from looking like he did, here, on the left, to the rather more... bulky version on the right:
& eventually ended up looking like this:
Let me reiterate this: the lad went from being a David Haye-esque fourteen stone of ripped, solid Adonis to becoming, well... the Black Dutch Incredible Hulk, all the while training for a sport that requires vast cardiovascular expenditure. It's difficult to gain lean muscle, in other words, when you're burning off thousands of calories per day with aerobic exercise.
Apart from if you stuff yourself to the gills with enough 'roids to muscle up a Grand National winner, natch.
Now, people have been... More than a little suspicious of Alistair's amazing physical transformation, for a while. & since he left Pride behind & started competing in the relatively big money UFC, people have been whispering that he's gonna get caught out, especially as (despite what many snide boxing fans like to giggle about) they apparently do test for drugs in UFC. Kinda. Even though most of the heavyweights look so much like action figures you expect to see the word "Mattel" stamped on their arses when they go over. Overeem's first bout in the UFC was against the former poster-boy/flagship fighter of the entire sports franchise (how strange it is, coming from boxing's corrupt but old-fashioned world, to use the phrase "sports franchise". It sits oddly on the tongue; & makes me think of an outlet of JJB Sports or something), the former UFC heavyweight champion & (before that) WWE wrestler Brock Lesnar:
Who also definitely does not look in any way suspicious, at all & whose physique is totally the result of heavy lifting, lots of protein shakes & lots of good wholesome sleep & nothing else.
The one-sided victory over Lesnar gained Overeem a shot at the current UFC heavyweight champ, a fella called Junior Dos Santos. However, today, all the stupid jokes about Wistrol & bitch-tits & probably having a very small package can be dusted off once again, because at his pre-fight drug test Overeem's "A" sample was flagged for an elevated T/E {testosterone} ratio that exeeded 10-to-1, well over the 6-to-1 limit.
That means, for those of you without a degree in biochemistry, that Overeem's testosterone levels were ten times the amount of a normal human male's at the time the test was done. Apparently, long-term steroid usage fucks up your endocrine system badly enough that you require testosterone replacement therapy like the massively-muscled lairy equivalent of a menopausal housewife; loads of fighters are "allowed" under UFC drug-testing rules to "compensate" for whatever they may have been injecting themselves with in the past by undergoing TRT, to the tune of having six times the normal level of testosterone in their bodies. This does not mean they have cheated in any way shape or form. No. Just paragons of athletic virtue, one & all.
But ten fucking times? I mean for fuck's sake. It's almost too pathetic to mock. Almost. I think they should disregard the drug test result & let Alistair take whatever he wants. Then they could get him to fight MechaGodzilla or something. It'd be wicked.
Alistair Overeem, if only for giving me ammunition to make lots of stupid jokes, I salute you, & hereby would like to extrapolate into the future the athletic gains you are sure to make, once you have duly served your suspension & got clean:
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