So I went to a UFC boot camp last week, which was located at The Ultimate Fighter gym, right where the television show is filmed. Yes, imagine me in shorts. Exercising. “Working out.” I laughed too. I said “I don’t go gyms, and I don’t do shorts.” Somehow I ended up doing it anyway.
To be fair, I didn’t do much. I let Rey do all the heavy lifting. Rey went through all the disciplines with actual UFC trainers. He did Muay Thai. He grappled with grown men on the floor. He punched bags. I stood back, sipped water, laughed occasionally, and tried one of those horrible tasting PowerBars that the healthy types are always eating.
If there’s one thing I came away with after training with all of these professional trainers and fighters is that these aren’t guys that blindly go out there in the octagon to kick each other’s asses. These are very disciplined, coordinated, and talented fighters. The contrast between chubby games press members and the pros was mind-blowing, as you’d expect. My mind was never blown watching a UFC fight on television, but I couldn’t look away as fighters snapped real kicks, blew through drills, and punished bags and high speed. The sheer coordination and finesse required was never apparent to me until I saw the layperson try it. Apologies to my fellow game journos, but you looked really silly in comparison.
It became apparent to me that Mixed Martial Arts is truly mixed, and to win you need the ability to quickly switch between them all, being a master of all. Your weakness is going to be exploited as soon as the opponent sees it. For most of the games press in attendance, that weakness was moving. Or their waistline.
All of this really figured into my playtime of upcoming gameUFC Undisputed 2010. I no longer had the desire to desperately mash buttons. I wanted to somehow apply what I’ve learned from real fighters and trainers and go into the octagon in a respectable manner. I thought about things like position and spacing and speed, and it all had a positive outcome on my game. All of this also had me looking down a bit on my other beloved fighting games, as none of them ever gave me this 1:1 experience of seeing how a game and its real-world counterpart compare. I’m not saying thatUFC Undisputedis aStreet Fighterkiller, but I am saying that the former gives me a new appreciation for the art of translating sports into games.
I suppose this all was worth putting shorts on for. I did take Destructoid readers’ advice: past-the-knee shorts were worn.
