Issue 108
December 2013
FO opens digital dialogue with MMA’s most plugged-in stars. The WEC and UFC veteran reveals why he and fellow striker ‘Cowboy’ Cerrone once owned four Xboxes.
He did an interview with ‘Cowboy’ Cerrone a few years ago where he said there were four Xbox 360 consoles in the house you two shared. Was he telling the truth?
“Yeah, at the time we had four Xboxes, and four Xbox Live accounts so there could be eight of us playing together in the same house on the same game. When we played Call of Duty we’d get big groups in the team deathmatches.”
That was at the TapouT Ranch, right? Was it other fighters you were playing against?
“It was. Also all the guys who were at Jackson’s gym; Kyle Noke, for example, was a huge gamer. We would connect with him and he would have a couple of fighters at his house and they would do the same thing. They had, like, two Xbox Lives there and we had four at our house, and John Dodson had two at his house. For a little while back then we were hardcore gamers.”
When did your relationship with video games start?
“I remember the Atari being around when I was a kid, and I used to play that. When I was growing up, the Sega Genesis (Mega Drive) was the one. I remember, if you were at school and you didn’t have a Sega Genesis your parents were slacking, man.”
What was your favorite game back then?
“On that one it would be... I can’t remember the name of the game now, but it was the one where you were a human and you’d turn into an animal as you were fighting. You were a wolf or something.”
Was it Altered Beast?
“Altered Beast, that’s it. Yep, I remember that game vividly, man. I used to play it quite a bit.”
Was it surreal seeing yourself in UFC Undisputed 3?
“Seeing my kids play, that was a dream come true for me. Just being on a video game felt great, but when you see your kids picking you as a character and their friends all freaking out because you’re standing there, that is one of the best feelings. It really is.”
Do you have any gaming guilty pleasures?
“Right now I’m on that stupid Candy Crush smartphone game. Oh man, that’s driving me nuts right now. I’ve almost completed it. I’m on, like, level 385 and I think it only goes up to 400 levels, from what I can see. Everybody tells me once you get to that it’ll keep going but as far as I can see on my phone, I’ve climbed the ladder all the way up to there and it ends at that point. So I’m trying to end it so I don’t have to play it anymore.”
QUICKFIRE
Sonic or Mario? Sonic
PlayStation or Xbox? Xbox
Single player or multiplayer? Multiplayer
Three games on a desert island?
“Call of Duty, Madden and any kind of racing game, like Forza.”
BACK TO THE FUTURE: VIDEO GAME HISTORY OF MMA
Altered Beast: any alterations, Sir?
You see it every fight event: calm-looking chap plods in the ring, ripped aggro-machine stands opposite, Mr Chill turns into Mr Hyde and proceeds to ‘go postal’ on Muscles, decimating him inside a round.
Some of the more memorable laid-back bruisers include Rory MacDonald, BJ Penn (depends on the fight), Michael McDonald, Steven Siler, Tamdan McCrory – the list goes on.
It’s almost as if these guys are changing and unleashing their inner animal. Or, you could say, becoming… altered beasts. Yes, Altered Beast, Leonard Garcia’s favorite old-school game (see opposite page), wasn’t just a fun sidescrolling beat ‘em up set in Ancient Greece, it was a metaphor for fighting itself.
Imagine the scene: you’re a centurion resurrected from the grave by Zeus to battle waves of mythological creatures and rescue his daughter, Athena, from the shape-shifting Neff. No, we’ve no idea why a Greek god is bringing a Roman solider back to life. Perhaps the developers of the arcade/Genesis/DOS title just weren’t too fussed about accuracy in an internet-sparse age?
Obtain three spirit ball power-ups by punching blue two-headed wolves (on the Genesis/Mega Drive version at least) into dust enough times and you’ll go into beast mode. At which time you will start cleaning house like the in-laws are coming around for lunch.
Depending on your form (there’s a different one per level) you’re able to use fire from your fists, enemy-exploding bull rushes – all the good stuff. Jumping purple blob? Take some lightning to the face, you foul lump. Winged hammer carrier? Eat my pillar of fire.
While MacDonald and Siler likely can’t say they’ve experienced the thrill of delivering a bouncing fireball to an adversary’s face in the middle of Octagon fisticuffs, they’ll recognize the sensation of allowing their primal aggression to rise to the surface. All have made their careers on the instinctual ability to finish that comes with it.
And what a different place the MMA world would be if these men couldn’t embrace their inner animal from time to time.
1. ‘The Korean Zombie’ and family come to dinner.
2. A spirit ball gives you a noticeably larger physique and strengthened attacks. As you can see, they’ve been doing TRT for years.
3. Ah, the Jon Jones/Rashad Evans approach.
LAUZON'S BEST BITS
Geek and UFC 155lb contender Joe Lauzon shares morsels from his life in video games
Lauzon on avoiding playing MMA games: “Mostly, I play video games because it gets me away from thinking about training. It’s kind of nice that I can purge my brain of not thinking about jiu-jitsu, or wrestling, or boxing, or whatever. And trying to play MMA games I just get frustrated. ‘That’s not how that sweep works! That should have been better.’ Or, ‘I would have hit that one.’ So it’s a little counter-productive for me.”
SEPARATED AT BIRTH
Carlos Condit/Gordon Freeman
Carlos Condit is the spitting image of the Half-Life puzzle-shooter series’ lead Gordon Freeman (those empty stares, pale complexions and cropped beards). Condit is an unassuming ‘Natural Born Killer,’ Freeman is a clean-cut alien-killing scientist. And while you might be sat there thinking, ‘You utter fools, UFC welterweight Matt Brown has a stronger resemblance,’ it’s the quiet coldness of Condit that nudges him a step closer to theoretical physicist Freeman.
