Issue 107

November 2013

Fighters only opens digital dialogue with MMA’s most plugged-in stars. The WSOF welterweight shares his Skyrim obsession.

When did your love for video games start?

“The first console we had was an Atari and one of my sister’s friends fell on it and broke it, and we were the type of family that was like, ‘Oh it’s broken? Well, you’re not getting another one of those.’ Then we had the original Sega; I can’t even remember what games I played. I think one of them was called Kung Fu or something like that. I actually broke that one because I got mad and hit it because I kept on dying in this game. Then we didn’t get anything else and I didn’t have another video game console until the original PlayStation. There was a significant gap in between my video game consoles.”

When it comes to video games everyone has a crazy story; what’s yours?

“It was probably around 2006 when Oblivion came out, which is this incredibly long role-playing game. I remember that the weekend was always my time to really get some hours in on it. One specific weekend, I don’t think I slept much at all. I think I played from Friday afternoon until Saturday evening, and I knew that this doughnut shop opened at five in the morning, so I went there and grabbed a few doughnuts then went home. I did like a 30-hour session that weekend.”

Clearly you can show a lot of dedication when you like a game, so what games have you been playing recently?

“I’ve had to cut back significantly because my son is now 15 months old and I don’t get much time to play video games now; I don’t even know what the popular games are now. When I do have some significant game time I play old games. When my wife was pregnant I was playing Skyrim which is the sequel to Oblivion: The Elder Scrolls. I even made a Twitter account with that game and it was nice because I could get tips from people and give them back. I ended up beating the game twice.”

Are there any specific genres that you just don’t like?

“I’ve never really been into too many sports games, like basketball, baseball or football games. I think the games that interest me the most are the games I can’t do in real life. I can go and find some guys to play a pick-up football game or play basketball. I like the games where I’m fighting a dragon in the middle of a war. I even had GameFly for awhile which meant that I’d receive three to four games a month. 

“I don’t even know how many games I played; probably something like 100 games during that time.”

BACK TO THE FUTURE: VIDEO GAME HISTORY OF MMA

BIO FREAKS: SEND IN THE CLOWN

Sometimes a video game predicts events, and sometimes, like an ancient carved text of digital data, it foretells the coming of a single person.

Bio FREAKS was a near-future 3D beat ‘em up set in dystopian ‘Neo-Amerika’ on PlayStation, PC and Nintendo 64. In a plot far more convoluted than what we can describe here, massive American corporations, and in turn entire regions, warred using biomechanics. Ultimately it was deemed that disputes would be settled in a fighting arena, and each firm bred its own cybernetic combatant representative. Some have chainsaws for arms, or look like badly drawn dinosaurs and others are basically fairies with swords.

What does all this madness have to do with MMA? Only former UFC lightweight Colin ‘Freakshow’ Fletcher, that’s all. Because surely the clown-copying, mask-wearing, gimp-walking British boxer and the synthoid Bio FREAK PsyClown are basically the same person. UFC fans aghast at Fletcher’s tattoos-and-fake-teeth appearance should have seen it coming all along.

While Fletcher didn’t pop off any tornado kicks, as PsyClown does, when Bruce Buffer announced him before bouts, their maniacal circus-themed appearance more than makes them a match – TUF alumnus Fletcher being partial to a little clown face paint and hat action with literally zero encouragement.

Do they fight the same? What a bloody stupid question. PsyClown is part of a video game where bioengineered mech-men fight each other, if you remember. Not to mention he’s got a hammer and shield as a weapon – all frowned upon in mixed martial arts. Plus, apparently he’s mentally unstable because he’s been programmed to have adrenaline constantly flow through his system. We’re not sure athletic commissions will give a therapeutic use exemption for that kind of thing.

As far as bizarre beat ‘em ups go, 1998’s Bio FREAKS could have been worse, and, like so many games in the post-Mortal Kombat landscape, relied a little too much on novelty rather than, you know, being good. But if it told us anything, in retrospect, it was that clowns make for folk a bit eager for a scrap. And that the fight business is going to get a little out of hand.

LAUZON’S BEST BITS

Geek and UFC 155lb contender Joe Lauzon shares morsels from his life in video games

Lauzon on gaming and social media: “When I had my ACL surgery I had to lay in bed so I would post all the time on Twitter or Facebook, ‘Hey, I’m playing this game on Xbox. Here’s my Gamertag.’ I made good friends. Me and my friend Justin, who’s from Texas, were playing all the time for a year. He flew out to my first UFC fight in Boston. There’s a couple of kids from Ohio I started playing games with. They’ve trained at my gym, stayed at my house for a couple of days and come out for my fights.” 

SEPARATED AT BIRTH

Todd Duffee /Duke Nukem

Square jaw? Yes. Cropped strawberry blond hair? Certainly. A pair of shirt-bursting pecs? Come on, does Dana White enjoy dropping ‘F’ bombs? Should they ever do a Duke Nukem movie surely UFC heavyweight Todd Duffee would be top of the list. After all, he acted in straight-to-DVD MMA flick Never Back Down 2 so he must have some silver screen abilities, right? Right? Nukem, the protagonist of an eponymous series of shoot ‘em up titles, might not find a like mind in Duffee regarding his taste for strippers and cigars, but they’re both no stranger to a scrap.