Typical Sunday night yesterday here at the headquarters of OneTake Media - Producer Reese and I were going back and forth on some edits, we were preparing our watch party for the Pond Skim 2024, and I was tidying up our latest episode of OneTake Tonight to record (we probably should've pushed to today, the recording was not our best as we both had pretty fried brains).
But amidst all of that chaos, this little video happened to pop up on my iPhone and stopped me in my tracks. The legend, the bad guy, the pride of West Linn, Oregon coming BACK into the ring against his greatest rival and biggest foe in Anderson Silva for our viewing pleasure in just under a month's time.
Chael has been a bit critical of the celebrification of combat sports in recent years - i.e. the Jake Paul effect, etc. - but perhaps he has come around, and as any lion knows, once the desire to be the best in any physical endeavor has been in your head, it never leaves for as long as a man may live. Chael is a good example of this... an alpha dog born to fight. Why he's still wanting to go well into his forties, why Mike Tyson wants to keep going into his late fifties. The market is brewing here with big names and huge fanbases, and this fight comes conveniently a few weeks before the rescheduled Nate Diaz - Jorge Masvidal fight; very much seeing a winner's bracket style situation if/when Chael is able to vanquish his oldest rival next month.
Boxing makes just too much sense - throw some 12 oz. gloves on the older guys, let them get that thrill and oneness with their existence, the fans above 30 all love it - cue the trash talk!
If Chael had been born 10 years after he was, he would be the most famous fighter of all-time in the UFC, and he could still very well make the argument that he was. Him going at Anderson in 2010 is still textbook marketing (dominated that fight because of it), got a fight with peak Jon Jones that he was less than a minute away from winning if he could have made it through the first round as Bones had destroyed his foot somehow on the canvas - the man was is just a born speaker and marketer.
Is striking Chael's strong suit? Not necessarily - but he's got a solid left hand that he can land down the middle against Anderson from his southpaw stance, and the likelihood that he goes for a golden double leg during the fight just for old time's sake is quite high if I were to bet on it. Perhaps this fight is more of a grappling match where they are wearing gloves without the fingers so they can still wrestle a bit but it's not full MMA? I don't know - this blog is not for the details of the fight, this blog is for the pure excitement of this announcement.
This fight has a why, a purpose, a story - this is bad blood going back decades. This is about pride, this is about country, not some thrown together nothing burger like we see with a lot of the fights made today. So go get 'em, Chael! I do not know the details of where the fight is, who is promoting, the commercials, where to watch - all I do know is that seeing you back doing your thing is good for the world. Chael by TKO, long live The American Gangster!
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