Bloody Elbow · May 23, 2019
Hurt Game: For all its complexity, at heart MMA is about damage
Photo via Jason Silva-USA TODAY Sports | Graphic design via Chad Stanhope There are many dubious subcategories of sports dialogue, but post-fight interviews are one of the strangest. Lobbing some perfunctory questions and a live mic at someone in the aftermath of physical combat is probably not a defensible practice, and talking around “Tell us how it felt to give your co-worker a severe concussion?” can generate mixed results. More often than not, the outcome is an out-of-breath – and maybe also concussed – athlete repeating a couple of sports cliches while awkwardly recovering from their fight-or-flight reflex. Occasionally, though, they unearth something uncharacteristically real.