Super Squad Letter #104
Humbling Is Good For The Soul, Definition Of A Great Fighter, The Cut Down to 55
Humbling Is Good For The Soul
It’s rare to see so many people and fighters root for a guy to be humbled.
I knew of Bo Nickal from wrestling, but I didn’t really know his personality. But I think that comes naturally with any undefeated prospect. They look at fights as a movie because they have never tasted defeat before.
RDR even said he never had this much fanfare before a fight. People were in his DMs rooting for him to beat Bo.
And when you go back and watch some of Bo’s interviews, it’s a little off-putting. It makes it easy to root against him.
But as you rise to higher levels, you can’t just go in there and do whatever you want. But unfortunately, that’s how Bo spoke. If you look at his previous matchups, he was able to be dominant.
But De Ridder is a huge step up in competition. A lot of UFC fans might not be familiar with him, but he was a double-champ in ONE. What he was doing over there was pretty impressive.
The only reason I know of RDR is because one of my teammates, Aung La Sang, was the former ONE champ. So I was able to watch him.
Experience played a huge factor against Bo. But I will say his body language and demeanor when he was in trouble were a little strange.
There’s nothing wrong with losing but he didn’t react very well to that adversity. He also probably never took hard knees to the chest like that before.
Nothing beats experience in this game. I know he’s probably had thousands of wrestling matches, but a fight is different. And when things start to go wrong, it goes wrong fast.
You need a good poker face. You don’t want to give your opponent or even your next opponent the confidence that they could break you.
I wish Bo the very best. But I think a loss is good for the soul. I don’t really like the idea of “humbling” people because I don’t think anyone gets to dictate when someone needs to get humbled.
But it’s still good for you as a human being in general. Now Bo has a grasp of what high level fighting really is and if it doesn’t break him, it’ll help him develop.
This is MMA, not boxing. You’re not gonna get written off just from one loss. You can go on a 10-fight winning streak after. To be honest, you can go on a 2-3 fight winning streak and get back into title talks.
And I don’t know if De Ridder is a giant middleweight or Bo is a smaller middleweight, but RDR looked huge.
Maybe they gotta figure out something from that. If Bo can make 170, he’d be hell to deal with. Maybe he doesn’t want to do a drastic weight cut.
But it looked like two different weight classes in that fight.
Definition Of A Great Fighter
Ever since I started watching the UFC as a kid, I’ve dreamed of becoming a UFC fighter. So I’ve always respected all the fighters, no matter what their records were or how popular they were.
As I got older, I still felt the same way. So when we talk about “great” fighters, I think a lot of them are great just by proximity to the best fighters in the world.
Funny enough, I heard something jarring from a new student. We were talking about UFC and I asked him who his favorite fighter was and he said Michael Chandler.
It caught me so off guard because I’ve never heard that before. So I asked why and the guy really liked his energy and how he puts himself out there.
If you sit and think about it, there are people who can resonate with that. Win or lose, you know the type of energy you’ll get when Michael Chandler fights.
And how Michael Chandler acts after his losses, it’s always classy. I’ve never seen him putting anyone down or putting his head down. It’s always on to the next one and the UFC always rewards him with something bigger and bigger.
But this proves that this is real. It’s not just me, there are a lot of fans who know what great fighters are.
They’re just being drowned out by the vocal minority on the internet. Although it’s easy to see negative comments and let them get you down, those people aren’t the majority of fight fans.
When you meet fans in real life, a lot of them are really cool. Even trolls in real life drop the persona and end up being cool.
I’m always disappointed when I find out someone I know is an internet troll. I literally sat down with my class one day and told them if they had fake social media profiles, cut it out.
It’s negative energy you’re putting out there. And for the ones who want to be professional fighters when they grow up, it’s bad energy and karma.
Plus, I don’t feel good helping you achieve your dreams if you’re doing that stuff online 🤣
The Cut Down to 55
Heading into fight week next week, I’m seeing a lot of differences between this cut and my usual cuts to 45.
The hunger that usually kicks in around 2-3 weeks out from the fight is now starting to creep in.
Normally around this time, I’d be bingeing videos of people eating food on TikTok and Instagram. But the urge to do that hasn’t been there that much. Only last night, I felt it a little.
Definitely not as bad as it used to be.
But the biggest difference is training quality. Towards the end of fight camp because of the weight cut, your training takes a hit. It’s one of those things you don’t realize until you don’t have to cut that much.
So my training quality has been so much better. It’s my first time doing this, so I don’t want to speak too much into it. I don’t know what’s a placebo and what’s actually real 😂
I’ll need a bigger sample size. But for now, all the things I’m feeling are all positive.
The biggest thing I want to see is the weight cut during fight week. I want to feel as healthy as possible making the weight.
That’s the whole reason I’m moving to 55 is for durability.
Sodiq’s Pop Culture Corner
In this week’s episode of The Last of Us, we saw the introduction of Isaac (played by Jeffrey Wright). What a hell of an introduction.
But afterwards, the episode took a decline 😅I don’t want to be the guy that says the show isn’t good because Joel’s dead. But I kinda see it heading in that direction.
Ellie isn’t the most charismatic character. I don’t really care much about her relationship with her friend or their stories. The revenge plot is cool, but there are aspects of the story that work well in the video game but it’s not translating well to the show.
For example, you’re sneaking around in a warehouse full of adults with guns and flashlights. That works well in the video game but in real life, it feels so fake.
And while they’re supposed to be hiding, Ellie and the girl are singing and playing guitar. I’m starting to get a little Game of Thrones plot holes going on here.
Hopefully they can pick it back up. I’m hoping next week’s episode is a little bit better.
That ends it for this week’s Super Squad Letter!
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Peace,
Super Sodiq Yusuff
Saw some back and forth on Twitter recently about how much fighters get paid for weighing in as the backup for a fight, like Imavov is planned to do for DDP vs Chimaev. One random guy was describing it as a very easy thing, saying he'd happily go on a diet for $10k or whatever. Weight cuts seem scary to me, especially after seeing dreadful ones like Cyborg's or recently Chris Eubank Jr.'s. I guess wrestlers may weight cut multiple times in a short span, but ultimately, I hope these drastic cuts are greatly reduced somehow.
Funny to hear that you would binge food eating vids. I don't seek out that kind of content, but fasting for Ramadan has had me watching mukbangs lol