Why do you live in South Africa?

Salamu

I have had the advantage of living in a foreign country for a number of years. I am a firm believer in travelling as it broadens the mind and opens you up to different experiences.

Before we continue, it must be said that there are more expatriates living in Dubai than there are locals. This is the backdrop to me interacting with the charming people from the United Kingdom in an Arab country. Anyway, we digress; the British may be many things, but unpatriotic they are not. One of the most frequently asked questions that the Brits threw at me was: Oi...mate...why do you live in Souf Africa?  

After insulting the queen, I actually take a step back and ask myself the same question.

 

South Africa is currently being run by Jacob Zuma. And while he never had a terrible first term in office, he has completely lost his fucken mind. It’s almost as if someone snuck into Nkandla and hit the reset button on his big head.

Since I last posted on this site, he has been through a significant investigation regarding his homestead and the misappropriation of state funds to bankroll the upgrades to said homestead. He was in court a lot and his responses to some of the questions were bloddy priceless. One of the questions was regarding very expensive windowpanes installed in the rooms. His response was: how can I be held accountable for it…I never asked for them.  

That’s great. Its faulted logic, but an excuse he gave the courts none the less. Thank the pope he was actually found guilty at the end of the day. If he didn’t, he would have had a stream of people appearing in court on charges of not paying etoll bills because: my lord (what we can judges in SA), we never asked for them.

Then there was the taxi scandal. For those not ofay with South Africa…a taxi is not the international understanding of a taxi, it is a minibus vehicle that can carry 14 passengers. The most popular vehicle used for a taxi is a Toyota Quantum. The price of these has increased significantly, taxi owners took exception to this so they went on a nationwide strike preventing people from going to work or school. Here is there logic…appreciate it people…how dare Toyota increase the price of their vehicles, we will stop EVERYONE from going to work or school. We will make OUR problem THEIRS. If this happened in Dubai, no doubt the people would have been arrested, charged and deported within 2 days. Yet, we let our lot continue with the strike and only intervening if there is violence.

Finally, we have the Ministers of Education. The Minister of Basic Education, Angie Motshekga, tells students at a school in Alexandria township that they need to put books away during school holidays because studying too much causes Brain Cancer.

Now, this is a matter where you can actually appreciate the logic. She is speaking to people who think that witch doctors can summon thunder and lightning to kill people. So they will believe any shit you tell them. The ANC is against the ropes politically and is losing influence with every election that is held. As people become more educated, the more they can see through the bullshit that is being told to them. Therefore, it is in the best interests of the ANC to keep people uneducated.

The problem is, the rest of the world is watching us and seriously thinks of South Africa as a circus when they see the minister of an education portfolio make utterances such as this. While I do think the Brits are arrogant bastards, they cannot be blamed for thinking this when our minister says what she says. 

What goes on in a writers mind?

Salamu

It seems as if it has been a long time since I have updated this blog. And indeed it has.

Sometimes a hiatus is the best thing for a writer. I don’t think a person who is not a writer genuinely appreciates the troubles that writers go through on a daily basis. The period of inspiration where you are dead to the world and only the vision of a beautiful naked lady can draw your attention away from your computer screen, the periods of non inspiration where you cannot write for love or money because the words just wont flow. Then there are periods when random words pop into your mind; you know that these words are gold, provided they are put together in a sentence that makes sense. And herein lies the challenge, how do you make sense out of randomness. 

I suppose that it is only fitting that I announce my introduction with a post on the demons that writers struggle with on a day-to-day basis. 

I think one of the biggest secrets of being a writer is that you are putting your heart and soul into essentially a piece of work that is a gamble. You don’t know whether the audience you want to write to will necessarily appreciate your work. If you talk to a number of people which jobs they think carry the highest risk, a journalist/writer is far down on that list. I strongly feel it should be higher up, especially of you are an author who essentially becomes unemployed if your book is not accepted.  Sure there will be an argument that says that you do not have the lives of people in your hands as a lawyer, judge or surgeon would have, but that doesn’t mean that the pressure is less. 

One of the other challenges that need to be overcome is the perception that people have of writers/journalists. When you tell people that you are a writer, the most common response is so when are you going to get a real job? This irritates me a bit because granted everyone can write, but not everyone can write well. There is a little thing that people do not know about authors, they have deadlines to meet. So I challenge people who say this to me to spend a day in my shoes. To wake up in the morning and produce five thousand or ten thousand words by the end of the day while keeping consistent to story flow, character developments, story arc’s, good grammar and a style which is amenable to readers. I bet it doesn’t sound so easy now does it? When you tell people that you are a journalist, the most common response is so all that you write is lies? There are certain degrees of truths, and a lot of the truth can be lost in translation and the way that a journalist presents a story. But no journalist wants to stand before a judge staring down the barrel of a massive fine; so no, not all of the stuff that a journalist writes is a lie. I am currently a journalist, and I can tell you honestly that 100% of most articles are the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. There are those journalists in the world who do make a living off fabricating articles, and yes they do spoil the apple cart for good journalists. But we need to make a distinction between gutter journalism and conventional journalism. 

The next challenge is the unpredictable nature of inspiration. Writers block is not a myth, believe me. There have been many times where I stare at a blank Microsoft Word document thinking where the hell do I begin? And there are also days as a writer that you just know deep down in the recesses of your soul that you must just not even go near a computer. But then there are times when inspiration overcomes you like a tidal wave, a primal force of nature. You will be woken up at two o’clock in the morning overflowing with words that just need to be put down on paper. The best way to describe it is that inspiration does not have a switch, it is like electricity flow in Africa, inconsistent in nature. There is never a direct and consistent flow of inspiration, it is always alternating. To illustrate how inconsistent in nature it is, I shall tell you about myself; if I am writing about a topic I want to write about, I can sit down and bang out five thousand words without to many interruptions, and I can do it in a relatively short time given that it is five thousand words we are talking about. But if I am writing on something I am asked to write about, I need to take short breaks inbetween, and it can take me a whole day to produce two thousand words. 

Finally, I can tell you one of the challenges that we are thankfully not guilty of, and that is arrogance. Yes we know a lot about different topics, but we need to have an open minded approach to a number of topics or else we will just be pissing into the wind. A journalist or writer that doesn’t know quirky facts that other people wont even dream of knowing is not worth anything, it is like a supermodel women who has a below average intelligence, worthless to many people.  

At the end of the day I am back, and I will be posting more and more. Hope I want missed to much! 

Mei jua daima kuwa kabla yenu, na vivuli nyuma yako!

The worst three words in history

Salamu

I don’t write on this site as much as I would like. That is just the nature of the beast. I would like to focus on writing more of these posts as it is an outlet for me to discuss issues I can’t talk about in the office environment or with lady friends.

Some people just don’t deserve to live. I know that this is bad coming from a good Catholic Boy such as myself, but if you really think of it, there are certain people that the world could have done better without. Adolf Hitler, Idi Amin Dada, Osama Bin Ladin, Pol Pot, Steve Hoffmeyer.  The list goes on and on. South Africa has also recently produced two political additions to this list in Jacob Zuma and Julius Malema.

There is a point to this post, I promise you .But first let me ask you a question: what do Idi Amin, Fulgencio Batista, Louis XVI of France and Marie Antoinette have in common. They all said three very detrimental words: FUCK THE POOR.  This is also essentially what the ANC government says every day, but we cannot prove it.

Here is another prize individual to add to your list. But before we talk about him, let’s talk about his company. I’ll give you the remix version. African Bank went on a money lending spree that would have made the Yanks that caused the 2009 global financial crisis jealous. Basically, they were giving loans to every Tom Dick and Harry who could not pay these loans off. The house of cards fell in on itself and the company lost 90% of its value overnight.

FUCK THE POOR!

So obviously every media company in the country wants to get hold of someone in charge at the Fuck the poor!

establishment to find out what they think about the whole thing. They got hold of Tami Sokutu, former chief risk officer at African Bank who took a leaf out of the books of the great dictators of the world and said:

The following bit of information was taken from an article on a prominent South African news website. Sokutu, who made more than R50-million in share options and earned another R35-million in salary and bonuses from his time as  African Bank’s chief risk officer, was asked about those who had obtained loans but were now unable to repay them.

The lives of thousands of borrowers have been ruined because they have been listed as bad credit risks. In response to their plight, Sokutu said: "Fuck them, fuck them."

Asked whether these people would be right to blame him for not having done a better job of controlling lending at the bank, Sokutu's answer was simple: "They will be right to say, 'I'm fucked.'"

Sokutu agreed to an interview with the Sunday Times this week. He stumbled and fell to the ground while welcoming the newspaper's reporter to his house in a gated complex in Centurion, Pretoria.

During the interview, he repeatedly boasted about how he had made millions and was now globetrotting.

He has three houses in South Africa, including holiday homes in Port Alfred and Cape Town, and another in Portugal. He said he did not need to ever work again. Sokutu also boasted about owning six cars, including a Porsche, which he said was parked "somewhere in the world - I don't know where". He also owns a Hummer H2, a turquoise Bentley, a BMW M6, a Mercedes-Benz A-Class and a Mercedes S500. His Johannesburg car, the Bentley, stood in his double garage.

Who in their right mind would say something like this? A person who knows that not a thing will be done to him, that’s who. He probably has every law maker and custodian in this country in his back pocket.

Look, he does have a point in a sense. If you cannot pay off a loan, don’t go and get a loan. It is that simple. But then again, if you - as a chief risk officer - can see that the person applying for the loan will never be able to pay it off, you have a moral obligation to refuse to give them that loan.

That is the problem with the world. It has simply lost its humanity. It’s also not a case of his salary is X and his expenses are Y. It’s a case of his position giving him a taste for the finer things in life which he simply cannot fund in a conventional manner.

Does this happen in the rest of the world, or only in South Africa? Why can we not stand up as a country and bring people like this to book to answer for what he has done? Another reason he can safely say Fuck the Poor is because they will go after the CEO and the CFO before they come after him.

Mei jua daima kuwa kabla yenu, na vivuli nyuma yako!

Word of the Day

Salamu

I haven’t done one of these posts in a long time, so I thought I would revive one after listening to one of my favourite musical artists…Lilly Allen.

I came across Ms Allen when living in Dubai. As stated on this blog before, I worked with a bunch of posh London boys and had a bunch of Geordie, Scouse and Sheffield Steel friends. The fact that Ms Allen really sings about rubbish and doesn’t care what she says is very appealing, as are her looks.

All of my definitions come from the bastion of slang…Urban Dictionary.com

Word Pig!

Word: Filth

Meaning: a derogatory word for a police officer.

Application: Riding through the city on my bike all day ‘cause the filth took away my licence.

If you come to think of it, the cops have it bad. I think they must be the only group of people in the world that has so many derogatory terms associated with them.

Word: Pig

Meaning: a derogatory word for a police officer.

Application: Want another donut pig?

There have been a number of other applications of insinuations of the word pig in various movies. Two that come to mind immediately are Training Day and Beverly Hills Cop. In Training Day, Denzel Washington and Ethan Hawke corner my main may Snoop Dogg (or is it Snoop Lion now?) he famously says “it smells like bacon in this mothaf##ker!” In Beverly Hills Cop, Eddie Murphy is undercover and is trying to set up a major deal that will entrap a drug cartel. When one of the cartel’s members comes to him, he smells around him and says “it smells like pork, I used to be a Muslim, I know what pork smells like!”

Here is a word which Ms Allen uses in her song where you think you know the meaning of it, but it has other nuances besides the obvious one.

Word: crackhore

Meaning: a whore that chases cracks no matter what shape or form it may be in.

Application: look at that crackhore he would take anything home.

Here is another word which I never knew what the hell it meant, but now I know. Ok, it may not be the correct definition of it. But it is a definition I will accept.

Word: SWAG

Meaning: The most used word in the whole fucking universe. Douche bags use it, your kids use it, your mail man uses it, and your fucking dog uses it. If you got swag, you generally wear those shitty hats side way, and your ass hanging out like a fucking goof cause your pants are half way down your white ass legs. To break down the word, it means (Secretly We Are Gay). It is also a word that means to represent yourself/ the way you represent yourself, baggy clothes, shitty hats, small penis and basically a way to say you’re afraid to come out of the closet.

Application:  

Assface Magee: I got so much swag

Darrel: You got so much dick in your ass

Assface Magee: Fuck you, SWAG

The closeness of guys and girls have come under the spotlight recently. And I blame Hollywood for this labelling a good friendship a “bromance.” What would be the female version of this? A hoemance?

We digress. We all know that our girls have best friends that they simply cannot live without. These are her besties….and get between them at your own peril.

Word: Besticle

Meaning: Term referring to 2 men that are best friends. The masculine counterpart to the female bestie.

Application: My besticle Mike and I are heading to the golf course then will grab some beers afterward.

This is the gayest thing I have ever heard in my life and I will not be using it soon.

I hope that this has been enlightening and entertaining. More so than the opening ceremony of the 2014 FIFA World Cup. Just goes to show that sometimes you just can’t beat the Africans.

Mei jua daima kuwa kabla yenu, na vivuli nyuma yako!

The great social experiment

Salamu

Perception is a funny thing. One person will see a potato as a source of nourishment while another person sees it as a dirty vegetable. Technically both of these aspects of the potato are correct, it just matters on the point of view you are looking at it.

I must say that I have a unique mindset when it comes to many things. I am not your conventional person

who will think in one particular way. In fact, many people ask me if I go home to a mental institution every night. I think that my rationale is quite revolutionary, others beg to differ.

Take for instance night clubs. Many people think night clubs are social gatherings. But there is no way on earth that a night club is anything but a social experiment.

A social gathering is a gathering of two or more people where a variety of events can take place. A braai (which is a barbeque for you non South Africans) is a social gathering. Here you can drink, dance, eat, watch sports, hit on women and perhaps see some action. There are very rarely fights at braai’s.

A social experiment is a situation where limited activities are on offer in order to see the human reaction to things. Realistically, there are only three things you can do at a club: drink, dance and hit on women. People go to clubs and dance as some form of perverse mating ritual which will hopefully attract the fairer sex. If this is successful and you get some action, you will no doubt then get into another ritual of dominance with a guy that has had his eye on her the whole evening. For you uneducated out there, this is called a fight.

Dating in a sense, is also nothing more than a social experiment in order to see if you can effectively pursue a relationship with the other person. A relationship is nothing more than a social experiment in order to see if you can marry a person. This is the ultimate social goal that most humans aspire towards.

And this is just conventional dating. Now internet – or social media dating –  is even more of a social experiment. With conventional dating, you get to interact with the person on a personal level and you can see whether you are compatible. You make these judgements on various factors such as her smile, her nature, her demeanour during the dates, common interests and her personality. I recently joined Tinder and I found that on Tinder, you make assumptions on a person’s look and nothing more.

What defines a social event from a social experiment? Well the presence or absence of controllable variables. To get me to like a girl on Tinder, three things need to occur: Does she have beautiful eyes, does she have an awesome smile, and does she have a good body. If she’s blonde, it’s a bonus, but it will not exclude a girl if the other criteria are met. With a conventional date, it is harder to manipulate the controllable variables because your personality dominates.

A club is a social experiment because the controllable variable here is alcohol and the lack of other activities to entertain our primitive minds other than dancing and drinking. It is easy to manipulate these variables. The absence of alcohol frankly makes a club shit. But the absence of alcohol at a braai is not such a train smash.

You need to look for common denominators with all of this. And the overriding one is emotion. Which is why dating is nothing more than a social experiment, marriage on the other hand is less so because emotions are settled down significantly from when you were dating. The overriding factor at a night club is emotion (how you feel towards a song, how you feel towards a girl, how you feel towards getting involved in a fight) there are far less emotions involved at a braai.

How do you know the difference between a social event and a social experiment? There is a very easy test you can conduct which I call the Judge Judy test.

Judge Judy is a US television show based on a judge who rules on court cases brought before her. She needs to do this unemotionally. I often find myself sitting and watching Judge Judy and making my own mind up as to whether the person is guilty or not. I do this without having any previous training in law and I am only using common sense. This is also done unemotionally.

So the Judge Judy test is: look at the situation or event and UNEMOTIONALLY force yourself to look at it from the point of reason of common sense and then make a judgement call on the number of controllable variables are present. If there is more than two, it’s a Social Experiment.

Mei jua daima kuwa kabla yenu, na vivuli nyuma yako!

Being single at 30

Salamu

Being single in your 30s is not fun. It’s the time in your life where a chilled night having a few drinks with friends over dinner looks way more appealing than getting shit faced at a club.  All of a sudden, the music at

Great lyrics bro! Took you all day to come up with it.

these places are too loud, young thundercats are running around trying to make a name for themselves either as the next big MMA fighter of his generation or the next big drinker of his generation, the music that these thundercats listen to (that Hardwell Tomorrow Land bullshit) has absolutely no soul, and it takes you three days to recover from a hangover.

These are some of the challenges that being single at 30 presents. But there is another challenge, a far deeper one.

What type of woman do you go after at 30? If you are targeting the age group of 26 years and under, you will still have to go to clubs and listen to that Hardwell Tomorrow Land bullshit music that has no soul. And do you really want to be that 30 year old at the club? If you are targeting the age group of 26 to 30, you will find them at a hipster bar drinking a craft beer trying to ‘define their life’ during their quarter life crisis. And if you are targeting the age group of over 30, they come with the challenge of divorces and quite possibly kids.

We live in interesting time my friends.

So…if the prospect of going to a club and a hipster gathering scares the shit out of you, what’s left? INTERNET DATING.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m sure there are a lot of internet dating success stories. I’m just giving you my point of view. My 8 things you have to come to terms with when internet dating:

11)      There is no such thing as a free lunch. You will be expected to pay for internet dating. Yes there are free sites like OK Cupid. But the decent ones will cost you.

22)      Be prepared to scrape the bottom of the barrel. A supermodel or a cute girl can pick up a guy standing in the line at the Department of  Home Affairs. All she needs to do is flash him a smile and lick her lips seductively. A Plain Jane or a girl who is not looked at twice at school will be on the internet. Don’t go onto the net expecting to find a supermodel or a cute girl.

33)      Be prepared to encounter psycho’s. There is only one other reason that a decent looking girl will be on

the internet. She’s mad. This girl has escaped from a mental institution and is completely Loony Tunes. She might be relatively normal around you, but she has regular imaginary conversations with Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam.

44)      Be prepared to enter the Twilight zone. And no, this is not the Twilight zone of teenage porn vampires and werewolves. This is the Steven Spielberg Twilight Zone of freakiness. You must remember, to date on the internet, you must lose a bit of shame. So, be prepared for weird requests. I met a girl on Tinder and we got talking. Not even 10 whatsapp messages later she tells me her prepaid internet is up and asks me to by some for her. And then she still gave me shit because I asked her how she can do this after only starting to talk to me.

55)      They will be needy. Sometimes needy as F##k. Because of points two and three above, there is a good chance that these girls will be needy. I met a girl on OK Cupid and we got talking. And it was nice for the first few days having someone to talk to, you know, to get you through the long day at work. But there are times when you don’t want to talk to a person who sits with their phone in their hands waiting desperately for you to reply to them. And when you don’t chat to them EVERY SINGLE DAY…THE WHOLE DAY you get messages like: Did I do something wrong? We don’t chat as often as we did. And then when you don’t answer her because you are driving….you get 15 messages where there are just question marks (?)

66)      You will be asked stupid questions. As much as I love technology, it is a curse at times. It is definitely a curse on relationships. But before you venture out and meet the girl from the internet in person, you have to chat on social media first. The same girl who asked me if she did something wrong once asked me if she was awesome. Now I mentioned to her before what she was awesome to talk to because we had a lot in common. But I don’t feel that there is a need to tell a person that they are awesome every day unless you are dating them and are serious about them.

77)      Don’t expect the perfect woman. Ok. This applies to both real dating and internet dating. Just like the

perfect guy is a unicorn, the perfect woman is a unicorn. A mythical creature! But this is even worse with internet dating. A girl you meet at a social event usually attends social events and has a relative idea on how to carry herself in such environments. A person you meet on the internet does not have this skill. Be prepared for awkward silences, the dreaded one word answers to questions like: yes, no, ok. And don’t expect to talk for hours on end without stopping. More like, be prepared to sit in silence for hours upon end without talking.

88)      Make sure you are on the same page with things. Interests are funny things. Many people share interests, but there are some people who have specifically unique interests that cannot be shared. I have very unique interests. I love sport to the extent that I am a fanatic about it. I am also very interested in ancient civilizations. Now to find a girl that has the same level of interest as me is hard. And if you cant. You will be able to communicate for the first week, and then it’s the one word answers.

Relationships are hard work at the best of times, but to date the female version of Sheldon Cooper is another beast altogether. Internet dating is definitely not for everyone. One thing you do need is a well-planned exit strategy.  Talk and get to know her on whatsapp or BBM. There is a great function on these apps called: Block contacts.

It’s like bug spray on steroids. Because sometimes you use bug spray and they just keep coming back at you. With block contacts, only you can unblock them, and why would you if they are bat shit crazy?

Is there hope for people who are single in their 30s? Of course there is. You just can’t use the same tactics you did when you were 20. At 20, you wanted to bang anything that had beautiful eyes, a cute smile, and licked her lips seductively. At 30 you need to be a bit more selective. Look for inner beauty as opposed to outer beauty. Because if shed is smoking hot…but single at 30, someone kicked her to the curb for a reason.

Mei jua daima kuwa kabla yenu, na vivuli nyuma yako!

Are the Brazilian champions trained by Superman?

Salamu

Well, what can we say about UFC 169 that hasn’t already been said in the international press?

Well, let’s start with the fact that it was a FRIGGEN AWESOME event which lived up to all of its expectations. I mean, what else can you expect from a card which features two of the best fighters in the business today in Renen Barão and José Aldo?  Um, maybe let’s throw in a former two time Heavyweight Champion in Frank Mir as well as an up-and-coming star in Ali Bagautinov.

Ladies and Gentlemen…sit back and enjoy the latest edition of The Rear Naked Choke.

One of the best fights I have ever seen in my life was at UFC 166 where Gilbert Melendez and Diego Sanchez unloaded on each other for five rounds. The result was one of the bloodiest fights in MMa history, but also one of the best. The great thing about it was that the punches that Melendez and Sanchez were throwing at each other were not technical punches, but rather what did you say about my mother punches.

The first fight of UFC 169 between Abel Trujillo and Jamie Varner proved to be the same. As usual, the

fighters spent much of the first round feeling each other out. And then Trujillo unleashed fury on Varner that few have ever seen. How Varner survived the round was a miracle, but he came out in the second round and paid Trujillo in kind. After spending 10 minutes with my jaw on the floor wondering if I was in a dream, Varner came out and almost knocked out Trujillo, but he got cocky and Trujillo caught him with a perfect overhand right which hit him square on the jaw. Varner hit the mat like a ton of bricks and the fight set the tone for the rest of the evening. How could any fight get close to that for fight of the night?

The next fight was between the man from Dagestan Ali Bagautinov and Brazilian James Lineker. The two fighters are known for their passion and the way they approach their fights. This was always going to be a tale of contrasting styles because Bagautinov is a stand up fighter while Lineker is a high level black belt in Brazialian Jujitsu. The first round was dominated by Bagautinov while Lineker completely turned it around in the second. It came down to the final round where Bagautinov threw Lineker around like a rag doll. 

Bagautinov won the fight and showed in the process that he is a force to be reckoned with in the flyweight division. He has high level combat sambo to back up his skills which is paving the way for a new breed of elite Russian fighters who are proving that wrestling is not the only backbone to a MMA fighter. For those of you who do not know where Dagastan is…it is in the South-Western corner of Mother Russia and is bordered by Georgia, Chechnya and Azerbaijan. Basically, if you blink your eyes, you will miss it.

We then move onto the main fights of the evening. Alistair Overeem took on the former two time Heavyweight champion Frank Mir. Like the Bagautinov fight, this fight was the stand up brawler (Overeem) versus the ground dominant (Mir). Overeem ended up winning the fight, but what impressed during the fight was that he paced himself well and didn’t gas out lie he did in his previous fight which was a loss against Travis Browne. In my opinion, Mir is over the hill and should hang up his gloves while he still has the respect of the dressing room.

The co-main event of the evening saw the UFC’s only Flyweight champion José Aldo take on the divisions third ranked fighter Ricardo Lamas. While Lamas came into the ring with a hairstyle that looked like the miniature version of Billy Ray Cyrus’ mullet, it looked like the boy could bang a bit. But Aldo came in and literally kicked the shit out of Lamas. Basically, if Lamas cut off Aldo’s legs, he would have won the fight. But he also would have won the fight if he managed to submit Aldo in the fifth round. Aldo was clearly struggling and spent the majority of the round on his back defending Lamas’ half mount. If Lamas had managed to do a bit more damage in earlier rounds, I think we would have seen a new Flyweight champion.

The main event of the evening was my boy Renen Barão versus Urijah Faber. This is going to be the shortest

write up because they came out, Barão caught him badly early in the first round and unloaded on Faber who was on his ass. Faber got out and Barão caught him again, but managed to get referee Herb Dean to stop the fight. There was a bit of controversy after the fight. Faber accused Dean (very gracefully I might add) of sloppy refereeing. Faber was on the floor and being hammered by Barão, Dean asked Faber to show he was ok and Faber gave Dean a thumbs up which was behind Barão’s leg. UM…FABER…HOW THE HELL IS DEAN SUPPOSED TO SEE THIS WHEN HE IS CLEARLY WATCHING YOUR OTHER HAND?

But Joe Rogan raised a great point at the end of the fight when he asked Faber where do you draw the line between getting hammered and still being ok as opposed to getting hammered and almost dying. And Faber answered the question beautifully when he said that the line is when a fighter’s lifeless body is on the mat. Faber clearly was still ok and had a firm grip on Barão’s leg. If his hold dropped, then fair enough, stop the fight. But Dean has a responsibility to have the fighter’s best interests at heart and he was just protecting Faber.

What UFC 169 proved to me, is that I am a bit of a doos and have a lot to learn about the sport. In my last edition of The Rear Naked Choke I slammed Brazilian fighters. And it seems I was amiss because Barão and Aldo are just head and shoulders above anyone else in the sport. Even above John Jones and Cain Velazquez. Barão and Aldo come out of the same training camp and they must be trained by a person who is the combination of Fedor Emelianenko and Superman. The combinations that these boys throw are amazing. One a fighter gets slightly behind against either Barão or Aldo, they might as well not answer the bell, because they are in for a long night of hidings.

And their record speaks for themselves. Barão has a winning streak of 21 fights and a title reign spanning 532 days. Aldo has a winning streak of 16 fights and has a title reign which spans 1141 days.  Simply amazing.

Awards (in my opinion)

Fight of the Night: Abel Trujillo vs Jamie Varner

Knockout of the Night: Abel Trujillo

Mei jua daima kuwa kabla yenu, na vivuli nyuma yako!