Fear, Jorge Masvidal, Henry Rollins, Nazi Skinheads And A Baseball Bat
Or Watch Your Mouth
Welcome to the latest C’Mon Now, a newsletter focused on mixed martial arts. This is the place where I’ll share my thoughts on all the goings-on in MMA. Those thoughts could range from media criticism to advice for folks looking to get into MMA writing to why certain fighters or managers are not good for the sport.
Today I look about growing up in the hardcore/punk scene in the mid/late 1980’s. .
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I have some time today, so let's dig into another personal one here.
For some reason, the topic of fear has been stuck in my head since I watched the "Countdown to UFC 244" video. During that piece, Jorge Masvidal spoke about what scares him about fighting in the UFC. He said he is not scared when he walks into the octagon because he knows there are protections for the fighters such as rules, a ref and a doctor. Masvidal also said that he was scared when he fought in the backyards of Miami when he was coming up. There were no rules in those battles. Masvidal recalled that he was afraid that weapons could have been pulled and people could have jumped in at any time.
So I got to thinking, what have I been scared of and what am I scared of.
That thinking brought me to something Henry Rollins said. Rollins was talking about growing up in the insular Washington D.C. punk scene and he said something about talking shit. Rollins' message was that he assumed anything he said would get back to the person he was talking about and that there was a good chance that he would walk around the corner one day and run into that person. So he tried to keep that in mind when speaking.
Here's how these things link up for me.
I grew up in a town in Pennsylvania that was more or less a meeting place for nazi skins from Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Being one of the vocal anti-racist folks in that scene, I kind of lived by Rollins' credo, because well, if you went to a show or played a show in that area, you could expect to run into a bunch of these folks and they were not above the group beatdown thing.
Roger Miret of Agnostic Front from his book My Riot:
All hell broke loose" one night in Allentown, Pennsylvania, he recalls, when "hundreds of guys came to the concert with swastika flags." After a group of fascists attacked a black audience member, the place exploded. "The fighting spilled onstage and backstage," Miret writes. "Vinnie broke apart the mic stands and handed out pieces of metal to everyone backstage to crack some [Nazi] heads. He was like a general sending his troops out to battle.
I think the scariest time for me was when the band I was in we're playing a show at a club that is now a small park. I believe it was around Halloween.
Our stance on the whole racist thing was made clear via our actions and lyrics. Anyway, our bass player wore clown pants and had a homemade screwdriver tee-shirt on for that show. Not the racist band Screwdriver, but a shirt with a screwdriver drawn on it. The clown pants and the shirt did not go over well with some folks in the crowd. At some point he had to lose the shirt because it was in danger of going up in flames thanks to the cigarettes getting thrown at him. Me, I was the singer, and with nothing in my hand but a Sure microphone, I had taken to carrying a Rawlings 28 ounce Roberto Clemente baseball bat I had since little league. The show got heated. We stood our ground and expected a fight, but our drummer did some fast talking and established some kind of truce. I don't know how he did, but it was close.
I guess the message here is that we knew what speaking out could have cost us, which was a beating, and we were okay with that. Ah, the folly of youth.
So when I look at what I do now with my MMA writing, I think what could it cost me if I speak up. The only thing I could come up with is that some promotions won't work with me or that Dana White or Chatri Sityodtong will block me on Twitter. That's a small price to pay for speaking my mind and speak truth to power in the sport. Losing credentials or not getting quotes? That's nothing. Losing that access doesn't play any role in what I will write about and what I will cover going forward.
In fact, the fact that these folks refuse to work with me, someone who barely has any reach or influence in the MMA media, says a lot more about them than it does about me.
I'm not saying this approach is for everyone. I know my stance has and will continue to cost me money and opportunities. I'm okay with that, others might not be.
I hope this gives ya'll something to think about.
Movie Time: The Godfathers Of Hardcore
Music Time: Agnostic Front “With Time”
My band tried to cover this, but I could never get the timing down and so we had to scrap it, which still bums me out a bit.
