Josh Tucker is a freelance writer who has appeared at Deadspin, Vice Sports, and The Classical.
StarCraft is reportedly dead, though for a corpse the exact time and cause of death are proving difficult to pin down. It’s possible that the StarCraft: Brood War match-fixing scandal of 2010 killed the pioneering real time strategy game a few months before the sequel was even released, but by then it may have already…
All the old knocks still apply. The Ultimate Fighting Championship is a corrupt, exploitative brand in a corrupt, exploitative sport. It functions in large part to enrich the egos and bank accounts of people lacking for neither, and it does so belligerently. At the moment it’s a business that may or may not be for sale
Fedor Emelianenko will be 39 years old when he returns to Japan to fight on New Year’s Eve. His comeback will be promoted by an organization so new that it only announced its name—Rizin Fighting Federation—after announcing the fight. His most recently rumored opponent is a relatively unknown, used-to-be-decent…
There is an Ultimate Fighting Championship card scheduled for this Saturday, like many—probably too many—other recent Saturdays. What makes this one special is that it will be capped off by a main event of the highest caliber, with a dominant champion facing a threatening, wildly athletic challenger in a rematch of a…
The Nevada State Athletic Commission is a bumbling, soulless government agency, and so a strange agent for the delivery of the message that our gods have forsaken us. They never have been particularly diligent messengers in any event, but for whatever reason—bureaucracy, incompetence, something more nefarious—they…
On Thursday, UFC 177 was positioned to be a terrible pay-per-view event, just really bad by any objective standard. At the risk of being accused of doing what promoter Dana White calls "the most disgusting fucking despicable thing," I would have discouraged fans from purchasing it, if asked. It was thin from top to…
Sometime shortly after Robbie Lawler started hitting Matt Brown unreasonably hard in San Jose, Calif. Saturday night, a low rumble shook my apartment. It felt and sounded strangely like—and turned out actually to be—fireworks. This was silly, entirely too literal, but given that the fight featured Lawler, a man far…
I love body shots. There is a horrible, wonderful noise generated when a professional athlete hits another professional athlete in the torso, a thudding slap of skeleton and meat. It sounds like a Foley artist's garish exaggeration of what you think a body shot should sound like. I love this sound.
If you follow mixed martial arts long enough, even at a casual level, and if you are capable of feeling shame or outrage, the sport will eventually embarrass you. For those of us who follow the sport intently, especially those of us who deeply love it, this is a regular, sometimes daily, occurrence. Awful,…
On Saturday night in Cincinnati, Ohio, Matt Brown and Erick Silva beat the hell out of each other for a while, and then things turned. In the end, it was Brown delivering and Silva absorbing a frightening thrashing, to the delight of nearly all, both his local fans in the arena and all those watching at home. This was…
April 11 was the kind of day that makes you wonder if the problem with fighting is that it can't be justified.
No one needed to see Marlon Moraes continue beating on Josh Rettinghouse. Moraes had outclassed his opponent in every facet of the game for 15 minutes, piling on abuse and bludgeoning his lead leg. Rettinghouse could barely support his own weight, let alone continue to defend himself, and as he hobbled back to his…
