Opinion: The Ghosts of Fighting

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I’m a big fan of Teddy Atlas and used to regularly listen to his
podcast: “The Fight.” I had grown up listening to Atlas commentate
on boxing for ESPN’s “Friday Night Fights,” where he would always
provide excellent technical analysis and outline exactly what a
pugilist needed to do to win. Yet, that is not his main focus on
his podcast. Instead, Atlas talks exhaustively about the mental
side of fighting. The psychology, the confidence and the fears.
This is an area of combat sports I used to underestimate and even
neglect. I’ve always loved dissecting technique and felt that if
you accurately summed up all of a fighter’s physical
characteristics relative to an opponent, you could predict how the
match would go. However, when I gambled accordingly, I kept running
into problems. Occasionally, a fighter who had all the
advantages—whether it was being stronger, faster, having better
striking or having superior grappling—would still lose. How was
this happening? After listening to Atlas’ podcast, I learned the
answer. It was the mental side of fighting, one that is difficult
to quantify but of paramount importance.

That brings us to the recent showdown for the
Ultimate Fighting Championship lightweight crown between
Charles
Oliveira and Islam
Makhachev. It was one of the most important fights of 2022. I
haven’t heard Atlas’ thoughts on the fight, but by applying his
mindset, we discover some interesting truths. Oliveira ranks in the
Top 5 of the most skilled and talented mixed martial artists to
ever live.
My scouting report on the Brazilian was gushing and complimentary
to a ridiculous degree and in ways it had never been before,
not even for fighters like a prime Fedor
Emelianenko. Despite that talent, Oliveira was for a long time
an underachiever. He would decisively lose fights to opponents who
didn’t have a tiny fraction of his talent. He went 2-4 in a period
from 2015 to 2017, and while an early injury to Max
Holloway can be forgiven, losing via guillotine choke to
Anthony
Pettis and Ricardo
Lamas cannot.

However, the most humiliating loss came in December 2017, when
Oliveira was pounded out by Paul Felder
at lightweight. Oliveira had every conceivable advantage against
Felder and should have crushed him like a bug. Instead, it was
Oliveira being helplessly pummeled before a referee saved him. What
happened? Oliveira ran over Felder for most of the first round,
taking him down at will, attaining dominant positions—including the
back and full mount—and attacking with deep guillotine chokes. He
was seemingly toying with his opponent. Then, Felder managed to
throw Oliveira off his back and, despite eating a few big upkicks,
started landing ground-and-pound. Oliveira wasn’t gassed at this
point, but he was certainly becoming discouraged. What started out
as easy, one-sided domination turned into a war where he couldn’t
rely on his talent alone, and he was absorbing significant damage.
This was especially evident in the second round. Oliveira wasn’t
physically tired, but mentally, he was in a vulnerable state. He
was immediately discouraged in the striking after Felder checked
his leg kick and then was discouraged in the grappling when “The
Irish Dragon” defended a takedown and turned him against the fence.
While he wasn’t in a bad position, Oliveira had checked out
mentally, a thousand-yard stare serving as proof. Felder nailed him
with powerful elbows in the clinch in the clinch, and from there,
the American began pounding him from the top. Oliveira was on pure
auto-pilot, but he was so talented that he had a solid kneebar
attempt and almost swept Felder late in the round. However, when
that didn’t work, the Brazilian gave up. Oliveira ended up tapping
to strikes, showing his complete surrender to the fires of combat.
Felder may have had vastly less talent, but he was mentally much
tougher, having conquered adversity in a way Oliveira could not.
That made the difference.

This match marked a turning point for Oliveira. Not only did he
improve his physical skills after the defeat, but he improved his
mind. He rattled off an amazing 11 wins in a row, many of them as
an underdog, while facing and vanquishing adversity many times. For
me, a key moment was when he faced Michael
Chandler for the vacant lightweight championship. Chandler
knocked down and badly hurt Oliveira in the first round. The
Brazilian was desperately trying to survive, bobbing his head back
and forth off the canvas on pure instinct as Chandler sought to
finish the job with vicious punches. Some referees might have even
stopped the match at this point, and the old Oliveira may well have
folded. This time, he managed to weather the storm and finish the
round. There was an opportunity for Oliveira to mentally give up in
the second round, too, as Chandler was still determined. Again,
Oliveira faced and overcame his demons, and he was the one who
delivered the knockout to capture the UFC lightweight crown.

Oliveira showed his mental toughness again against Dustin
Poirier in a pitched, back-and-forth battle. The Brazilian had
wilted in several such encounters, but it was Poirier who couldn’t
handle the rage and tension of battle, as Oliveira submitted him
early in the third round. So Oliveira had successfully past his
mental weakness, right? The prodigal son had fulfilled his vast
potential and was only going to add to his legendary legacy, right?
Well, not entirely. The ghosts of his past were still there, ready
to come back at the right moment. It would just take a lot more for
that to happen.

We’ve seen this before—and recently. A lot of people doubted
Amanda
Nunes’ mental toughness when she lost by knockout to Alexis
Davis and Cat Zingano
in fights where she was dominating early but eventually faded and
seemed to give up as her opponents rained down punches. In the
midst of her legendary 12-fight winning streak that saw many cast
her as the greatest women’s fighter ever, this was considered a
problem she had successfully overcome. It was firmly in the past,
having no relation to the current iteration of Nunes. Yet, the
ghosts were not permanently exorcised, as the very same events
occurred in her first fight against Julianna
Pena—a far less skilled but endlessly tough opponent who
refused to ever give up and never faltered in her belief that she
could win.

That brings us to Makhachev. He is an all-time great fighter with
tremendous talent but not quite at the same dizzying level as
Oliveira. However, Makhachev has a huge advantage over the
Brazilian. There was never even a shadow of a doubt about his own
mental state. Makhachev is an unrelenting warrior who constantly
pressures his opponents, makes smart decisions and never remotely
gives in to the tension of the fight. If ever there was someone who
could make Oliveira’s old demons manifest themselves once more, it
was the man from Dagestan.

That is exactly what occurred. Right off the bat, Makhachev sowed
the seeds with a left cross that landed flush. Oliveira must have
been confident in his striking superiority, and this early exchange
shook that confidence. He panicked a little, tried to go for an
ill-advised takedown and, as a result, found himself on his back.
To his credit, the Brazilian regained his composure, and after
sustaining little damage, he managed to get back to his feet when
Makhachev tried to pass guard. However, the Russian hit him with a
beautiful judo hip toss in the clinch. This time, Oliveira
succumbed to the tension and terror of battle, especially with the
crowd roaring its approval for his opponent. Instead of attacking
with submissions or working to get back to his feet, he locked on a
passive closed full guard and seemed content with being on the
bottom. At the end of Round 1, matters weren’t so bad for Oliveira.
He had only lost a single round out of five. He hadn’t absorbed
much damage or expended much energy. Mentally, however, he was in a
precarious state. With little strategy, he sleepwalked through the
beginning of Round 2, wading forward, getting hit with blows and
foolishly wandering into another clinch. If he wasn’t so
psychologically wounded, he would have been dancing around the
ring, hitting Makhachev with punches and kicks from range. They
eventually disengaged, but again, Oliveira kept wading forward,
hoping he could use that ever-present superior talent to land the
necessary shots. Makhachev just stayed calm and kept making good
decisions, hitting the Brazilian every time he waded forward. Then
it happened. Oliveira went for a nonsensical, ill-advised jumping
switch knee, the equivalent of closing his eyes and hoping for a
home run to rescue him from the flames of combat. He was
immediately punished with a right hook from Makhachev that put him
down. Makhachev was on him like a shark, working for an
arm-triangle. Rather than fighting hard to recover and continue the
battle, Oliveira did the same thing he had done against Felder late
in the Round 2. He gave up. With plenty of opportunity to hold his
trapped right hand with his left or otherwise resist, he tapped out
quickly. The ghosts had not only come back, but they had defeated
the Brazilian yet again.

Thus, we learn a powerful lesson about the raw nature of mixed
martial arts combat. Mental doubt and fear are enemies fighters
must battle and resist in addition to the physical opponent in
front of them. Even when they have done so successfully many times,
under enough stress, those pernicious ghosts are always ready to
return.