Gladiators Of The Octagon

Since i'm getting back into blogging to keep this blog alive, I'll share some of my interests with all of you.

MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) is a fast growing sport in the world today. With the major fight organisation, UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship), gaining worldwide popularity, the sport of MMA has gone mainstream and is a big hit for pay-per-view TV.



Some may misunderstand it as the dirty sport of cagefighting but MMA has shown to be a valid sport, just like any other martial arts like boxing and Muay Thai. The thing that makes this sport so appealing is the combination of multiple disciplines into one sport. Major disciplines include JiuJitsu, Muay Thai, kickboxing, wrestling, boxing and kick-assery.

Amongst notable fighters today are:

• Brock Lesnar (people know him from the WWE days),
• George St Pierre (Canadian fighter who is highly skilled in all areas of MMA)
• Ken Shamrock (also known for his days in the WWE/WWF)
• Randy Couture (a Legend of the sport)
• Anderson Silva (c gondol portuguese a real ass kicker)
• Matt Hughes (timing berabis but a great fighter)

More about the sport for some other time. For now these gladiators should be inspiration enough to kick ass out there.

~jobe 'train hard, who needs teeth anyways...'

When the philosophers play football

The dream team from philosophy takes the pitch for an epic match. The Greeks played their top players which includes Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, while the Germans kept their heavy playmaker, Karl Marx on the bench. They however field their strongest player, Franz Beckenbauer, nicknamed “The Emperor”, to play alongside top philosophers Hegel, Karl Jespers, and Immanuel Kant.  The referee for the match was Confuscius from China.

The first half ended a nil-nil draw with neither players touching the football. Karl Marx was brought in the second half to spark the German team, but was unable to give answers. Socrates, the captain for Greece, managed to score the only goal of the match with a header from a beautiful cross by Archimedes.

The goal didn’t come without controversy as Hegel argues that “the reality is merely an a priori adjunct of non-naturalistic ethics, Kant via the categorical imperative is holding that ontologically it exists only in the imagination”. Karl Marx argues it was offside but Confuscius waves away the protests. The Greeks managed to create an upset win with the final score line Greeks 1 Germans 0.

~jobe