Most Helpful Customer Reviews
|
|
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Superb Portrait of an MMA Icon and the rise of MMA as a Sport, January 11, 2009
As one sign that MMA is now mainstream, there is a growing bookshelf dedicated to the sport and its luminaries. In 2008, we saw the autobiographies of Matt Hughes, Tito Ortiz, Chuck Liddell and Randy Couture. Kelly Criger's "Title Shot" is excellent in offering profiles of various elite MMA training centers around the country. That fine book has one glaring omission, though, in that it did not profile Miletich Fighting Systems in Bettendorf, Iowa.
Author and Sports Illustrated writer L. Jon Wertheim fills that void with a vivid, fascinating and entertaining "Blood in the Cage." "Blood' tracks the parallel emergence and transformation of Pat Miletich with the burgeoning sport of mixed martial arts. The fact that a writer for SI was paid to write an entire book about MMA is another sign that the sport has arrived.
Wertheim offers a flattering but not fawning portrayal of Miletich, a hardscrabble kid who went from tough guy punk to brawler to MMA champ to a trainer of the elite. Miletich and his stable of fighters mirror their Midwest location: hard working, conservative, methodical. The Croation Sensation reached his peak before the UFC hit the big time, but now Miletich trains some of the top competitors in MMA. He is the Yoda or Mr. Miyagi of MMA.
Until someone better comes along, Wertheim has written perhaps the best book yet on MMA and the rise of the UFC. Nor does he idolize the latter, noting the issue of performance enhancing drugs, the closed financial deals and the heavy-handedness of it bald F-bomb dictator, Dana White. Still, reading Wertheim you can almost feel yourself in the octagon, as the book brims with authenticity. (The only blooper I spotted was a point where Wertheim said the Miletich fighters trained with Russian kettle drums. I imagined the fighters auditioning on the percussion with the Moscow Symphony Orchestra ..) You are there on the mats, at least vicariously, without the inconvenience of having to sweat, bleed or barf.
If you are a fan or the MMA or UFC, you may have a hard time putting down "Blood in the Cage." I don't put it down, but instead give it five stars out of five!!
|
|
|
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
not written by a true insider, June 22, 2009
Pat Miletich is a pretty interesting subject to use as a door into the development of mixed martial arts and the book uses it to good effect. If you want to learn about Pat, or are new to MMA and would like to learn a the basics of its history, this might seem like a decent book to read.
However, I had major problems with a few things:
1. The author's descriptions of events that are available to the public record are often inaccurate. This undermines the credibility of his descriptions of things we haven't seen. Major and minor examples of innacuracy:
Major: in his description of the controversial first fight between Carlos Newton and Matt Hughes, its almost as if he didn't watch the fight, or watched it carelessly once and wrote the description from notes. He writes that Newton grabbed the top of the cage and then secured a triangle choke, implying that it was Newton's foul that allowed him to choke Hughes. In fact, the only reason he was up against the top of the fence was that he had Hughes in a triangle on the ground, and Hughes lifted him up to try to shake him off, or possibly slam him.
Minor: In the Ultimate Fighter, he wrote that there was a dispute about asparagus tips being left on the counter. In fact, Stephan Bonner confronts Diego Sanchez about eating all of the asparagus tips and leaving the stalks.
Maybe some people won't consider these types of errors a big deal, but there were so many of them that I had a hard time taking the book seriously. The impression you get is that the writer is not an insider, and didn't really care to spend enough time to write a thoroughly researched book.
2. The writer is way too concerned with turning a cute or literary phrase. I found his style very irritating. So often, the representation of reality is subsumed by lame figurative terms or sensational images that really don't serve the subject and remind you that the guy is primarily a writer of deadline-driven magazine articles where such slop is acceptable. He tries to create a tone with stuff like fighters coming to a gym from all over to 'trade pints of blood'. Really? That's what they're doing? I understand that these are just writerly turns-of-phrase but there are so many poor and unnecessary ones in this book that I felt the subject suffered.
In short, if you're already an MMA fan, read this book for the Miletich story--it's pretty interesting--but you should know beforehand that this guy is not much of an expert.
|
|
|
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great book, February 24, 2009
Very good book if you have even a small interest in MMA. It gives an interesting account of Pat Miletich's life, but it also sheds light on many other aspects of the UFC, and the origins of MMA. Lots of stories about other fighters (not just Pat and his crew). Also tells the story of Dana White and the Fertitta brothers and how they became involved with the UFC, and eventually changed the MMA world. I highly suggest this book, best I have read in a long time.
|
|
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews
|