Fernanda Prates Sep 16, 2021. 32 minute read
“It’s Almost Feeling the Need to Represent Women as a Whole:” A Conversation With MMA Pioneer Dr. Rosi Sexton
Rosi Sexton didn’t exactly set out to be a professional mixed martial artist. The whole thing was more of an experiment, really. After her own martial arts training had taken her up to instructor level, Sexton figured it was time to share some of her knowledge. To teach others, as…
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Fernanda Prates Aug 27, 2021. 9 minute read
Everything You Wanted To Know About The TUF 29 Finalists (But Were Too Reasonable To Ask)
And so the time has come. You kept telling yourself over and over, “I’ll catch up on this when I get a chance.” You maybe saved some links, bookmarked some tweets, took a cursory glance at a highlight or two. But then life happened, as it usually does, and you…
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Fernanda Prates Aug 18, 2021. 5 minute read
The Ultimate Fighter 29, Episode 12: A Review
I’ve been waiting for the right time to bring this up, but The Ultimate Fighter 29 is officially ending and the right time never came, so I’m just going to come out and say it at the wrong time: I hate Tresean Gore’s “woo” in the show’s intro montage. I’m…
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Fernanda Prates Aug 11, 2021. 5 minute read
The Ultimate Fighter 29, Episode 11: A Review
First and foremost, an admission: I owe horses an apology. After spending upwards of 4 (four) paragraphs of our little The Ultimate Fighter 29 journey explaining why they are nature’s biggest assholes, I got some sobering perspective when episode 11 brought us the pound-for-pound leaders in animal kingdom assholery: snakes.…
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Fernanda Prates Aug 4, 2021. 5 minute read
The Ultimate Fighter 29, Episode 10: A Review
If you’ve been following all of our The Ultimate Fighter 29 reviews up to this point, you have probably already come to the realization that I am essentially a parasitic underground organism who needs animosity and bedlam to thrive within the darkness of its own mind. As such, while I…
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Fernanda Prates Jul 29, 2021. 11 minute read
Bellator Champ-Champ Patricio Freire on Getting to the Top, Staying There and Not Looking Around too Much
Patricio “Pitbull” Freire made his professional MMA debut in 2004. He has since won 32 fights, finished 23 of them, claimed Bellator’s featherweight title, lost Bellator’s featherweight title, re-claimed it, and added a lightweight title to his collection. At 34, as he prepares to attempt his sixth consecutive 145-pound title…
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Fernanda Prates Jul 28, 2021. 3 minute read
The Ultimate Fighter 29, Episode 9: A Review
Roses are still red Violets are still blue We got another prank on The Ultimate Fighter 29 And it was not necessarily life-changing but Volk was excited about it so I love it and you need to love it too via GIPHY The episode starts with Ricky Turcios being Ricky…
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Fernanda Prates Jul 27, 2021. 3 minute read
MMA Fighters As Olympic Sports
Have you ever started watching world-class athletes that have nothing to do with MMA practicing world-class sports that have nothing with MMA and thought to yourself “Hm, I wonder how I can take this world-class thing that has nothing to do with MMA and add a total of 0 (zero)…
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Fernanda Prates Jul 22, 2021. 4 minute read
The Ultimate Fighter 29, Episode 8: A Review
Dear MMA gods: Remember when I thanked you for all the wholesomeness of The Ultimate Fighter 29 but asked you to maybe sprinkle in a little drama so as to fulfill the reprehensible needs of my fucked-up heart? Well, that is not what I meant. Right off the bat, we…
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Fernanda Prates Jul 14, 2021. 5 minute read
The Ultimate Fighter 29, Episode 7: A Review
Remember when I spent the first three episodes of The Ultimate Fighter 29 complaining there weren’t nearly enough broken doors, flying objects, drunken rants, or outward displays of the most questionable aspects of human nature in general? Well, I’m still a horrible person and therefore I stand by my complaints.…
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Fernanda Prates Jul 9, 2021. 15 minute read
I Asked Twitter to Pick the Worst MMA Movies Then Watched Them for Science
Content warning for a (plot-specific) mention of human trafficking and sexual abuse in the piece. A few weeks ago, I gave myself some dumbass assignment and asked Twitter to help me with it. MMA Twitter, I KNOW you'll have opinions on this and will be able to help me: What…
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Fernanda Prates Jul 7, 2021. 3 minute read
The Ultimate Fighter 29, Episode 6: A Review
Since I’ve started writing The Ultimate Fighter 29 reviews, I’ve had many people ask me if this season is worth watching. As a pathological people pleaser who can’t make categorical statements, I usually skate around the question; “depends on your relationship to the show,” “depends on your expectations,” “depends on…
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Fernanda Prates Jun 30, 2021. 4 minute read
The Ultimate Fighter 29, Episode 5: A Review
Roses are red/Violets are blue/I love me some inconsequential “TUF” drama/ Don’t event sit here and try to act like you don’t love it too. As a fellow asshole, you probably remember that the fourth episode of The Ultimate Fighter 29 ended on a tense note, as the tardiness-related spat…
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Fernanda Prates Jun 23, 2021. 4 minute read
The Ultimate Fighter 29, Episode 4: A Review
I don’t know many things about myself, or anyone else, or literally any other thing that exists in the world. I know I don’t like papayas. I know people who like papayas are untrustworthy. I know papayas smell funny and have unreasonable texture and shouldn’t exist. And I knew, going…
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Fernanda Prates Jun 16, 2021. 3 minute read
The Ultimate Fighter 29, Episode 3: A Review
Intrigue. Espionage. Answers to age-old questions that plague humankind. Haters will say we didn’t get any of these things on Episode 3 of The Ultimate Fighter 29 and I am just saying this for dramatic effect. I will say that these things totally happened and the haters just lack the…
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MICROREVIEWS
Fernanda Prates Jun 11, 2021. 6 minute read
The UFC 263 Press Conference: A Compendium Of Thoughts
UFC 263 takes place this Saturday in Arizona and the UFC held a press conference ahead of it. Champions Israel Adesanya and Deiveson Figueiredo were there, as well as respective title challengers Marvin Vettori and Brandon Moreno. Nate Diaz isn’t a champion and nor is he fighting for a title,…
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Fernanda Prates Jun 9, 2021. 2 minute read
The Ultimate Fighter 29, Episode 2: A Review
Having never been one myself, I can’t tell exactly what it is that nice people with good hearts enjoy, but I’m going to guess that it’s the type of wholesome, family-friendly content we got from the second episode of The Ultimate Fighter 29. Right away, we’re treated to one of…
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MICROREVIEWS
Fernanda Prates Jun 2, 2021. 1 minute read
The Ultimate Fighter 29, Episode 1: A Review
The Ultimate Fighter is back, and I’ve got some good news and some bad news. The good news is that the show, which had been on hiatus since 2018, looks and feels exactly like you remembered. The bad news is that the show looks and feels exactly like you remembered. …
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Fernanda Prates May 28, 2021. 5 minute read
A List of Things to do on a Bellator-less, UFC-less weekend
If there’s one thing this past year has taught us it’s that neoliberal capitalism has failed us all and it is now an existential imperative that we reimagine the way we organize as a society. But, perhaps of more relevance to the point of this particular column, it’s taught us…
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Fernanda Prates May 21, 2021. 5 minute read
Time, What a Wild Concept (MMA edition)
Here’s the thing about professional fighters: They are not like regular people, in the sense that their brains and bodies are conditioned to do things that regular people can’t. But they are like regular people, in the sense that they host entirely human brains in their entirely human bodies, in…
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