Total head-rush

The first thing I noticed was that he was much smaller than I had imagined. This was a common thing that I heard from friends who have had celebrity encounters and recount, “I walked past Tommy Lee Jones in Chicago, tiny,” or, “I saw Spike Lee in Brooklyn, dude is miniature” etc. But it really did surprise me how small this guy was in person. After all, he was Georges St. Pierre, mixed martial artist and current Ultimate Fighting Championship welterweight champ. And he was smaller than I thought.

I was further weirded out by the fact that he was wearing flip flops. Maybe I expected the man who only lost twice in 17 professionally brutal fights to be sporting clothing that wasn’t so, um, femme-y. Like, I dunno, combat boots with bits of blood and hair or maybe a necklace made with the teeth and ears of his fallen victims. Nope, just cargo shorts and flip flops. At the time, he looked less like the guy who knocked out almost half of his opponents and more like a guy going to Florida for some spring break binge drinking.

For those of you not familiar with the sport, MMA basically started as an extension of that schoolyard game “Who would win…” when boys debate the winner of a theoretical battle; it could be historical (Genghis Khan vs. Hitler), plausible (Jean Claude Van Damme vs. Steven Seagal) or fantastic (Wolverine vs. Superman—Superman would win). The idea behind MMA was to see if, say, a guy who studied Brazilian Jiu Jitsu would win against a boxer or a wrestler or a Muay Thai warrior. In the end, it developed into a brutal contest where combatants had to know a bit of everything to kick each other’s asses.

And when I say brutal, I mean it. In the same way boxing is brutal, but MMA is faster and more vicious. It’s like cockfighting, except there’s more training and money on the line and the audience doesn’t eat the losing combatant when the fight is over. Now I wouldn’t say I’m a huge fan of the sport—there is still contention as to whether this actually even constitutes a sport—but I do on occasion watch a clip here and there, not because I have a thirst for blood, but more out of a morbid (yet exhilarating) fascination. I could go on about the nobility of a mano a mano struggle for survival, of the purity of pitting one will against the other, the strategy, agility, level of athleticism it takes to become a champ and blah blah blah, but I think it might be as simple as the thrill of watching one guy kick the crap out of another guy. Wait, maybe I am a bloodthirsty philistine.

Either way, the Quebec-born St. Pierre (or “Rush,” as he’s also known) is one of the best guy-who-kicks–the-crap-out-of-other-guys out there. And I must admit, when I saw him standing just six or seven people behind me in line for the U.S. customs at Trudeau airport, I was a little star-struck. And I’m not really one to be star-struck. One thing my job has taught me is that when you actually talk to famous people, you learn that they are just human beings. Just like the rest of us, they put on their cargo shorts one leg at a time, and when they jump out of their private jets after doing tons of blow out of a supermodel’s ass, they also have to open up their diamond encrusted parachutes. Just like the rest of us.

I’ve always respected athletes way more than actors. Maybe because I don’t think acting is really that impressive. You basically have to be a good liar. But athletes push the boundaries of the human body. And they have the kind of knowledge and discipline I could never have (I’m still convinced the cookie part of an ice cream sandwich constitutes a grain, which in turn makes it the perfect breakfast meal).

Maybe I respect St. Pierre because, like me, he was picked on at school. But unlike me he chose to learn martial arts and “take back the night,” so to speak (my defence was to start dressing weird so people would just be too creeped out to approach me). Maybe I like him because he’s obviously a smart guy who is also respectful of his opponents and audience. Or maybe I like him because he started off as a bouncer at Fuzzy’s in Brossard, which I think is hilarious. Or maybe I just like him because he’s from Quebec and there is some kind of local pride in knowing some guy who lives in your vicinity is one of the toughest badasses in the world.

Riff-Raff@sympatico.ca