When you hear people talk about UFC 203, they’ll tell you about CM Punk before long.
They’ll ignore the heavyweight title fight anchoring the card almost completely, hotly stating an opinion on Punk as idiot or inspiration.
They’ll tell you about this pro wrestling star who decided to take up MMA without having ever thrown an unplanned punch in his life.
They’ll tell you that his opponent, 2-0 Mickey Gall, looks like a whole handful more than most 2-0 fighters they’ve seen.
They’ll draw attention to Punk as, like it or not, a Roufusport athlete, and wonder what exactly he might have picked up in his 18 months or so of training there.
I feel like 5 years from now we're not even going to remember Gall got to the UFC because of CM Punk. Seems like a real legit prospect.
— Matthew Ryder (@matthewjryder) August 28, 2016
But what they’ll really be telling you is that this whole event and the hoopla surrounding the first WWE-to-MMA crossover since the far more athletically meritorious Brock Lesnar heavyweight title run is about one thing: the culmination of the martial arts journey of Phil Brooks.
See, Phil Brooks is the guy behind the gimmick. Back before there was a CM Punk there was just Phil, and he’ll tell you as much himself. This MMA thing was very much about getting back to being Phil and getting away from the chaos of life on the road as a professional wrestler.
Ignoring that some people don’t like that he parlayed fame into a new type of fortune by signing with the UFC out of nowhere in late 2014, there’s something uniquely budo about that idea. Brooks, a rudimentary martial artist and MMA fan who more or less thought the idea of taking a fight was a cool bucket-list challenge, is embodying everything that’s right about pure martial arts.
He was and continues to be willing to enter one of the toughest gyms in America and give the toughest sport that exists a shot. He went in knowing he was functionally talentless, and that he’d line up with former and current champions like Anthony Pettis, Ben Askren and Tyron Woodley in an effort to change that.
He did it willingly at a time that he easily could have sat in his swanky Chicago home with his pretty celebrity wife and counted the money he pried from Vince McMahon’s hands before his body and mind broke down, as so many wrestlers before him have.
At its basest level, Brooks did this as a test.
Sure, he’s rich. Big deal. Conor McGregor’s rich, and no one bats an eye when he spends $300,000 on a fight camp to test himself against a bigger opponent who starched him only a few months prior.
Sure, he’s famous. Big deal. Ronda Rousey is famous, and no one bats and eye when she spends months at a time making bad movies between fights or showing up in ridiculous commercials.
Sure, he’s inexperienced. Big deal. Matt Mitrione was inexperienced, and no one batted an eye when he made his pro debut in the UFC after, not unlike Brooks, time in another sport and on a reality show.
The fact of the matter is that, in his own way, Brooks is to be admired for getting this far. How he got the contract itself isn’t nearly as relevant as his putting in the same work as the pros after years as a martial arts joe. He got his fight and he promoted it, made weight and appears ready to go out and give it his best shot against all odds.
The outcome almost doesn’t matter, because the journey has justified itself just by getting him to this point and allowing him the chance to rise to an occasion and prove to himself that he could do it.
That’s the martial artist’s dream, and hating on Phil Brooks for pursuing it runs counter to the very ideas that are foundational to the sport itself.
