Twitter Mailbag: Carwin's retirement, eyepokes, TRT, free agency in MMA and more

It’s another week with no major MMA events scheduled, which means the Twitter Mailbag gets to field a variety of questions across a dazzling spectrum of topics.

Or, in other words, we finally have time to discuss a bunch of different crap, instead of a bunch of different discussions all about the same crap.

To ask your own question, go to @BenFowlkesMMA on Twitter and let it fly. Make sure you stretch out real good first to avoid injury.

@benfowlkesmma What’s Carwin’s legacy? Interim champ/perennial contender? Lesnar battle? Cheater? Best nickname in UFC? Solid goatee? #tmb

— Matt Murray (@mbmurray) May 8, 2013

Assuming Shane Carwin‘s retirement sticks, and I believe it will, he ends his MMA career with a 12-2 record overall, and a 4-2 mark in the UFC. He held the UFC’s interim heavyweight title, but not the real one. He came within a punch or two of stopping Brock Lesnar back when that really, really meant something. He spent shockingly little time in the cage throughout his career, and lost the only two fights he had that went past the first round. He was also, as you mentioned, connected to a steroid scandal, though he chose to ignore it in the hopes that it would go away. The fact that we’re still talking about it now tells us how well that worked (take note, athletes: an explanation and/or an apology beats a “no comment” every single time).

When it comes to his legacy, however, I think we’ll remember Carwin mostly as the very talented fighter who refused to quit his day job for this sport. I think that’s also a big part of why he’s retiring now, at age 38, after the injuries and surgeries had begun to pile up. He doesn’t need this. He has a good job as a water management engineer – a job he reportedly refused to give up even when the UFC offered him cash money to do so – so his future and his financial security is not tied to his ability/desire to get in a cage and pummel other large men with his enormous fists. That’s the way he wanted it. Maybe it was a little leftover trauma from his failed attempt to play professional football that left him with a cautious outlook on the career prospects of a pro athlete. Maybe he just really liked his job and saw no reason to quit. Whatever the reason, Carwin was the guy who made MMA his sideline gig and almost became the UFC heavyweight champion. We may never see another one of those.

@benfowlkesmma how much responsibility should fighters take for eye pokes. Even accidental ones?

— Anthony Boyd (@penny1532) May 8, 2013

Ideally, all eye pokes are accidental. Intentionally flinging your fingers into another person’s eye isn’t just illegal under the Unified Rules, it’s also incredibly unethical. You could permanently damage someone’s eye that way, and for what? To gain an unfair edge in a professional sporting competition? That’s insane, once you stop and think about it. The fact that the consequences could be so serious should give us a real sense of urgency about putting a stop to all this eye-poking nonsense, accidental or otherwise. If you’re an MMA fighter, there’s no good reason for you to have your fingers extended in the area of your opponent’s face. In that sense it’s so much worse than an accidental kick to the groin, since at least that usually happens as a result of an attempt at a legal strike. Eye pokes almost never happen that way. You don’t try and throw a jab and end up gouging someone’s retina with your index finger on accident.

That’s why, instead of worrying about the gloves, we should get serious about penalizing the pokers. If an eyepoke, accidental or otherwise, resulted in an immediate point deduction, I think we’d see a reduction in the number of eye pokes. The UFC’s idea for a new glove that keeps the fingers curved isn’t a bad one, but a) if it limits the available range of motion in the hand/fingers, it might be unfair to grapplers, and b) if it doesn’t do that, eye-pokers gonna eye poke. A look at the statistics shows that eye pokes are still unlikely to result in any real penalty in an MMA fight[. That’s a problem, and it’s one we could fix without making any new merchandise.

@benfowlkesmma Is Dana’s “Boston will be best TV card ever” just DW hyperbole? Title fight looks unlikely unless Grant/Maynard is ready #TMB

— Lou Giordano (@NYR30_) May 8, 2013

There you go again, talking about a fight card before it’s even happened. Haven’t you heard that only the UFC president is allowed to do that?

@benfowlkesmma what’s up with Tyson Fury calling out Cain? What purpose could it possibly serve? #tmb

— Rook Castle(@RookCastleSays) May 8, 2013

How many MMA fans were talking about, or even aware of the existence of Tyson Fury before this? By making a lot of noise about fighting the UFC heavyweight champ, he gets free exposure before a brand new audience. So that’s the purpose it serves, and it’s already served it. Would Fury actually accept a fight with Velasquez? Not if he knows what’s good for him. Boxers are specialists. Asking them to go get in a real fight is like asking your eye doctor to remove your tonsils. He might have a better chance of successfully doing it than, say, someone who is not a doctor of anything, but he’s still not qualified for that job. Look at the way Fury fights. For that matter, look at Floyd Mayweather. These are people who have excelled at a type of fighting that never asks you to even consider what would happen if the other guy reached down and grabbed that completely undefended front leg of yours. Fury’s good at what he does. He’s making good money doing it. So why would he want to go and do something he’s not good at, when it’s so much easier to merely talk about it?

@benfowlkesmma We are starting to see the younger fighters speak against TRT, do you think this will become a young vs old thing soon?

— Adam Marsh (@IWearMySoxRed) May 8, 2013

It would make sense, wouldn’t it? Testosterone-replacement therapy supposedly helps the old lion feel like a young dinosaur again. Good news for MMA’s golden oldies, but bad news for the new breed of fighters trying to knock them off and take their spots. After all, the old fighter already has something that the young fighter doesn’t: experience. You can’t get that from a syringe (at least not yet), which means older fighters like Vitor Belfort get to have it both ways when they get on TRT. Belfort’s been fighting professionally since 1996. Luke Rockhold, who faces Belfort in Brazil next week, has been at it since 2007. There’s a pretty significant experience gap there. There’s also nearly a decade’s difference in their ages. In a natural state of unarmed combat, one’s experience and the other’s youth might cancel each other out, or at least make for an interesting experiment to see which matters more. But now that Belfort gets to seek a fountain of youth in a syringe, the equation is thrown out of balance. It’s no wonder young fighters don’t like it. I just wonder whether they’ll change their minds when time plays its cruel little trick on them, as well.

@benfowlkesmma will the EA/bellator saga change the way contracts are worded?Free agency in mma is not the same as it is in other sports

— joe mosqueda (@joedaddy85) May 8, 2013

That’s true. MMA free agency is very different from, say, free agency in the NFL. Then again, the nature of this sport is very different from the nature of pro football. For instance, one of the trickier parts in the Bellator’s legal battle with Eddie Alvarez seems to be the difference between what a fighter is promised and what he’s guaranteed. As we’ve been told in many different ways by many different people over the years, MMA contracts don’t necessarily guarantee all that much. You can’t even reliably guarantee a fighter that he’ll get a fight on a certain date. Opponents get injured, whole cards occasionally get canceled, pay-per-views don’t sell, you name it. That’s not like the NFL, where we know not only how many games there will be next season, but exactly how many quarters of football will be played. It will be interesting to see what a judge makes of all the promises being floated in both Bellator and the UFC’s contracts. MMA fans might feel like they can tell the difference between something that will actually happen and something that probably won’t, but who knows if the legal community sees it the same way.

@benfowlkesmma How likely is it that Vitor is stranded in Brazil for the rest of his career? #tmb

— Baltasar Shepard (@BaltasarShepard) May 8, 2013

Stranded isn’t the word I’d use. Stranded implies that you got stuck somewhere due to forces beyond your control, like the rough weather at sea that left the S.S. Minnow stranded on that island with an abundance of coconuts and evening wear for so many years. Belfort isn’t stranded so much as hiding out. It seems unlikely (though not impossible) that he’d be able to get a therapeutic-use exemption for testosterone in a state like Nevada, due to his history with performance-enhancing drugs. In Brazil he has no such difficulty, which Rockhold is none too pleased about.

Rockhold is right to be upset the situation. By keeping Belfort in, shall we say, less regulated environments like Brazil and Toronto, the UFC appears to be intentionally shielding him from real regulation. I know Dana White has promised to “test the s–- out of” TRT users, but when it comes to Belfort’s recent bookings it looks like the UFC is more interested in enabling TRT use than exposing it to independent, third-party scrutiny. You can’t do that while simultaneously claiming that you want to crack down on TRT use in the sport. The UFC wouldn’t let a fighter who was suspended in Nevada skirt that suspension by fighting overseas, so why is it doing this for a fighter who, according to the NSAC executive director, would probably not receive permission to use the treatment he’s already using? Imagine if the UFC only booked Alistair Overeem for fights in Japan. Imagine if Nick Diaz only fought in coffee shops in Amsterdam. It wouldn’t be too difficult to connect the dots, would it? It’s the same with Belfort, and it’s an obvious contradiction on the part of the UFC.

@benfowlkesmma Antonio Carvalho was released on a one-fight losing streak with a questionable stoppage. Is it win or die for all under 155?

— Chris Newman (@TroopNewman) May 8, 2013

Carvalho went 2-2 in the UFC thanks to one squeaker of a decision over Rodrigo Damm and one slightly questionable stoppage loss to Darren Elkins. Doesn’t matter now, though, because he got axed right along with an MMA vet like Leonard Garcia, who had to lose five in a row before the UFC finally let him go. If we’ve learned anything from the UFC’s pattern of hirings and firings, it’s that we never really know who’ll stay and who’ll go. Obviously losing fights doesn’t help your case, but winning boring ones sometimes seems even worse. That keeps the fighters on edge, which might be part of the point. Maybe the UFC hopes that desperate fighters produce exciting fights. Or maybe it just can’t stop itself from overfeeding its own roster, and as a result it has to drop a bunch of fighters all at once, leading to cuts that are just and unjust alike.

The fighters know what the UFC wants out of them. It wants them to win awesome fights every single time. That’s kind of like a telemarketer being given a list of phone numbers and instructions to keep sales high and long-distance charges low. Maybe he can do it if everything goes perfectly, but eventually he’s going to have a day where he calls a bunch of people in Alaska and gets nothing. It’s the same for fighters. There are good nights and bad nights. Unfortunately, the UFC doesn’t have much patience for the latter.

@benfowlkesmma Looking back at Wandy vs. Stann: Would you really enjoy it, if 90% of the fights in MMA would be like this (pure brawls)?

— Mad_Manni (@MayhemMuller) May 8, 2013

If 90 percent of all MMA fights looked like that we’ve have to keep a trauma unit on standby right next to the cage. We’d also probably come to think of it as commonplace for two guys to play Rock-em, Sock-em Robots, and then it wouldn’t so special anymore. That fight was thrilling to watch, but one of the things I love about MMA is the variety. There are so many different ways for a fight to be fun and competitive and inspiring. That’s why it bugs me when fighters are pressured, sometimes subtly and sometimes not, into producing a certain kind of fight. This sport has room for barroom brawls and Sunday afternoon chess matches. That variety helps make it special.

What is the point of announcing A Silva’s 50K fine? Inconsistency with UFC’s operating procedure is getting weird.@benfowlkesmma #TMB

— DirectorPatrick (@DirectorPatrick) May 8, 2013

You’re right, that is weird. Matt Mitrione gets “suspended” (only, you know, not really) and fined an undisclosed amount for violating the UFC’s code of conduct, while Anderson Silva misses a media day and the UFC can’t wait to tell us exactly how much it cost him. It’s kind of like how Dana White likes to tell us that he keeps true fighter pay figures secret as a favor to the fighters, but let somebody like Quinton “Rampage” Jackson complain about his salary and out come the pay stubs. Seems to me that if a professional sports organization is going to announce that it has fined one of its athletes, it should also say how much. Or, if it absolutely, positively doesn’t want to do that, it should never do it. When your policy on it is this inconsistent, it kind of makes it seem like you don’t have one.

@benfowlkesmma #TMB First looking into rule changes re grounded fighters, now investigating new gloves: since when is the UFC about reform?

— The Ras (@rjarborg) May 8, 2013

For all the grief we give the UFC (and I’ve done it a few times in this very column), we also have to give the organization credit for being responsive to fan concerns. When the UFC sees a problem, it’s generally pretty good about doing something to fix it. Or, you know, at least trying to fix it. We may not always agree with the solution it settles on (cough*TRT*cough), but the UFC isn’t one of those pro sports behemoths that stays up in the luxury box so it can remain deaf to the howling of its fans. Especially with the talk of requesting changes to the Unified Rules, it seems like the UFC is becoming more accepting of its own role as the guardian of this sport. Every other organization follows its lead in ways both big and small, and many fans still think the UFC is MMA. It’s encouraging to see the organization trying to improve the sport, and it’s good to know that change is possible. It just might take a few lacerated eyeballs to make it happen.

Ben Fowlkes is MMAjunkie.com and USA TODAY’s MMA columnist. Follow him on Twitter at @BenFowlkesMMA. Twitter Mailbag appears every Thursday on MMAjunkie.com.