Dave Hanratty

And then that lends itself in turn to a whole load of other things.

The feelings that mix martial arts and that fighting in general promotes in people, fighting is not about aggression and it's not about anger and it's not about a lack of control or just being more angry than the other guy.

That's actually the opposite of that.

You go into a cage or a boxing ring angry and you're going to get knocked out.

But what it does is when you have those feelings, you start to control them and channel them in a powerful way into being able to control another person or knock them out.

All of a sudden, you start to feel that you've stepped up as a human being, right?

And that then leads you to believe not just everything about fighting in the cage, but everything about life in general, how you should approach your boss when you want to pay rise, how you should approach your diet, how you should approach your relationships with your family and your partner, your spouse and your children and all these other things.

And it does lend itself to this very American ideal of this frontierism, which existed in the 1800s when people from Scandinavia and from Ireland and from Europe were

were looking to be themselves.

In Ireland, we were escaping the famine, the major part of that, in the middle of the century there.

But in Sweden and in Germany and places like that, people wanted to go there because they wanted to practice an even stronger form of Protestantism than what existed in the continent at that time.

So this idea of going to a new frontier and being self-sufficient and dependent on yourself, it really fits into that.

And the UFC has noticed that all of these things dovetail.

Probably the greatest of all time, in my opinion, is an out gay Brazilian woman called Amanda Nunes.

I think she's probably the best fighter I've ever seen, any category.

But there is people who appeal to that then directly.

One of them would be a guy called Colby Covington, right?

Nothing.

A journeyman.

The most boring fighter you could ever watch.