Bloodlust traditions in a freestyle century

MUCH was made of the recent bout between Irish cagefighter Conor McGregor and acclaimed American boxer Floyd Mayweather.

It was billed as a clash of styles: the hallowed traditions of pugilism versus the street credibility of 21st century mixed martial arts, all conducted under Marquess of Queensberry rules.

Had McGregor won, it would have been a handsdown victory for mixed martial arts. The fact he lost, but put up a fair show, was a win too because everyone knew that had Mayweather entered the brutality of the cage and been forced to kick and grapple his bigger, more violent opponent the result was inevitable.

However, despite the global hype leading up to the fight, I think the significance of the bout was underplayed.

The McGregor/Mayweather clash was emblematic of a much deeper collision of ideas.

It was a struggle between the strictures and proven effectiveness of traditional techniques and the exploration of the instinctive potential of an individual allowed a personal approach. Let me explain by example. Had Australian Test cricket captain Steve Smith played between the 1940s and the 1980s, his technique would have been challenged at a primary school level by a sharp-eyed coach, and he would not have been allowed to get to first-class cricket without major changes.

Smith does it all wrong: his back-lift is appalling, his offstump guard is flawed, his stance is awkward, he is moving when he hits the ball and strikes it across the line. He is an affront to the coaching manual.

But Smith is one of the top three batsmen in the world.

The reason is that many Australian cricket coaches have, in the past few decades, taught traditional technique, but with an overriding proviso that players do what “works” for them.

This has produced an Australian line-up with some very ungainly, sometimes brilliant, batsmen who regularly struggle with the variety of pitches in world cricket.

Teams with more traditional techniques, such as England and South Africa, tend to perform better across the range of dry, dusty tracks to the green grass of home.

The Aussie captain is an exception, performing under all conditions.

Is it possible traditional technique is more effective for most players, and when used across a variety of conditions, but that the gifted person benefits from the freedom of instinct rather than the strictures of dogma?

This question is not just for sport. Teaching techniques in Australian schools have faced criticism in recent years for shunning tradition. This is being blamed for a downward trend in student performance.

I wonder whether the gifted are benefiting and, like Steve Smith, doing better than ever.

The obvious example of this collision of approaches is in how we deal with information.

As a formally trained librarian, I marvel at the beauty and grace of cataloguing.

Armed with the Dewey Decimal Classification System and a good collection of bibliographies and bibliographies of bibliographies, one can lo- cate with precision the most specific and tiny piece of information among a library full of books.

This elegant system is the product of immense tradition.

The internet, as most of us know and use it, is the antithesis of this. Most of the know- ledge of humankind is on the web, available at the touch of a key and a Google search.

However, any semblance of order or veracity of that information is lacking. The web is as full of garbage and lies as it is of potential enlightenment.

This frustrates me. My mind has been indoctrinated in the linear progression of logic and reason, as tradition dictates. Not so today’s youth, who survey the scatter-gun results of a Google search to form an impression of the world. These young impressionists have far more information than I as a boy, and instant feedback with others.

This has huge benefits, especially for the gifted who thrive in information saturation, but can the same be said for the masses? What is the effect of unreliable information in a democracy, which by its nature depends formed populace.

We can take from the internet what we want in the same way McGregor took bits of boxing, jiu jitsu and other martial arts to create his style.

Will 21st century freestyle pioneers like McGregor and Smith be studied, their techniques developed to become the orthodoxies of the future?

The Information Age is inciting revolt everywhere from the bookish shush of the journal section of libraries to the unholy tempest of the cage.

This revolution unsettles me, and may explain why I wanted Mayweather to knock McGregor out. I was barracking for tradition.

Or maybe my desire for McGregor to hit the canvas is explained by something far older in our species’ DNA – bloodlust. on an in-