By After an exhaustive study examining more than 3,000 MMA fights in over 100 organizations, researchers have released a world-shattering study that shows that every fighter labeled “brave” or “a gamer” for taking fights with, or using crowd-pleasing but dangerous tactics against, a more highly regarded opponent was actually just entirely overconfident in their abilities. Rather than a show of defiance against long odds, the study found that the fighters were unanimously certain of their inevitable victory and never considered the possibility things wouldn’t work out.
“Like all of you, we’ve marveled at fighters willing to step up in challenging circumstance,” lead researcher Fern McDonald said. “Imagine our surprise to discover that there was no need for courage as every single fighter saw no potential world in which taking a fight on two days notice or fighting a top-five fighter in their first bout with an organization wouldn’t end in inevitable triumph.”
While researchers hypothesized that these fighters may actually be quite cowardly when presented with a situation in which they felt at risk of losing or suffering embarrassment they were unable to identify a bout where a fighter considered such possibilities and as such could draw no strong conclusion.
