An Open Letter In Reply

AN OPEN LETTER IN REPLY To the STRIFE office, the STRIFE locker room, and STRIFE Nation, in approximately that order of priority and in no other order. Published by my hand on the morning after Behind Closed Doors 6, from a hotel room in this city that I am increasingly fond of and which I will name when it becomes promotionally useful. No federation interview was offered to me last night. I would not have accepted one. The federation has made its statement on its terms. I will now make mine on mine. ———————————————— Mr. Barr — I have read your office's response to my Behind Closed Doors 5 broadcast segment. I have read it twice. I have, as a matter of professional courtesy, watched it twice as well. The first time at speed. The second time slowly, with the pause button working as hard as the rest of the production. I want to begin by saying — and I am aware of how unusual this sentence will read in my voice — that the office's response was substantive. The federation said it would respond on tonight's broadcast and tonight's broadcast contained a response. The man who delivered the response did not waste my time. He did not waste yours. The form, as it was, was correct. I am going to give the form its credit before I address its content. That is the order things ought to be addressed in. I have been told my entire career that I am bad at order. I am not. ———————————————— ON WHAT THE OFFICE COMMITTED TO You made two specific commitments on the federation's broadcast record. Both are now binding on the federation, by virtue of having been delivered into a federation-operated camera in a federation-operated cage during a federation-operated broadcast. The audience watched you make them. The audience will, in due course, watch you keep them. I would like to enumerate them for the locker room, who reads what I write more carefully than the audience does, and who is the room that produces real consequences for federation conduct. ONE — the office committed to publishing a written process for how late signees are integrated into the federation's bracketing and seeding structure. The deadline is ninety days. The publication will be made in the locker room and on the website. I am, on the public record, grateful to the office for the commitment. I am also, on the public record, going to be the man counting the days. Day one is today. Day ninety is the day the federation either has the document in writing or it doesn't. I will not be ambiguous about which day we are on. TWO — the office committed to placing me in a singles match, within the next three shows, against an opponent of the office's selection that the office will discuss with me in advance. The opponent will be a credible upper-card competitor. The format will not be designed to exploit my identified weakness. I will have study time. I will have format input within reasonable bounds. These are the conditions I asked for. The conditions have been agreed to. The match has not yet been named. The match will be named. I will be in the building. These two commitments are the federation's commitments. I will hold the federation to them. I will not hold them to anything they did not commit to, and I would like the audience to attend to that distinction carefully, because the distinction is the entire point of what I am writing here. ———————————————— ON WHAT THE OFFICE DID NOT COMMIT TO The office, Mr. Barr, declined to debate methodology on broadcast. You said this directly. You said — and I am quoting your exact phrasing because I want the locker room to read it — "I'm not going to debate methodology on broadcast. Methodology is the office's job." I respect the position. I respect the reasoning. I respect the man delivering it. I do not, however, mistake the position for an answer. The federation has now committed to fixing the methodology going forward. The federation has not, on tonight's broadcast or any prior broadcast, committed to acknowledging that the methodology produced an incorrect result in my specific case. These are different questions. The first question is what the office is doing differently from now. The second question is what the office is willing to say about what it did already. The first question received a ninety-day commitment. The second question received a procedural shield ("methodology is the office's job") that I am, professionally, not going to pretend I did not notice. I am not asking the office to invalidate Tomás Reyes-Montoya's championship. He is the inaugural champion. He won it cleanly. His credo, which Reginald Graves was good enough to read into the broadcast record last night, is a credo I respect. I have no complaint with the man wearing the belt. I have a complaint with the room he was placed in. The room would have benefited from my presence at the seeding round, and the office's decision not to seed me at that round produced a championship picture from which I was, structurally, excluded. The office has now committed to making sure that does not happen again. The office has not committed to saying it happened the first time. I would like the office, at some future broadcast, to be willing to say it happened. Not as concession. Not as retraction. Just as observation, on the federation's record, in the same way the office produced last night's ninety-day commitment. The federation will be stronger for the acknowledgment. The federation's record will be more complete. I will, in passing, mention that I am willing to wait for it. ———————————————— ON YOUR NOTE TO ME Mr. Barr, you delivered a sentence into the broadcast last night that the federation has been quoting all morning, and that I have been thinking about since. You called it "an old fighter's note to a younger fighter." You said the federation is eight months old. You said the man — that is, I — has been here for two of them. You said "hasn't been wrong yet" is a true statement at a sample size of two months. You suggested I revisit the sentence in a year. I am going to revisit the sentence now. The note was correctly delivered. The note was, more than that, kindly delivered, which is a register I am not always best at recognising when I am the one being addressed. I want the record to reflect that I heard both halves of what you said — the half about the sample size, which was accurate, and the half about the old-fighter-younger-fighter framing, which carries seventeen-and-nine of regional MMA behind it and which I would be a fool to dismiss. I respect that record. I respect the man with that record. I will, however, also note — and the locker room is the room I am writing this part for — that the federation is eight months old, which means the federation's own sample size for assessing whether anyone in the office has been wrong is also small. The note about sample sizes cuts both ways. It cuts toward me, and I accept the cut. It cuts toward the office, and I would like the office to consider whether the cut applies to its own decisions as well. We are, on this question, structurally similar. I am willing to revisit the sentence in a year. I would like the office to be willing to revisit its decisions in a year. That is the structure of the request. ———————————————— A REVISION I will not stand by the BCD 5 closer in its original form. The closer was: "I have not yet been wrong about anything in this federation that mattered." You corrected the sample-size assumption embedded in it, accurately, on broadcast. I am refining the sentence. The refined version is this: I have not yet been wrong about anything in this federation in a way the federation has been willing to acknowledge. The refined version is harder to refute. The refined version is also, I would like to note, more accurate. The first sentence was a claim about me. The second sentence is a claim about the relationship between me and the room I am operating in. I prefer the second sentence. I am going to use the second sentence going forward. You taught me to say it more carefully. I have done so. ———————————————— WHAT HAPPENS NEXT I am in the building until the office names the match. I am not on tonight's card — and I am, for the record, not asking to be on tonight's card. I will be at the gym during the day. I will be at The Foundry in the evenings. I will be available, by federation channels, for the office's selection process. I will not be approaching individual roster members for matches. I am not running my own match selection. The office is running the match selection. I have asked it to. I will let it. In the meantime, two notes for the locker room. One — Katrina Randall, my handler, stopped me on broadcast last night with a single word. She was correct to stop me. She has been correct to stop me on multiple occasions. I would like the federation to attend to her counsel, when the federation interacts with her, as carefully as I do. She is the room's adult. The federation has more to learn from her than the federation has yet asked. Two — Brody Vance was at ringside last night and did not speak. He will not speak until I ask him to. I will, in time, ask him to. The federation will know when. ———————————————— In closing — *Mr. Barr made the right gesture. Now the federation finds out whether the gesture was a commitment or a courtesy. I will be reading the calendar.* *How does it feel to want, STRIFE Nation? Federation included.* — "Simply" Shawn Cortez